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Have The Sacramento Kings Changed Their Culture?

ByTi Windisch|

One aspect of championship teams that often gets overlooked is culture. Great players are obviously necessary for an NBA team to win it all, but it’s pretty rare for an organization to make it to the NBA Finals without a strong, healthy culture guiding each and every move and member of the team.

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The Sacramento Kings finally seem to be getting their culture in order. After a long drought of winning seasons, the Kings have a completely different feeling to them this offseason. For me, it started with the NBA Draft. There was no “Stauskas?” incident this season.

That’s because Vlade Divac is very clearly running this team. He has the final call on personnel matters, although he does seem to be open to other’s opinions. That’s the ideal situation for running a franchise–openness is important, but it’s very important for there to be one guiding voice in the end–not several conflicting, clashing opinions.

Vlade is the comforting leader of the Kings, and he’s managed to resolve the biggest issue that faced Sacramento this offseason: the difficulties between George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins. If Nancy Liberman is to believed, the issues were never as bad as Adrian Wojnarowski would have us all believe.

Either way, all that matters now is that things are good between the two, and it seems as though they are. Those two men are probably going to do the most to determine the Kings’ fortunes over the next year, and beyond it now that Vlade Divac is done making roster moves for the summer.

Obviously Boogie is going to have a massive impact on Sacramento’s season–he’s the franchise cornerstone after all, and may just be an All-NBA First Teamer this season. But I feel like one aspect of Karl that people have been sleeping on while he’s been demonized by a lot of people (myself shamefully included) is that he’s a really damn good coach.

Karl has 1,142 career wins, which is a pretty incredible number–good enough for sixth all-time, and just 13 wins behind the legendary Phil Jackson. Much has been made about Karl’s desire to move up and pass Jackson and maybe a few other coaches as well, but I think he’s more focused on cementing his legacy by finally adding a championship to his coaching legacy.

The way that the Karl/Boogie “situation” was handled is another sign that Sacramento’s culture has changed for the better. In the past, Karl would’ve been fired, or Boogie been traded.

I’m not sure which one, but neither is the right result. Actually putting in the time, effort and work to fix the situation was the right idea–losing either coach or cornerstone player would’ve been nothing but damaging to the team.

Like him or hate him, you can’t deny that George Karl is a great coach. He’s got the track record. And now he’s got a talented team around him.  Things are on the rise in Sacramento, and honestly it’s all thanks to Vivek Ranadivé.

No, this isn’t a clever dig at Vivek. He’s finally done what every good owner needs to do–less. It’s not easy for a wildly successful man like Vivek to step back, as he’s used to making the right call in a pressure situation. But he has, and it’s done so much for this team this offseason. Things are sailing smoothly–not even the national media has been able to punch holes in the Kings lately.

The winning culture I talked about earlier all starts at the top and runs down. If these Sacramento Kings have a great season and band together to make a playoff push, you can trace the results back to one Vivek Ranadivé. Everything starts, and ends, with the man on top.

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