After complaining about the national media’s unfair perception of the Sacramento Kings for quite a while, it seems as though they’re finally starting to come around. The most contentious part of the offseason for Sacramento was easily the “situation” between DeMarcus Cousins and George Karl, and although we’ve known for a while that Cousins and Karl have been working on their issues bigger outlets are starting to report on it as well.
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In this case, bigger outlets refers to CBS Sports, and James Herbert in specific. Herbert wrote about how part GM, part peacemaker Vlade Divac has claimed “everything is fine” in regards to Cousins and Karl’s relationship.
DeMarcus Cousins on Vlade bringing people together: "His talent as a player has carried over to GM, President, whatever his role is."
— TKHBlake (@TKHblake) September 28, 2015
Although Herbert still seemed fairly skeptical about the partnership actually working for the entire season, it is refreshing for a story involving the Kings to not call them a disaster or completely incompetent franchise.
DMC on Karl: "That's my man."
— Jason Jones (@mr_jasonjones) September 28, 2015
And luckily today was the Sacramento Kings media day so we have a lot of great quotes from and about both Cousins and Karl. Although this is still all just talk until we actually see this team take the floor together, there were still several good signs for Kings fans.
Cousins agreed with George Karl that their relationship is "solid." Cousins said they talked their differences out. "It's about winning."
— TKHBlake (@TKHblake) September 28, 2015
That bit about winning is something I’ve been stressing for a little while here. This partnership depends on winning games above all else. Like the legendary Al Davis was known for saying: “Just win, baby.”
You can have all the workouts and team-building sessions you want to, but if this Sacramento Kings team goes out there and loses 50-some games this season everything is going to fall apart. With these three volatile personalities in Rajon Rondo, Cousins and Karl there’s no chance they make it through an entire rough season.
On the other hand though, if this team gets off to a hot start similarly to last season they might be able to band together and make a real run at the playoffs. Or at least 40 wins, which would probably feel like a playoff trip after this horrible run the Sacramento faithful have had to endure.
And as nice as it is to see the NBA world change from “they’re all going to explode in a fiery catastrophe” to “well maybe it’s not so bad in Sacramento” those wins could move the needle all the way over to “wow, this team is actually damn good”.
And although it’s more than just him, Boogie really deserves to be on a good team and not be the subjective of 19 new trade rumors every single day. And he’s going his part to get there, seeing as I’m not sure he’s taken a single day off this entire offseason.
So although they’ve been through a lot this offseason, it seems like the combination of Cousins and Karl is set for smooth sailing at the moment.
How it ends will be determined by how coach Karl’s team ends up playing in the coming months, but it seems that his relationship with his star player won’t automatically derail the Kings, which is more than we could say earlier this summer.
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