The DeMarcus Cousins trade talk has cooled down considerably over the past week or so, and it’s safe to assume that has nothing to do with Sacramento Kings coach George Karl warming up to the idea of keeping Cousins around.
In an interview with Jim Rome earlier this week, Kings president of basketball operations Vlade Divac was very honest when asked about the relationship between Karl and Cousins.
“I will be honest with you, I think it’s not pretty right now,” Divac said. “I’m focused on bringing a better team this year, and I think I did a pretty good job in this free agency, and now I will be focused on the two of them. I think they should think about how they can do the best for this team, and I hope everything goes well.”
Divac said he considers Cousins to be Sacramento’s “franchise guy,” which seems to be an opinion that is shared by the entire Kings front office. For whatever reason, Karl just doesn’t want Cousins on his team. But, according to Divac, the veteran coach is going to have to live with it.
“A lot of rumors around the country talking about ‘he’s not going to play for coach’, ‘coach wants to trade him’; it’s not going to happen,” Divac explained. “If somebody is going to make a decision, I’m going to make the decision. So I want to keep them both here for now. DeMarcus is definitely our guy that we want to build a team around.”
Assuming Cousins isn’t traded and Karl keeps his job, there are two ways this could go. Either Cousins is determined to prove Karl wrong and performs at a high level without creating drama, or he takes the “if he doesn’t want me, why should I try?” approach.
Despite rumors about a certain college coach having interest in the Kings job, Sacramento doesn’t want to fire Karl after hiring him just five months ago. Either Karl and Cousins are going to have to make nice, or the Kings could be in for a disappointing season.
