DeMarcus Cousins stormed into the locker room and cursed out George Karl following a recent Kings loss, according to a new report.
After Sacramento’s loss to the Spurs on Monday night, Cousins allegedly stormed into the locker room and directed a “torrent of obscenities” at Karl, a source told The Big Lead’s Jason McIntyre. Karl responded by simply walking away.
The source says that Cousins was remorseful and asked teammates if he’d gone too far, which they agreed he had. This was shortly before Cousins spoke to the media and said there were “issues in-house” and a need for a players-only meeting.
The players-only meeting apparently did not go well, and the locker room is a mess.
The entire Sacramento locker room is frustrated. During the players-only meeting, the team’s 2013 lottery pick, Ben McLemore, spoke up. He said he was frustrated with his role, and he didn’t even know what his role was. Teammates responded: “Your role is to make 3-pointers and defend. That’s everyone’s role on this team except DeMarcus and Rajon.”
Even more wildly, the source claims that after the meeting, GM Vlade Divac and his assistant Mike Bratz went to the players and openly admitted to the team that they didn’t know what to do with Karl and asked if they should fire him.
A GM straight up telling the players he doesn’t know what he’s doing and asking what they think he should do is absolutely bonkers, and the source says the players were “shocked and didn’t know how to respond.” Karl remains the coach at the moment, but USA Today’s Sam Amick reports that a firing could still come this week with the team off to a 1-7 start.
This goes along with a previous report that Karl was in trouble in Sacramento just months after signing a four-year contract. Team owner Vivek Ranadive is said to be a fan of John Calipari and the team gauged his interest during the summer. Calipari, of course, was Cousins’s coach at Kentucky, and was a long-shot solution with Cousins and Karl at odds over the summer. It goes without saying that the Kings have no shot at Calipari right now with the college basketball season about to tip off.
Whatever the case, if there’s any truth to these reports, the Kings appear to be wildly dysfunctional from top to bottom. Cousins wasn’t kidding when he talked about in-house issues.
H/T Bleacher Report
