DeMarcus Cousins, Vlade, Vivek downplay new round of Boogie trade rumors
The rumblings started shortly after George Karl accepted a four-year offer to become the fifth head coach of DeMarcus Cousins’ NBA career, and his third of the 2014-15 season alone.
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Two months after taking over the Sacramento Kings, Karl made it clear that, while he respects his All-Star center “a tremendous amount,” at no point in his coaching career has he ever had an “untradeable” player. That ignited a hot stove fire that’s burned all summer long, even as the Kings engaged in transactions ranging from inscrutable to inspiring in an attempt to find enough stability to pull off their first winning campaign in a decade.
The latest stoking of the embers comes courtesy of Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck, who identified Cousins — one of just two players, along with LaMarcus Aldridge, to finish among the NBA’s top 10 in both points and rebounds per game in each of the last two years — as one of three high-profile talents who could begin the upcoming season on the trade block. Beck’s report starts at the 2:24 mark of the clip below:
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DeMarcus Cousins. Look, again, Sacramento, I think, wants to hold onto him. Certainly, the owner, Vivek Ranadivé, absolutely wants to hold onto DeMarcus Cousins. But I’ve been told that if you polled the rest of the organization, the vast majority are in favor of trading DeMarcus Cousins, and that would include — though he denies it — coach George Karl.
We saw that awkward moment between George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins at Summer League. They’re trying to put the best face on their relationship, but it certainly has all the makings of a doomed partnership there. And maybe they get through it. They’ll certainly give one another a chance in the early going. But if there’s any signs of tension, if there are problems between them, if chemistry is an issue for that team — and there’s potential volatility all across that roster — then you’ve got to expect at some point, the Sacramento Kings have to at least consider it.
And DeMarcus Cousins — yeah, young, elite, one of the top big men in the NBA. There’ll be plenty of interest for him around the league.
Cousins responded Monday evening with a dismissive tweet:
… that was soon echoed by vice president of basketball and franchise operations Vlade Divac:
… which was almost immediately followed by owner/controlling partner Vivek Ranadivé:
For whatever it may or may not be worth, the lone voice missing from this chorus belongs to Karl … which, in terms of alignment, has sort of been the issue from the start, hasn’t it?
New chief decision-maker Divac later said Karl “kind of step[ped] it up farther than he should” have with his “untradeable player” comment and walked it back, saying, “If we’re talking about today, yeah, DeMarcus is untradeable.” That’s the trouble with today, though — it keeps becoming tomorrow.
Before long, Yahoo Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Karl had been campaigning for Cousins’ departure, and that the Kings had discussed sending the talented big man to the Los Angeles Lakers, possibly in exchange for No. 2 overall draft pick D’Angelo Russell. We had emojis pregnant with history, myriad conflicting reports about Boogie’s availability and furtive Instagram recruitment … but, as of press time, no deal.
Karl’s reportedly confident that he and Cousins can patch things up. Cousins says they’re “trying to understand each other better.” They’ve moved on from awkward handshakes to awkward hugs:
… in the interest of, as Cousins’ Instagram caption put it, giving us “something to talk about.”
And, y’know, it has! Here we are, talking about it. But until Cousins and Karl can show they’re making it work on the court, though, and until the Kings can rediscover the rhythm that had them looking like a surprise playoff contender in the early going last season, the other thing — the “so much smoke reported by enough reliable sources to make it exceptionally difficult not to believe there’s fire” thing about the Cousins/Karl schism and the prospect of dissension within the ranks of the Kings’ ever-churning front office — still figures to be the primary topic of conversation whenever we chat about the headliners in California’s capital. Even if (almost) everybody seems to be tweeting from the same page.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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