DeMarcus Cousins, George Karl, and the Crisis of the Sacramento Kings

Organizational incompetence compounds itself. The Sacramento Kings fired half-decent head coach Mike Malone nearly eight weeks ago and if the decision was baffling then, it has since been revealed as straightforwardly bad: the team has dropped 19 of the 27 games they've played since Ty Corbin took over on an interim basis. Any and all feel-good vibes the squad had been cultivating under Malone are dead, thus throwing DeMarcus Cousins into one of his trademark depressions.

In Malone, Cousins appeared to have found his first boss with whom he could work happily. Malone didn't condemn the heart-on-sleeve verve with which Cousins plays, and the two shared a mutual respect that also allowed Malone to stand up to his star center from time-to-time. Under Malone's stewardship, Cousins developed into the block-bullying, rebound-devouring big man he had previously only hinted at becoming. Now that Corbin is in charge, Boogie looks adrift again. He hasn't gone full Mr. Hyde, but he's falling into old habits and sometimes looks unengaged in a way that harkens back to his problem child days. He's unhappy, which is understandable considering the Kings were winning games for the first time in his five-year career, then fired a guy he liked and have subsequently retired to the Western Conference's basement.

Kings management is frantically trying to course-correct. Their initial plan was to have Corbin play the role of caretaker for the next few months before installing a permanent head coach in the offseason, but with the team floundering the way it is, Vivek Ranadivé and Pete D'Alessandro are trying to bring George Karl aboard as soon as possible.

One problem: DeMarcus Cousins's agents are opposed to the hiring. An anonymous so-and-so in Cousins's camp passive-aggressively noted that if the Kings want to bring in Karl, they should "make the move; we don't run the team," but the implication is the Kings would be doing so against Cousins's wishes, or at least against the wishes of his business partners. As of Sunday evening, D'Alessandro is reportedly committed to going forward with the signing, but certainly not without at least giving consideration to the fact that he might be antagonizing his franchise player for the second time this season. Boogie, for his part, seems incredibly stressed out by the whole ordeal

This is a predicament the Kings have brought upon themselves. Malone's firing wasn't utterly misguided, but the timing of the move was inexplicable. Why hadn't the team, if they didn't like Malone, gotten rid of him the previous offseason? D'Alessandro could have hired Karl last June and given the veteran coach a full summer to get everything in order. Malone's dismissal happening when it did gave the impression the Kings don't know what they're doing, that they make decisions according to the whims of their egomaniacal Silicon Valley owner rather than the opinions of clear-thinking basketball people. It makes sense that fans would fret about this, but wouldn't the players, too? No one wants to be part of a directionless enterprise.

The folks who run the Kings have made so many mistakes that they now operate operate from a position of weakness. Whatever they choose to do with Karl will be not just a personnel decision, but a statement of intent they probably would prefer not to make. Will they defer to DeMarcus Cousins or make the hiring they believe will help the team, Boogie be damned? There's no right answer, only a less-wrong one.

It's unclear which is which. The Kings could do a lot worse than George Karl, but more than anything, they need to keep Cousins invested without handing him the power to choose his own coach. (Players rarely make good de facto general managers.) Ranadivé fancies himself a buccaneering roundball thinkovator, but his tenure as an NBA owner hasn't borne that out. Because of his organization's blunders, we're about to find out if he has a knack for crisis management.