Kings' DeMarcus Cousins turmoil starts with owner Vivek Ranadive

All of this has been met with an avalanche of nopes and neins from Ranadive and Vlade Divac, the recent hiree as the Kings’ vice president of basketball. Even Karl joined the chorus, denying he wanted Cousins out. “I think it’s just a lot of crazy fibs and lies,” Karl told the Sacramento Bee. “It’s just a situation where we won 29 games last year and for us as a basketball organization we want to get better.”

That’s not quite going to put this situation to rest. The organization is left in an untenable situation with Cousins now duly wary of Karl's frustration and all of this becoming public knowledge.

All of it leads to an obvious question: Were things really so bad when Mike Malone was coach and Pete D’Alessandro was the general manager? Those two were, at least, making a very public show of nursing Cousins along with get-to-know you visits and positive publicity. That air of support long gone.

The Kings are in no position to make a move now. Even if they were to trade Cousins, they’d be doing so from a position of weakness, and they’ve never received an offer for Cousins that would make sense in terms of a talent swap. At the same time, it is hard to see how the Kings will get through all of next season with both Cousins and Karl on hand. Eventually, Ranadive will have to pick between the two.