DeMarcus Cousins made it clear that he didn’t want the Kings to fire former coach Michael Malone, but owner Vivek Ranadive told him that he had to do so because Malone clashed with GM Pete D’Alessandro and had missed a meeting, sources tell Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher. Cousins asked the team at that point to hire Mark Jackson, but as the Kings instead decided to stick with Tyrone Corbin, team officials promised they would consult him in the future, Bucher also hears. The team now is reportedly close to a deal with Karl, and plenty seems up in the air. Here’s the latest from California’s capital city:
- Some close to Cousins weren’t sure if Karl’s personality and the intensity of Cousins would be a match, as Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee writes. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports wrote Monday that Cousins’ agents. Dan Fegan and Jarinn Akana, have given their approval of Karl and were merely wary of the team’s swift coaching changes.
- Cousins wasn’t alone among Kings disenchanted with the way the team ousted Malone, Jones adds in the same piece. Rudy Gay recently said he felt “lost” on the court, according to Jones. Gay signed his extension with the Kings in large measure because, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports originally wrote, he wanted to play for former coach Michael Malone,
- Ranadive asked D’Alessandro to meet with Karl last week, Jones also writes in his piece. It seemed Monday, before the owner gave the GM the go-ahead to hire Karl if he wished, that Ranadive was hesitating while D’Alessandro pushed for a deal, though perhaps that wasn’t the case.
- The Kings are expected to hire Vance Walberg as an assistant coach should the team complete a deal with Karl, as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group hears (Twitter link). Walberg, currently a Sixers assistant who previously worked under Karl on the Nuggets, has made his mark on offense, Haynes notes.