WESTERN CONFERENCE PACIFIC DIVISION Sacramento Owner Vivek Ranadive believes his organization has outside-the-box thinking going on to renovate the Sacramento Kings franchise to where it was a dozen years ago. But really, this is the same old 20-something wins team. For every good action done, an equal bad action has undone the progress. For instance, getting a good player like Rudy Gay. Good. Overpaying him $19 million and looking to lock him up long-term at similar rates. Not good. Locking up DeMarcus Cousins. Good. Making him the leader of your franchise going forward. Not good. You could go on and on—with the decision to replace Isaiah Thomas with Darren Collison. With the decision to draft two suspect shooting guards with lottery picks in consecutive drafts. The Kings won 28 games last season and they may hit that figure once again this season. It puts them right on subpar with what they have done the last five seasons, winning anywhere from 30 to 34 percent of their regular season games. Same old Sac. DEFENSE Mike Malone was known for his defensive tutelage, when he was an assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors and New Orleans Hornets, but unfortunately that rep didn’t translate over to Sacramento, with his 2013-14 Kings rating 23rd in defensive efficiency at 106.3 points per 100 possessions. It’s not hard to find the culprits behind such a porous D. All you had to do was watch one Kings game. Any Kings game. DeMarcus Cousins
Sacramento Kings Gameday HQ
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