The saga of the Sacramento Kings season is not over, even as their season winds up.
There are many issues to address in the offseason, and one of them will be promptly cleared. Head Coach George Karl will be fired at the end of the season. The declaration, which already seemed like a given, was given by Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee.
"Multiple league sources have indicated Karl will be fired Thursday. The sources would not go on the record because they are unauthorized to speak on the matter."
The writing on the wall is very clear. The Kings front office did not even inform him that the veterans of the team will not join the trip for the final game in Houston.
Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski described the decision as to fire Karl as "a broader decision of ownership and top basketball executive Vlade Divac" in contrast to the firing of Mike Malone which was purely an individual move by team owner Vivek Ranadive. Karl is still owed $ 6.5 million on his current contract.
The next coaching choice will be pivotal. A huge part of their roller coaster season hinged on disagreements between Karl and the Kings star DeMarcus Cousins. As the ownership has continued to reiterate that trading Cousins is out of the question, they need to find a coach who would be agreeable with him.
The Kings have actually done that with Mike Malone, now coaching for the Denver Nuggets, which is why his ouster was a shocker. For Karl, it was actually more surprising that he got this far.
Wojnarowski has also provided a short list of coaches that the Kings might be considering. He has eliminated the big names which are Tom Thibodeau who used to coach the Chicago Bulls, Jeff Van Gundy and Scott Brooks formerly of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Instead, the Kings are looking at former Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro, Celtics assistant Jay Larranaga, ex-Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt, Hawks assistant Kenny Atkinson and recently fired coach Jeff Hornacek of the Phoenix Suns, as per Wojnarowski's sources.
Blatt and Hornacek had relatively successful head coaching runs. Blatt actually had the best winning percentage of any coach fired in-season, while Hornacek was a Coach of the Year runner-up (losing to Gregg Popovich) in his first season with the Suns.