DeMarcus Cousins: 'We're Not the Same Team' Since Mike Malone's Dismissal

The Sacramento Kings' 9-5 start feels like it never even happened, and DeMarcus Cousins has a theory as to why.

Per Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee:

Fresh off of a 114-95 loss to the Detroit Pistons, the Kings are now 14-20 on the year, playoff hopes fading into the distance by the second. More troubling than that, they're moving close to some uncomfortably familiar territory, that of league-wide laughingstock.

Why?

Because so many saw this post-Malone collapse coming:

This isn't a case of hindsight offering clearer vision; it's a deluge of justifiably self-satisfied "I told you so's" drowning the Kings. The consensus at the time of Malone's firing was that ownership had unrealistic expectations about the team's performance, that Vivek Ranadive was asking for too much, meddling in affairs better left to the basketball minds he'd hired to handle them.

Here's Grantland's Zach Lowe with a representative sample on Dec. 15: 

"

Look, Malone is not some incredible coaching genius. He was given too much credit for the Warriors’ defensive improvement under Mark Jackson, and it took him a while to find a style that fit Sacramento’s roster on that end. But he was doing damn well with this group, and with this ornery franchise player. The Kings were on the upswing, a happy NBA story. Now they’re a depressing mystery again.

There’s a lesson here, too: Never underestimate a wacky ownership.

"

Now, Cousins is playing nothing like he did under Malone, which could be explained by his slow recovery from viral meningitis—a serious deal, no doubt.

But it could also be explained by dissatisfaction with the decision to fire Malone, which was, you know, exactly what Cousins said.

This is where you'd normally make the case that all's not lost, that the Kings could band together and get back their early season form. For what it's worth, that's what Cousins is hoping for:

But Boogie's initial statement was the most important. In pinning the team's changes on Malone's exit, he laid it all out there for us: This is a team that lost its leader, and it's hurting.

God knows no coach had ever reached Cousins before, and it's probably not a coincidence that the big man is suddenly looking much more like his old, pouty self than the mature, dominant force he was under Malone this year.

The Kings aren't the same team, Cousins said, which is and isn't true. They don't look anything like they did during the first weeks of this season under Malone.

They do, however, look a whole lot like the disjointed mess we came to know them as in recent years.

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