Is anyone that surprised that nobody wanted to be trade partners with the Sacramento Kings? I’m not!

Thursday’s NBA trade deadline came and went with very little action happening around the league (which is the first reason why nobody wanted to make a deal) and names like Ben McLemore,Kosta Koufos and Rudy Gay are still members of the Sacramento Kings. Guys like Pau Gasol are not.

Let’s look at why the Kings weren’t able to make a move to improve their chances at a possible playoff berth,their first since 2006.

First off, the Kings are and have been portrayed as a franchise who has no idea what they’re doing as far as their front office and the ownership is concerned,and unfortunately I agree with that. Vivek Ranadive, as great as he was to buy the franchise and save it from being the Seattle Supersonics 2.0, has proven he isn’t sure what he’s doing as owner of the team. I have no problem with him owning the team,I just want him to hire the right people suited for the front office and he hasn’t done that yet. I like Vlade Divac very much as a person and was a great player in Sacramento,but he isn’t really making the grade as a general manager for me. From trading away a first round draft pick to Philadelphia for Nik Stauskas,Carl Landry,and Jason Thompson to the rocky relationship he and the front office are having with George Karl, it isn’t going too well for Divac.

Players aren’t blind to the situation, they see how poorly run this team is with the moves they’ve made and the constant coaching changes and I’m sure any player who is linked to a trade with the Kings is telling their agents to do something to avoid getting sent there.

Honestly, maybe it’s a good thing a move wasn’t made. Sure,I’d like to see the Kings make the playoffs,we all do. But in all seriousness, they need to clean house upstairs before retooling the roster and building a team that’s competitive and hungry to win and eager to play quality basketball. Fans are tired of seeing dysfunction in the front office as well as impatience with the coaching staff. Ranadive needs to examine if Divac is the long term general manager and find the right guy to coach this team since it’s obvious with the firing of Vance Walberg this week that George Karl won’t be back after this season. As far as the roster goes,I’ll let whoever is dumb enough to take the Kings’ general manager job to handle that. I’d rather the team take a deep look at who they are as an organization, what their plan is for the future (and a real plan with a coach and a general manager you plan on keeping for the long run) and a foundation for that plan. Before you start anything in life,you need a plan. The Kings showed me this season that their plan was flawed and not very well executed.

If this team is to get anywhere near sniffing a playoff berth, they need a plan to get this team where they want to be and they need to stick to it. Until they do this,continue to see a dysfunctional franchise that thinks they know what the plan is,but are making it up on the fly.