USA TODAY Sports-Steve Mitchell
News broke late Monday night that Sacramento Kings head coach George Karl has an intense desire to trade DeMarcus Cousins.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports, Karl has been recruiting Kings vice president of basketball operations Vlade Divac and multiple players on the Kings’ roster to unite with him in making the case to owner Vivek Ranadive that Cousins needs to be traded. Following the release of the report, Cousins posted an all-timer of a tweet.
— DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) June 23, 2015
The superstar center clearly won the night with this tweet, calling his coach a snake in the grass. In case you were unaware, this is not the first time one of Karl’s players has not-so-cryptically called the coach a snake. The most famous case,”The Melodrama,” came back in 2011 when Karl’s Denver Nuggets team traded Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks. Shortly after the trade, Karl took numerous shots at Anthony’s defensive effort during his time with the Nuggets. Just like Cousins did on Monday night, Anthony responded shortly after on Twitter.
WHEN THE GRASS IS CUT THE SNAKES WILL SHOW. — Carmelo Anthony (@carmeloanthony) February 25, 2011
Since Anthony’s tweet that started this whole “Karl is a snake in the grass” drama, players have consistently followed suit at a rate of about one snake tweet per year.
The next instance that we have a concrete reason as to why a player tweeted about it came after Karl and the Nuggets were upset in the first round of the 2013 NBA Playoffs by the Golden State Warriors. Karl said that Andre Iguodala had been a “mole” for the Warriors, basically saying one of his best players had been spilling secrets to the opposition.
When the grass is cut… — Andre Iguodala (@andre) May 15, 2014
J.R. Smith and Ty Lawson have also tweeted about snakes. I’m guessing these also are in reference to Karl, unless Lawson really came upon a field with too many snakes, in which case I apologize.
Tooo many snakes in the field
— Ty Lawson (@TyLawson3) July 12, 2012
To many snakes in the grass got to get the lawn kut! — JR Smith (@TheRealJRSmith) October 7, 2011
Karl clearly is not a player’s coach. It’s safe to wonder what kind of respect the Kings’ players will now have for their coach.
Divac and Ranadive have been put in an extremely difficult situation. Trading Cousins would be a colossal mistake, but the relationship between player and coach might now be beyond repair.
Seth Lassen is a writer for RantSports. ‘Like’ him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @Seth_Lassen.
