Can the Sacramento Kings Finally Find Some Dignity Under Dave Joerger?

After a cutting loss to the Clippers in his team's final preseason game, Sacramento Kings Coach Dave Joerger said, "Every game is like a microcosm of the season."

Joerger is new to the Kings, and new to the many ways a Kings season can go wrong. Perhaps that's why he leaned on the microcosm cliche. Because he doesn't want to acknowledge that over the last ten years, the Kings might occasionally have won games, but they have never won seasons.

The decade of struggle in Sacramento dates back to steady decline of the heyday squad that never recovered from that playoff game in 2002 that shall not be mentioned. Until the sale of the team to tech-mogul Vivek Ranadive in 2013, the franchise was run like an outlet mall in liquidation by the brothers Maloof. It was an era of trading rookies for cash, no paper towels in the arena men's room, and monthly relocation rumors. It was a goddamn mess.

Ranadive and the record-setting construction of the Golden 1 Center, which opened for regular season basketball last week, was supposed to signify a new era. The local rally cry for keeping the franchise in Sactown was "Here We Rise," but that phrase, engraved at the entrance of the G1C, feels more the inscription at the vestibule of Hades:"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Under Ranadive, the franchise has remained a laughingstock as coaches cycled in and out of town, wild rumors infiltrated the tabloids of Ranadive wanting to play "4 on 5" defense, and the team couldn't go a season without having a public meltdown on the court or in the locker room. This is why Rudy Gay will be quoted as calling Sacramento "basketball hell" in former coach George Karl's upcoming tell-all biography, Furious George.

Joerger—arrived from Memphis—is tasked with being the franchise's Virgil in the Inferno, sent to guide the Kings out of the hellfyre. Since his instatement he's been uniform in his message on how that will be done: with defense first. It's what he told Zach Lowe on his podcast, it was his message at media day, and it's been his exhausting mission statement in each post-practice and post-game interview. Head of Basketball Operations Vlade Divac brought in journeyman vets like Matt Barnes, Arron Afflalo, Ty Lawson, Anthony Tolliver, and Garrett Temple to be pillars and accelerate the learning curve. In some ways it looks to be working. Other times it looks like chaos.

The question remains how quickly can the team gel? Socially it sounds like things are going fine. (And in one case, too fine as Ty Lawson was filmed in a Vegas nightclub with teammates Ben McLemore and Willie Cauley-Stein the night before a flight to Kentucky, a flight Lawson missed.) On the court, well, there have been flashes.

As under Karl, and before him Tyrone Corbin, Mike Malone, Keith Smart, and Paul Westphal, the fate of the Kings under Joerger hinges on DeMarcus Cousins. Cousins has always been a physical player. You don't average a double-double and get to the line 15 times per game without being physically dominant. But it's "smarts" that Joerger seeks to suss out.

"I've always felt like I was a smart defender," Cousins said at a recent practice . "That's kind of what helped me. I'm not the most athletic guy. I think that's what has always helped me, but I have gained more knowledge [under Joerger], yes."

"Defense is where we've always struggled. Do I think we're in a comfortable place? No, but I think we're on the right path. Still got a lot of growing to do, still new to this."

Offensively, Joerger says the team has only digested a third of his system. This is why they haven't fared well against teams with long term chemistry like the Clippers and Spurs. After the Clippers loss Joerger noted, "We make up our own offense far too often." That made up version tends to look like uncertainty and poor spacing or standing around as Cousins dismantles his defender. By Cousins' assessment, the Kings can "play with the best" offensively.

To actually do so, they need to protect the ball better. Last season the Kings turned the ball over more than any team besides the "process" 76ers and the shot-happy Suns. They also need to find a way to score that goes beyond Cousins and Rudy Gay. In their home opener against San Antonio, Cousins scored 37 points on 22 shots. Gay scored 17 on 10 shots. The Kings still lost 102-94.

Afterwards Cousins' remained positive, interpreting the defeat as a "good loss."

"We got to be the guys that hit first, and once we hit we need to keep hitting," he said. "I think we applied some pressure on them, but we kind of let up and let them back in. Not taking away any credit from them, the Spurs are known for that. They'll take a hit and come back hitting us. We got to learn how to continue to hit."

The home opener might have been about christening a new building for the city and franchise, and trying to welcome in a new era of Kings basketball, but on the court, it was clear that Joerger had only begun the task of guiding the actual team into that era. "As competitors you never want to say we played hard but we lost," he said.

Since losing to the Spurs, the Kings have beaten the much hyped Timberwolves and fallen to the rebuilt Hawks and rebuilding Heat. They are 2-3. Joerger has been candid that redemption for the Kings could take up to a year and a half. If every game is a microcosm of the season, that's a a long time. And that's asking for a lot of purgatorial patience for a fanbase that's endured a decade of muzak in hell's waiting room. There will be distractions, there will be obstacles, and undoubtedly hellfyre.

"The biggest challenge is doing it night in and night out," he says. "When you're taking the hits with two, three, four losses in a row will you be that team that goes away and let's go of the rope? There's going to be points in the season where you can just go away if you want and make it easy. Or we can be known as that team that's hard to play against every night. That takes a lot of mental fortitude to do that possession after possession. That's what we're working on."

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