Sources: George Karl pushing for Kings to trade DeMarcus Cousins

George Karl (right) doesn't have the same level of trust with DeMarcus Cousins as Mike Malone did. (Getty Image)

Despite Sacramento Kings management's public insistence that DeMarcus Cousins is unavailable in deals, coach George Karl's intense desire to trade the All-Star center has made it increasingly unlikely this coach-star partnership can peacefully co-exist next season, league sources told 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, league sources said.

Since the end of the 2014-15 season, Cousins has become aware of Karl's campaign to move him – including teammates telling Cousins, sources said. All around the Kings and Cousins, there is a growing belief the coach-player relationship is irreparable. Trust is a constant theme with Cousins, and he's been unable to build any with Karl, sources said.

No one in the Sacramento organization – not coaches, nor players, nor support staff – wants to imagine the combustible scenario awaiting Karl and Cousins should the Kings try to reunite them in training camp.

Ranadive has remained the biggest Kings advocate for holding onto Cousins, and several sources indicate he has become irritated with Karl's insistence that the coach doesn't believe he can manage the supremely skilled and strong-minded star. Cousins have held a firm loyalty to former Kings coach Michael Malone, whom Ranadive fired shortly into last season. Under Karl, that relationship couldn't begin to be duplicated in the final weeks of the season.

Karl and members of the Kings front office have made it clear to opposing team executives and coaches that they hope to soon have a formal ownership authorization to actively shop Cousins, sources said. Kings officials, including Karl, have discussed potential deals informally with other teams, but no other front office has felt comfortable that any deal can happen until Ranadive is fully on board.

For now, the Kings are pursuing trade scenarios for everyone on the roster, including talented forward Rudy Gay, league sources told Yahoo Sports.

Sacramento officials believe it will be difficult to find a trade partner that can give the Kings the value it wants for Cousins – and has a better chance to find a deal for Gay, sources said.

The Los Angeles Lakers have had significant interest with Cousins, but their No. 2 overall pick isn't as appealing to the Kings as finding a deal that includes established, veteran players. Ranadive doesn't want to rebuild with a move into a new arena on the horizon, and Karl is chasing Don Nelson's all-time NBA career victories record. Karl's interest isn't in cultivating long-term assets, but rather compiling as many victories as possible in the near future.

Most teams trying to trade into the lottery believe the Kings are determined to package the sixth overall pick to bring back veteran talent.

Gay signed a three-year, $40 million extension that starts with the 2015-16 season, a contract that has become even more palatable to teams with the sharp rise coming in the NBA salary cap. Gay has played well in his two-plus seasons with the Kings and remains a target of interest with multiple teams, front-office executives said.

Sacramento is motivated to find a way to create more salary-cap space with possible deals, something that the Kings will need to pursue Dallas Mavericks free-agent point guard Rajon Rondo, league sources said. The Kings and Rondo have a mutual interest, with Rondo intrigued with the idea of a potential one-year deal in Sacramento that could help to rebuild his league-wide value, sources said.

Source: Yahoo News

Spurs forward Tim Duncan says he lost $25 million to ex-financial adviser

San Antonio Spurs forward Tim Duncan says he lost about $25 million in investments to a dishonest adviser, but is not a factor in deciding if he will return for a 19th NBA season.

Earlier this year, Duncan sued Charles Banks, his former financial adviser, seeking more than $1 million in damages after Duncan says that Banks took Duncan's $7.5 million investment in his company, Gameday Entertainment LLC, and used it for his personal benefit.

Duncan claimed in the lawsuit, filed in January, that his signature was forged numerous times and was not aware of any impropriety until he prepared documents pertaining to his divorce last year.

Banks, who met Duncan sometime during his rookie campaign in 1997-98 season, also “encouraged, promoted, hustled and advised Duncan to invest in several wineries and investment funds that he controls," the lawsuit states.

 “Luckily I had a long career and made good money,” Duncan saidto Bloomberg. “This is a big chunk, but it's not going to change my life in any way. It's not going to make any decisions for me.”

Banks’ attorney says that Duncan’s claims “lack foundation” and that his investments as a whole have performed well.

Duncan is a 15-time All-Star and two-time NBA MVP who has made more than $220 million in his career. He made $10 million last season and will be an unrestricted free agent next month.

• Cavaliers favored by Las Vegas to win NBA championship in 2016

Duncan, 39, has not said if he will return next season, but did say that as far as financial advice is concerned, he won’t “go out and preach to people” about potential pitfalls when dealing with investors.

"The bottom line is this: You can’t be angry at yourself. I keep going back to this word, but I trusted someone,” Duncan said. “I was wrong about it. I got screwed over for it. I’m not mad at myself for that. That’s a lesson learned. I’ll never put myself in that situation again.”

Source: SI 

The NBA Finals Don't Matter, The Debate Afterward Does

Photo by: Associated Press

We are a sports-obsessed nation that doesn't know how to talk about sports. Take, for instance, the NBA Finals. The series isn't even over, and yet, the legacy of LeBron James is already being re-litigated from Cleveland to California. As the pundits reassess where James stands in the pantheon of NBA Hall of Famers, they will continue to butcher the very terms of the debate they seek to clarify. Even worse, this verbal muddling has implications that extend beyond sports.

This crisis of sports debate hinges almost exclusively on the misuse of the words great and best. The words are often used interchangeably -- "Who's the greatest/best player of all time?" -- but they do not mean the same thing.

Merriam-Webster defines the adjective best as "better than all others in quality or value." Great is posited as "remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness" or "eminent, distinguished." Best asks us to identify the objectively superior player; great demands that skill and athleticism be transcended or sacrificed in the interest of social, political, or economic impact.

At sports' most basic level, being the best comes down to statistical dominance, whereas the quality of being great, or greatness, hinges on winning. Peyton Manning's personal rolodex of NFL records makes a strong case for his being the game's best quarterback, but Tom Brady's playoff and Super Bowl victories make him the greatest quarterback (forgetting "Deflategate" for a moment).

The question of greatness is inherently subjective and, in many respects, political. How we value social, economic, or political change is often directly linked to how we rate our athletes.

Bill Russell's career illustrates the case for social greatness. The Boston Celtics icon was the NBA's first black megastar, winning a record 11 titles in 13 seasons. He was the game's first black coach, a role he filled while playing (an unthinkable proposition in today's NBA). Russell was great because he set the league's gold standard for success, but was greater still for serving as a racial pioneer in a predominately white sport.

Michael Jordan's greatness was of an altogether different flavor. Fate hitched Jordan's star to the colossus of globalization, which was still in relative infancy when he arrived to the NBA. During Jordan's second season, Magic Johnson was the league's highest paid player at $2.5 million. Thirteen years later, Jordan received $33.1 million for his services. And that's pennies compared to Jordan's lifelong partnership with Nike, which continues to earn even more through him. As the NBA became must-see TV in large part thanks to Jordan's Bulls, ho-hum broadcasting rights became the subject of billion dollar negotiations and rich owners became wealthy.

Jordan's economic force brought prestige and power to anyone with a vested interest in the NBA. These people played no small part in advancing the idea that Jordan was the Michelangelo of basketball: He was the game's greatest artist during the league's economic renaissance.

Jordan understood this game within the game. His famous remark -- "Republicans buy sneakers too" -- was an honest admission that the maintenance of an athlete's economic empire demanded political neutrality.

Muhammad Ali didn't get that memo, perhaps because he came of age in the 1960s rather than the 1980s. What's Ali's career without his abandonment of boxing to protest the Vietnam War? "The Greatest" was stripped of his boxing license in the prime of his career because he wouldn't fight the Viet Cong, who, he said, "never called me nigger." Subtract that from his legacy and Ali is just another great fighter because he beat Joe Frazier twice and annihilated a Herculean George Foreman in Zaire. Instead, he transcended boxing by becoming synonymous with the rebellious spirit that marked the 1960s.

There's more than a little irony behind Ali's transformation from political sports rebel to global icon. Like Martin Luther King Jr., a generation had to pass before the new establishment could congratulate the martyred for giving the finger to their parents. Jordan didn't want to wait. There was simply too much money to be made.

Today, Floyd "Money" Mayweather fights for six figures a second, and LeBron has a stake in everything from bubble gum to Liverpool F.C. In contrast to the social greatness of Russell or the political greatness of Ali, the reputations of the best athletes are now overwhelmingly dependent on economic greatness as established by Jordan. Our valuations are so one-sided that the media is compelled to throw sports fans an occasional politically- or socially-minded bone. One would've thought LeBron was putting his career on the line when he wore an "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt before a game late last year. But until LeBron signs a petition criticizing China's suppression of free speech (instead of visiting the country regularly to buttress his brand), the move should only be regarded as brilliant marketing on behalf of the political zeitgeist.

Some may howl at this attempt to politicize the legacy of our sports heroes. The country is polarized enough, they'll say. Let me have Michael Jordan as a basketball player, not Gordon Gekko. As long as we don't confuse best with great, that would make for a worthy debate.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post mistakenly stated that Bill Russell was the only player-coach in NBA history and that Muhammad Ali was jailed for draft evasion. He was convicted but never served jail time. - Huffington Post

Michael Jordan Is 'Pretty Sure' He Could Defeat The Hornets In One-On-One

Charlotte, N.C. - October 29: Michael Jordan, owner of the Charlotte Hornets, watches on during their game against the Milwaukee Bucks at Time Warner Cable Arena on October 29, 2014 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Charlotte Hornets defeated the Milwaukee Bucks 108-106 in overtime. | Streeter Lecka via Getty Images

Michael Jordan's name is always thrown into the great NBA debates: Is Kobe better than MJ? Is LeBron better than MJ?

Well, the G.O.A.T. thinks there is someone he could take on: the Charlotte Hornets.

Jordan, who owns the NBA franchise, told French outlet L'Equipe in an interview posted Saturday that he's "pretty sure" he could take the squad.

"I'm pretty sure I can, so I don't want to do that and demolish their confidence," Jordan, said when asked if he could win against some of his players in one-on-one. "So I stay away from them, I let them think they're good, think that they are good -- but I'm too old to do that anyway."

Jordan is 52, but the Hornets did finish with a 33-49 record this past season (and 28th in both points per game and offensive rating). So maybe not totally a stretch.

Jordan's remarks come around the 2:59 mark. - Huffington Post