by Charlie O Mallonee

SACRAMENTO–Kings head coach George Karl said that the last 30 games of the season would be like a mini season and in some ways it’s almost like a transition and the Kings are getting an opportunity to try a lot of things and Karl is getting a chance to look at a lot of players. There is going to be a some real player movement on the Kings in the off season.

They’ll be making some decisions about who they want to pursue and who they want to package up and how exactly they want to do that. Every game even if it’s not with a full compliment of players it’s a very interesting contest just to see how their putting things together. When the Kings went on this four game trip that started off in Phoenix and then they went to New Orleans and Memphis and on Wednesday night they’ll be in Houston.

If they could win one game and steal one game out of these four games it would be a successful road trip. Well they won in the opening game of the trip they were able to beat Phoenix 108-99. They put a win under their belt and things didn’t go particularly well in New Orleans and then against Memphis they had the big disadvantage of no DeMarcus Cousins.

They deliberately didn’t play Cousins because they wanted to rest him and of course this is the big controversy that’s been going on throughout the NBA because the Kings are resting players whether or not that should happen. It’s just a whole cadre of things I don’t want to far field on it. With Cousins right now he’s got a lot of things going on with him, he’s got a hip and knee problems, nothing in the way of a stress fractures or any of that kind of stuff.

You have to remember Cousins has played basketball continuously now for over a year. He played over the summer with USA National Team, he went to the World games. So Cousins hasn’t had no break and right now they have the opportunity to give him some rest, not have to work him quite as hard and why not? The Kings aren’t going to the playoffs they know where they’re going to be an right now it appears the plan for them is to play in the four remaining home games.

Charlie O is a Sacramento Kings beat writer for http://www.sportsradioaservice.com catch his podcast below