Kings owner floated idea of playing defense with four guys, leaving cherry picker

You’ve got to give Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé this — the man wants to think out of the box.

He crowdsourced draft advice. They hired the ultimate run-and-fun D-III college coach to take over their D-League Team. He’s open to almost anything.

Of course, that can lead to bad ideas coming from bad places — such as an NBA owner suggesting unconventional basketball strategy. It’s Bad Idea Jeans. Such as this one that the incomparable Zach Lowe has at Grantland. (Hat tip Eye on Basketball)

Owner Vivek Ranadivé has pitched the idea to the team’s brain trust of playing 4-on-5 defense and leaving one player to cherry-pick, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The Kings aren’t actually going to do that, but their D-League might, and it shows Ranadivé is committed to pushing boundaries in his search for an offbeat brand of “position-less” ball.

There is a movement in the league toward position-less basketball — big men who can shoot threes, point guards posting up inside. Heck, even back in the Showtime Lakers days Pat Riley was contemplating how to win with a team of guys all 6’6” to 6’9” (which was an easier thing to do if you had Magic Johnson as your point guard).

But convention is often convention for a good reason. This is one of those cases.

More interesting — and another way Ranadivé has changed that franchise — is that the Kings will again be aggressive looking for trades, Lowe reports.

They’ll also be active on the trade market, and I’d love to see them either move Jason Thompson or use him as a backup center. In Gay, Derrick Williams, and even Omri Casspi, the Kings have the tools to play small-ball lineups, but that will be a tiny feature of their rotation as long as Malone starts the Cousins-Thompson duo. The rising cap has renewed interest in Thompson as a bench big, according to several sources across the league.

The Kings were a pretty good team (around .500) when both Rudy Gay and DeMarcus Cousins were working together the second half of the season. The question in Sacramento is can coach Mark Malone and a bit of a mismatched roster (I think they are really going to miss Isaiah Thomas) take that step. Probably not.

But they will be entertaining. There’s that.