Rudy Gay and the Kings search for answers. (USATSI)
Rudy Gay and the Kings search for answers. (USATSI)

Many moons ago, the blog Basketbawful coined the phrase "dead coach bounce" to describe "the burst of inspired play a team experiences immediately following an in-season coaching change." We might need a new phrase to refer to what the Sacramento Kings are going through. After firing head coach Mike Malone and replacing him with Tyrone Corbin, it's been more of a crash than a bounce. 

The 14-19 Kings actually won a game on Thursday, escaping the Target Center with a 110-107 victory over the depleted Minnesota Timberwolves despite rookie Andrew Wiggins running circles around them. That was their third win in nine games under Corbin -- they beat the Los Angeles Lakers 108-101 and the New York Knicks 135-129 in overtime. None of them were particularly impressive.

You might want to look at how center DeMarcus Cousins reacted to that win over the Knicks last Saturday, via KXTV News10.

The video does not show a man satisfied with the state of his team. A man satisfied with the state of his team wouldn't use the word "frustrating" so many times. Part of it was because of his health -- Cousins battled a stomach ailment after getting over viral meningitis --  but he also repeatedly said that he wanted things to go back to how things were earlier in the season.

"We have to get back to being the old team," Cousins said that night. "That's wanting to defend at a high level and taking pride in actually playing defense. We can't be a team that tries to come out every night and outscore people. That's not us. We defend and our defense transitions over to our offense. We gotta get back to playing that type of basketball. As of right now, we're taking steps back. So we've gotta get back on the right path."

Cousins made reference to lineups changing and everything being "so new right now" with the change in style, and said that Sacramento had to get back to its identity. Two nights later, Cowbell Kingdom reported that the Kings had quietly signed Corbin for the rest of the season, removing his interim tag. The next day, Cousins told reporters that he and his teammates found out about that through social media at the same time the rest of us did. 

After everybody learned about Corbin sticking around, Sacramento was annihilated by the Boston Celtics. On New Year's Eve, the Kings lost 106-84, shooting just 37 percent from the field. Cousins was ejected halfway through the final frame when he picked up a technical foul for losing his temper and throwing Celtics rookie Marcus Smart to the floor. He told reporters afterward, "We have to come together and figure this thing out."

Since Corbin took over, Sacramento is essentially doing what its owner and general manager wanted -- it's had the sixth-fastest pace in the NBA, and it is 11th in offense, per NBA.com. The defense, though, has completely collapsed. The Kings are 29th in the league in points allowed per 100 possessions over that span, which is rather troubling.

Cousins is Sacramento's only real difference-maker on defense. Under Malone, though, the Kings were disciplined. The effort was there. They were physical and they were excellent at rebounding, at least before Cousins was sidelined in late November. You can't say any of that anymore. 

As the Kings try to push the ball, they're turning the ball over more often. They're also, in general, less in tune with each other. Usually, when a team tries to run, it's more fun to watch. That is decidedly not the case here. Grantland's Zach Lowe pointed out a particular possession against Minnesota in which Cousins hunched frozen with his hands on his knees while Rudy Gay drove into traffic and turned the ball over:

That, as an isolated incident, is not good but not necessarily a big deal. The problem is that it's indicative of how Sacramento is operating. The Kings don't appear to have bought into this new philosophy, and trying to make such a change midseason -- when the team was overachieving and the players believed in Malone -- looks like a massive mistake. 

On the bright side: Sacramento is 1-0 in 2015. There's technically time for Corbin to turn things around, and he's at least talking about getting stops now. The Kings have a long way to go, though, and the hungry team that started the season 9-5 has disappeared.