The Sacramento Kings have found their analytics guy. ESPN's Marc Stein is reporting that the Kings have come to an agreement with Roland Beech to head up their analytics department. Beech is formerly of the Dallas Mavericks, and was a part of that team during their 2011 title run and most recently served as Vice President of Basketball Operations for them. Beech will take over the position vacated by Dean Oliver, who was let go by Vlade Divac last month.

Divac's firing of Oliver seemed to spark off rumors that Divac wasn't interested in analytics considering that Oliver is one of the more prominent names in basketball analytics. Those rumors seemed baseless at the time (as confirmed by numerous local reports) and this hiring of Beech seems to confirm that. Oliver's departure likely stemmed more from the fact that he was an old regime hire and Divac decided to go with one of his own hires after a few months of working with Oliver.

Beech founded the NBA analytics website 82games.com, and even once wrote an article debunking the supposed conspiracy to force a Game 7 in the 2002 Western Conference Finals. Beech's writing and analysis for 82games caught the eyes of the Mavericks, who he has worked for since the 2005-06 season.

It remains to be seen if the Kings opt to make any more front office hires this summer. They currently don't have a dedicated cap expert and Mike Bratz has been fulfilling the role of General Manager since Pete D'Alessandro's departure. But what is certain is that Vlade Divac is in charge and will make whatever changes he deems necessary as he tries to rebuild this Sacramento Kings team.