The best thing that can be said about the George Karl reign in Sacramento is that it was relatively short. The Sacramento Kings were 44-68 during Karl’s tenure, and though his winning percentage of .393 wasn’t demonstrably worse than that of say, Dave Joerger (.398 over three seasons), the vibes around the team when Karl was head coach were unpleasant.

According to Karl, who spoke with Jason Jones of The Athletic this week, the problem was that he and the Kings organization were never aligned on a coaching philosophy. While Karl preferred to play small and fast and run the offense through a playmaking point guard, Sacramento was committed to DeMarcus Cousins. In Karl’s lone offseason as head coach, the team doubled down on bigs by drafting Willie Cauley-Stein and signing Kosta Koufos.

It seems like Karl would have been fine with Cousins having a large role so long as the team had his preferred type of point guard. That wasn’t the case.

Ray McCallum was the Kings’ point guard for Karl’s first 30 games and lasted only half a season in the NBA after leaving Sacramento. The following year, Rajon Rondo assumed the role, and despite Rondo’s gaudy statistics (he led the league in assists per game), Rondo hasn’t meaningfully contributed to winning since his Boston days.

As Karl saw it, it didn’t really matter how much Cousins improved — the team had a ceiling so long as Cousins was the No. 1 option, and not a perimeter player.

The Kings and Karl may have parted ways, but the team actually closely adheres to the former coach’s theories. Their best player, De’Aaron Fox, is a dynamic point guard who plays with pace, and they have other perimeter scoring threats in Bogdan Bogdanovic and Buddy Hield. Sacramento also values passing ability at the big positions, as seen with Nemanja Bjelica and Harry Giles.

Sacramento also has significantly more talent now than in Karl’s time with the team, which has enabled Joerger and now Luke Walton to have more success. But Karl wasn’t exactly wrong about generating offense through the backcourt rather than a big man, and the Kings have benefited from giving the control of the offense to Fox. If anything, Fox should have more control than he currently does.

If Sacramento manages to end its postseason drought in Orlando, it will likely be because of a strong run of play from Fox. That’s a luxury Karl’s Kings teams never had.