A Kings Radio Announcer Totally Wasn't Suspended, But Was Suspiciously Off The Air After Criticizing The Cousins Trade

AwfulAnnouncing-  On Monday, KHTK 1140 radio host Damien Barling harshly criticized Vlade Divac and the hometown Sacramento Kings for a poor return in the DeMarcus Cousins trade. Two days later, Barling has reportedly been pulled from the air in what his co-hosts say was a retaliatory suspension.

On Wednesday, Barling’s co-hosts on “The Lo-Down,” Jason Ross and Ken Rudolph, came onto the air at noon and explained that Barling had been suspended for calling the Kings’ front office “embarrassing” and that they were canceling their show in solidarity, according to The Sacramento Bee. 

The Bee reports the Kings had nothing to do with Barling being removed from the air. Sources at KHTK told the paper that Barling had not been suspended or fired, though being barred from his own show sounds like a suspension to us.

Via the Sactown Royalty blog, here’s what Barling said following Divac’s press conference:

Damien Barling: “That was embarrassing. That was absolutely embarrassing.”

Jason Ross: “In what way?”

Barling: “In every single way imaginable. That dude is not fit to be the general manager of a basketball team. This is real life. You just heard a general manager say publicly at a press conference ‘We had a better deal two days ago’. You moron! You can’t say that! ‘Oh why didn’t you wait till Thursday?’ ‘Oh cause we had a better deal two days ago?’”

Ross: “It was getting worse”

Barling: “Are you serious? Bro… I don’t even know what to say. If you’re a Kings fan, you should absolutely be embarrassed by that. That was awful. That was absolutely awful. You cannot do that. You can’t do that. Awful. That’s awful dude. Absolutely incredible”



Amazing how these radio personalities are always trying to focus on the negative. The Sacramento Kings flagship station could have discussed any number of things on Monday, and they chose to rip into the team's highly-decorated GM after he traded away a dominant, top 10-15 player in the league for the NBA equivalent of pocket lint? Vlade Divac came forward to unnecessarily admit that he could have gotten the NBA equivalent of a sleeve of pennies a couple days earlier, and they aren't appreciative of his honesty and forthrightness?

I'm actually glad that Damien Barling was suspended via non-suspension. He clearly needed the time to find the bright side after pessimistically overlooking the fact that the Sacramento Kings picked up a player that could turn into the next Steph Curry if he magically happens to become approximately 15x better in every aspect of the game. DeMarcus Cousins useless 28 points and 10 rebounds per game got flipped into a known quantity like a middling first round pick, and all this simple-minded contrarian seems to care about is picking apart the thought process behind trading a superstar for roster fodder? How dare he! He will be lucky if he doesn't get canned, because surrounding a dysfunctional franchise with yes-men at every level is a tried and true way for an organization to finally see the error of their ways.