Rui Thomas and James Ham contributed to this report.
Cowbell Kingdom has confirmed earlier reports that basketball statistician Dean Oliver and the Sacramento Kings have parted ways.
The Kings hired Oliver away from ESPN in late September 2014 to bolster their analytics staff. The author of Basketball on Paper, Oliver is considered one of the founding fathers of the basketball analytics movement, but he struggled to find common ground with the Kings’ new regime.
Oliver previously worked for the Seattle SuperSonics and spent time with the Denver Nuggets alongside former Kings frontman Pete D’Alessandro.