I must have said it three times during the fourth quarter: we'd have had a better shot of winning if, when Cousins went to the bench, we had just deliberately held the ball on, like, five straight possessions, until we were charged with a shot clock violation. Even getting charged for five straight turnovers, we could have still managed to burn two full minutes of game time off the clock, and bought time for Cousins to come back in.
In fact, that should be Malone's new second-quarter strategy: let the starters get us up 20+ in the first quarter, and then tell Sessions/Stauskas/Evans et. al, "Okay, fellas, I need to get DeMarcus and Rudy about five good minutes of rest. So, what I want you to do is play defense, and run the shot clock out every possession on offense. Don't even bother trying to shoot, because they might get the rebound and score on a leak-out. Just hold the ball, and make them inbound on the violation, so we still have a chance to set our defense. All you have to do is stall, until I can put the real players back on the court."