Done playing games with Cousins... (split from game thread)

SLAB

Hall of Famer
#2
I'm done playing games with Cousins. The team wouldn't be in the state it's in with a legit top ten piece
So what? Get rid of him and be a 10 win team and hope to get a better player through the draft? It's DMC's fault people "project" superstar on him, even though you don't agree? It's his fault he can't LeBron his way to the playoffs despite a ****y supporting cast?

I don't get your point here.
 
#3
I'm done playing games with Cousins. The team wouldn't be in the state it's in with a legit top ten piece
Hes the only legit nba starter on the roster left, most guys arent even rotation level guys. I see his flaws too but I want to see him on a team with a legitimate starting five before I can pin it all on him.
 
#4
So what? Get rid of him and be a 10 win team and hope to get a better player through the draft? It's DMC's fault people "project" superstar on him, even though you don't agree? It's his fault he can't LeBron his way to the playoffs despite a ****y supporting cast?

I don't get your point here.
I don't see the *** supporting cast. These are average level vets Collison, Temple, Koufos, Afflalo, Tolliver etc

But yes, I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed that I don't see in him as of now that Duncan, Dirk, Howard level player that can just carry a team (maybe because I thought he had that skill level). It's not really his fault, just being a mid level all star type, it's just this franchise needs more.

Whether you deal him depends on the package, but I would keep him if nothing legit is on the table. We are just going to have to wait to get better pieces here
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#6
He's like the Mitch Richmond of big men....solid All-Star type but not good enough to lead a winning team.
That's nonsense. Mitch in his prime was plenty good enough to lead a winning team -- he just never had enough talent around him while he was in Sacramento. Kobe Bryant in his 20 year career never won a single playoff series without an All-Star big man next to him. One player is not enough, no matter how good the player is.
 
#7
That's nonsense. Mitch in his prime was plenty good enough to lead a winning team -- he just never had enough talent around him while he was in Sacramento. Kobe Bryant in his 20 year career never won a single playoff series without an All-Star big man next to him. One player is not enough, no matter how good the player is.
At what point do we stop saying that Cousins is on an island though? Rondo and Gay wasn't enough? Check out some of the hype around here in bringing in "proven winning vets". What was that about having an actual starting SG? Seems like fans here think players on the Kings are all great ... until it comes to an argument about whether Cousins has enough talent around him to win.

That said, it's without a question that Cousins needs more talent around him. Like we have discussed in other threads, the issue is how we are possibly going to achieve that, being the #KANGZ.
 
#8
I don't see the *** supporting cast. These are average level vets Collison, Temple, Koufos, Afflalo, Tolliver etc

But yes, I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed that I don't see in him as of now that Duncan, Dirk, Howard level player that can just carry a team (maybe because I thought he had that skill level). It's not really his fault, just being a mid level all star type, it's just this franchise needs more.

Whether you deal him depends on the package, but I would keep him if nothing legit is on the table. We are just going to have to wait to get better pieces here
You just named 5 backups, one of which is an end of bench type of player.

Don't get me wrong, he has enough talent around him to at least win out on the 8th seed this year since the west is so weak but when Garrett Temple stands out as one of the best players on your team, you have a bad team.
 
#9
You just named 5 backups, one of which is an end of bench type of player.

Don't get me wrong, he has enough talent around him to at least win out on the 8th seed this year since the west is so weak but when Garrett Temple stands out as one of the best players on your team, you have a bad team.
What if we substituted "the best center in the league" with another prime big like Dirk or Duncan or Orlando Howard?

If in the end he's only a secondary piece, pedestrian all star whom a team can't be built upon solely, is he worth this 200+ million super max ?
 
#10
What if we substituted "the best center in the league" with another prime big like Dirk or Duncan or Orlando Howard?
Just my opinion here but I'd say:

Dirk - Same position we're in right now. Offense might be more efficient but it would be offset by bad defense. Either way we would be scrapping an uphill battle for the 8th seed.

Orlando Howard - I'd say we would be closer to .500. Defense would be much improved but teams would just double him the way they do Cousins so the offense would be about what it is now. Those Orlando teams were stacked with solid 3 and D players plus Hedo who was a swiss army knife. The current roster here isn't put together as well so I don't see us having the same success.

Duncan - 5th seed. His defense was light years ahead of Cousins'. Plus way less mistakes on offense. The ship would be ran much tighter.
 
#11
Indications are that Cuz just doesn't have mental or physical stamina to be "in it" for the minutes he is being asked to play. Last night a triple double and at least half of the 4th quarter he was the doufos who screwed up almost every play and he was it for almost every play. Brain dead? Tired? Let's ease up on "no talent" and talk about what's going on with Cuz.
 

Kingster

Hall of Famer
#12
So far this season (41 games up to now) Cousins has averaged 34.7 minutes per game. In the last 10 games he's averaged 32.1 minutes per game. (He sat out one entire game in that 10 game span). Seems to me like a reasonable amount of minutes. If Cousins can't play with energy for 35 minutes a game, how much does his minutes per game have to be reduced in order to play with energy during the entire game?
 
#13
So far this season (41 games up to now) Cousins has averaged 34.7 minutes per game. In the last 10 games he's averaged 32.1 minutes per game. (He sat out one entire game in that 10 game span). Seems to me like a reasonable amount of minutes. If Cousins can't play with energy for 35 minutes a game, how much does his minutes per game have to be reduced in order to play with energy during the entire game?
Energy AND smarts. Good question. Last night the team and Cuz put out a lot of effort and good team play in the early stages which was unusual. They didn't play that way late. Could the rest of the team put something together in the last minutes? We'll never know because Cuz agreed to take it on himself.
 
#14
Indications are that Cuz just doesn't have mental or physical stamina to be "in it" for the minutes he is being asked to play. Last night a triple double and at least half of the 4th quarter he was the doufos who screwed up almost every play and he was it for almost every play. Brain dead? Tired? Let's ease up on "no talent" and talk about what's going on with Cuz.
The guy was mentally shaken, as was the team, to see Rudy carried off the court. He lost focus with probable knowing his teammates Achilles snapped like a twig. He probably had flashbacks to Paul George lower leg snapping in half, which is emotionally jarring and reminds the athlete how fragile one's career and body can be. Theses are professional athletes were talking about but emotional beings too. Yeah it would have been nice if Boogie and the team could have rallied and refocused and "win one for Rudy" but I think their distraction under the circumstances was understandable. And need I remind you the dude came up clutch with two huge 3s on one win on home stand vs Pistons so its not like the guy is a chronic choke artist.
 
#15
N
The guy was mentally shaken, as was the team, to see Rudy carried off the court. He lost focus with probable knowing his teammates Achilles snapped like a twig. He probably had flashbacks to Paul George lower leg snapping in half, which is emotionally jarring and reminds the athlete how fragile one's career and body can be. Theses are professional athletes were talking about but emotional beings too. Yeah it would have been nice if Boogie and the team could have rallied and refocused and "win one for Rudy" but I think their distraction under the circumstances was understandable. And need I remind you the dude came up clutch with two huge 3s on one win on home stand vs Pistons so its not like the guy is a chronic choke artist.
Good points. Well said but I don't think that is the end of the question.
 
#16
the kings just aren't very talented. vlade did a fair job with limited tools to "make lemonade" of an impossibly difficult situation during the offseason, but it's been obvious all season long that this roster was going to have a very small margin for error. in order to make the playoffs, dave joerger was going to need to work quite a bit of magic, the team was going to need to quickly form above-average defensive chemistry, ty lawson and aaron afflalo were going to have to rediscover their peak form, ben mclemore was going to need to discover that he's an nba player, and willie cauley-stein was going to need to start developing into something reasonably substantial, among many other individual and team-wide factors. none of that has happened, sadly.

demarcus has been about as stellar as he can be while carrying an entire team on his back, but there's just not enough firepower on either side of the ball for the kings to legitimately contend for a playoff spot in the contemporary nba. there are only a few teams across the league that stand out as less talented than the kings overall, and that the kings lost twice to one of them in the miami heat is pretty telling. there's some fight in this dave joerger-coached squad, as you'd expect. they do scrap until the final buzzer. but the talent gap is too wide on too many nights, and that margin for error shrinks even further with every defensive lapse, missed open shot, first quarter deficit, mclemore and cauley-stein regression, rudy gay injury, omri casspi DNP, and the occasional off-night from boogie.

put demarcus on a team with more talent and greater stability, and just squeaking into the playoffs isn't going to seem like a monumental task. the formula for winning in the nba isn't too complex. though priorities shift as the game evolves, a winning squad always needs talent on both sides of the ball, and requires a team-wide effort on both sides of the ball. it's possible to win when one guy does a lot of the heavy lifting on either or both sides of the ball, but it's damn near impossible to win with any consistency when one guy has to do just about all of the heavy lifting on both sides of the ball.
 
#17
the kings just aren't very talented. vlade did a fair job with limited tools to "make lemonade" of an impossibly difficult situation during the offseason, but it's been obvious all season long that this roster was going to have a very small margin for error. in order to make the playoffs, dave joerger was going to need to work quite a bit of magic, the team was going to need to quickly form above-average defensive chemistry, ty lawson and aaron afflalo were going to have to rediscover their peak form, ben mclemore was going to need to discover that he's an nba player, and willie cauley-stein was going to need to start developing into something reasonably substantial, among many other individual and team-wide factors. none of that has happened, sadly.

demarcus has been about as stellar as he can be while carrying an entire team on his back, but there's just not enough firepower on either side of the ball for the kings to legitimately contend for a playoff spot in the contemporary nba. there are only a few teams across the league that stand out as less talented than the kings overall, and that the kings lost twice to one of them in the miami heat is pretty telling. there's some fight in this dave joerger-coached squad, as you'd expect. they do scrap until the final buzzer. but the talent gap is too wide on too many nights, and that margin for error shrinks even further with every defensive lapse, missed open shot, first quarter deficit, mclemore and cauley-stein regression, rudy gay injury, omri casspi DNP, and the occasional off-night from boogie.

put demarcus on a team with more talent and greater stability, and just squeaking into the playoffs isn't going to seem like a monumental task. the formula for winning in the nba isn't too complex. though priorities shift as the game evolves, a winning squad always needs talent on both sides of the ball, and requires a team-wide effort on both sides of the ball. it's possible to win when one guy does a lot of the heavy lifting on either or both sides of the ball, but it's damn near impossible to win with any consistency when one guy has to do just about all of the heavy lifting on both sides of the ball.
Padrino returns, casually saunters in, and offers a hefty plateful of common sense.

Well executed, Sir.
 
#18
the kings just aren't very talented. vlade did a fair job with limited tools to "make lemonade" of an impossibly difficult situation during the offseason, but it's been obvious all season long that this roster was going to have a very small margin for error. in order to make the playoffs, dave joerger was going to need to work quite a bit of magic, the team was going to need to quickly form above-average defensive chemistry, ty lawson and aaron afflalo were going to have to rediscover their peak form, ben mclemore was going to need to discover that he's an nba player, and willie cauley-stein was going to need to start developing into something reasonably substantial, among many other individual and team-wide factors. none of that has happened, sadly.

demarcus has been about as stellar as he can be while carrying an entire team on his back, but there's just not enough firepower on either side of the ball for the kings to legitimately contend for a playoff spot in the contemporary nba. there are only a few teams across the league that stand out as less talented than the kings overall, and that the kings lost twice to one of them in the miami heat is pretty telling. there's some fight in this dave joerger-coached squad, as you'd expect. they do scrap until the final buzzer. but the talent gap is too wide on too many nights, and that margin for error shrinks even further with every defensive lapse, missed open shot, first quarter deficit, mclemore and cauley-stein regression, rudy gay injury, omri casspi DNP, and the occasional off-night from boogie.

put demarcus on a team with more talent and greater stability, and just squeaking into the playoffs isn't going to seem like a monumental task. the formula for winning in the nba isn't too complex. though priorities shift as the game evolves, a winning squad always needs talent on both sides of the ball, and requires a team-wide effort on both sides of the ball. it's possible to win when one guy does a lot of the heavy lifting on either or both sides of the ball, but it's damn near impossible to win with any consistency when one guy has to do just about all of the heavy lifting on both sides of the ball.
The "no talent" thing again. Is the analysis of Cuz then done? I'm just not sure. There was plenty of talent around Cuz n the first half.
 
#19
The "no talent" thing again. Is the analysis of Cuz then done? I'm just not sure. There was plenty of talent around Cuz n the first half.
apart from rudy gay (a deeply flawed starting SF in the contemporary nba), every other king on the roster projects out as a bench player for any other team. i like garrett temple, omri casspi, and kosta koufos. these are hard working players with utility, but none of them are surefire starters on a serious playoff contender. aaron afflalo and matt barnes are in the twilight of their respective careers. darren collison and ty lawson are speedy change-of-pace guards who don't really belong in a starting unit. ben mclemore probably doesn't belong in the nba altogether, and while the jury is still out on willie cauley-stein, a springy 7-footer who doesn't rebound is never going to earn significant minutes on any roster.

so i'll repeat myself: the kings just aren't very talented. that doesn't mean the kings' roster doesn't have useful players, but they're the kind of guys who should make up a "bench mob" meant to spell their more talented counterparts in the starting unit. unfortunately, they don't have more talented counterparts in the starting unit. the kings need a legitimate #2 to pair with cousins, and they need surefire starters who can shoot the ball and defend with consistency everywhere else. this is a tall order, given the lack of trade assets on the roster and the encumbrances on their future first round draft picks. hence the perpetual calls to trade demarcus cousins.

the kings would never get an equal talent back in such a trade, but they could restock their increasingly bare cupboards a bit and offer the fans a new, fresh product to root for, despite the losses that would continue to pile up. of course, that's just selling a hope-and-a-prayer strategy, but sometimes change for the sake of change is necessary, despite the conventional wisdom. i remain convinced that demarcus cousins can anchor a playoff contender, but i also remain unconvinced that this franchise can effectively build a winner around him. there's too little talent on the roster, and too few pathways forward with which to acquire talent for that roster.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#20
...demarcus has been about as stellar as he can be while carrying an entire team on his back, but there's just not enough firepower on either side of the ball for the kings to legitimately contend for a playoff spot in the contemporary nba. there are only a few teams across the league that stand out as less talented than the kings overall, and that the kings lost twice to one of them in the miami heat is pretty telling. there's some fight in this dave joerger-coached squad, as you'd expect. they do scrap until the final buzzer. but the talent gap is too wide on too many nights, and that margin for error shrinks even further with every defensive lapse, missed open shot, first quarter deficit, mclemore and cauley-stein regression, rudy gay injury, omri casspi DNP, and the occasional off-night from boogie...

...the formula for winning in the nba isn't too complex. though priorities shift as the game evolves, a winning squad always needs talent on both sides of the ball, and requires a team-wide effort on both sides of the ball. it's possible to win when one guy does a lot of the heavy lifting on either or both sides of the ball, but it's damn near impossible to win with any consistency when one guy has to do just about all of the heavy lifting on both sides of the ball.
Well said, but you're missing the point. DMC should be able to do it all. Haven't you been paying attention? :p
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#21
...the kings would never get an equal talent back in such a trade, but they could restock their increasingly bare cupboards a bit and offer the fans a new, fresh product to root for, despite the losses that would continue to pile up. of course, that's just selling a hope-and-a-prayer strategy, but sometimes change for the sake of change is necessary, despite the conventional wisdom. i remain convinced that demarcus cousins can anchor a playoff contender, but i also remain unconvinced that this franchise can effectively build a winner around him. there's too little talent on the roster, and too few pathways forward with which to acquire talent for that roster.
I may be in the minority but if they trade Cousins and the losses continued to pile up (which I agree they would), that new fresh product would be old and rotten very, very quickly.

As it is, the only reason I'm even considering traveling from the middle of the forest again this season is to see DMC. If he's gone, I'm not sure I would bother.
 
K

KingMilz

Guest
#23
At what point do we stop saying that Cousins is on an island though? Rondo and Gay wasn't enough? Check out some of the hype around here in bringing in "proven winning vets". What was that about having an actual starting SG? Seems like fans here think players on the Kings are all great ... until it comes to an argument about whether Cousins has enough talent around him to win.

That said, it's without a question that Cousins needs more talent around him. Like we have discussed in other threads, the issue is how we are possibly going to achieve that, being the #KANGZ.
Also coach Joeger over Karl was at least a 10 win upgrade cause you know Karl lost us at least 10-15 games last year
 
#25
That's nonsense. Mitch in his prime was plenty good enough to lead a winning team -- he just never had enough talent around him while he was in Sacramento. Kobe Bryant in his 20 year career never won a single playoff series without an All-Star big man next to him. One player is not enough, no matter how good the player is.
Who's saying win a playoffs series? I just want this d*mn team to sniff .500 which they haven't done in a decade. For the past 10 years, the season has been over before the all-star break.

Kobe led a Lakers team surrounded with Odom, Smush Parker, Chris Mihm, Kwame Brown and Luke Walton to 45 wins!!!
 
#26
Well said, but you're missing the point. DMC should be able to do it all. Haven't you been paying attention? :p
that sure would be nice, wouldn't it? i'd like my very own michael jordan or lebron james, the do-everything talent who carries their team to victory no matter who surrounds them. but those kinds of generational players are in awfully short supply. russell westbrook and james harden are the closest equivalents elsewhere, i suppose, but they have the benefit of being guards in a league that presently makes life so much easier for backcourt players. the only chance a big has of superstardom in the contemporary nba... is to play more like a guard. it's why damn near all of the league's most talented bigs are developing face-up games and three-point shooting ability. it's the only way to survive.

it's also interesting to me that so few of these bigs play for winning teams. demarcus cousins plays for the KANGZ, which is an endless bummer. anthony davis and the pelicans have never risen above mediocre. KAT and the timberwolves have been disappointing in year one with thibodeau. porzingis and the knicks have... well, they've been the knicks. embiid and the 76ers are still a losing team, though there's plenty of reason to believe that they will improve a significant amount next season. and there's marc gasol and the grizzlies, who are managing to hang in there. and there's blake griffin and the clippers, who are a yearly playoff contender. i'm certainly not insinuating that there's some grand conspiracy against big men across the league, but it just seems to be quite a bit more difficult to build a winning team around a big of any kind in the contemporary nba, no matter how talented.
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#27
At what point do we stop saying that Cousins is on an island though? Rondo and Gay wasn't enough? Check out some of the hype around here in bringing in "proven winning vets". What was that about having an actual starting SG? Seems like fans here think players on the Kings are all great ... until it comes to an argument about whether Cousins has enough talent around him to win.

That said, it's without a question that Cousins needs more talent around him. Like we have discussed in other threads, the issue is how we are possibly going to achieve that, being the #KANGZ.
I took exception mostly to throwing Mitch under the bus for circumstances outside his control. He was a damn good player and those teams he was on were managed just as badly as this current team.

Last year... well that was a different team. Rondo and Gay should have been enough. I watched every game the first month of last season and there were obvious changes that needed to be made and never were. It's not that George Karl was solely responsible for the team going to crap. But there were obvious red flags from day one about the direction of the defense. I watched game 3 from Staples on Oct. 31st and saw Blake Griffin posting up Collison one-on-one without help defense on 3 straight possessions in the 4th quarter of a close game. That should not happen. In October you say, okay, some adjustments need to be made. By February there's nothing left to say. The same players showed defensive aptitude the year before which means it was a coaching decision and the full-on revolt came when "trust me and do things my way" obviously wasn't working and zero adjustments were made. Things snowballed from there. People will put up with an butthead if they get results but everyone has their limit and we found out exactly where that was last season.

You're right that any explanation which doesn't include Cousins himself is incomplete. His own frustration takes him out of games as do technical fouls and suspensions. Part of being a leader is calming everyone else down and getting them focused on the common goal and DeMarcus can't do that if he's out of control himself and sparring with the refs or players on the other team. And you'll get no argument from me that the talent this year is a major step down from last season. I was offered that kool-aid many times this season and the summer before and have declined it every time. Afflalo is barely an improvement on McLemore statistically and you have to put up with him dominating the ball. Matt Barnes just forced a productive and enthusiastic Omri Casspi to the end of the bench and replaced him with a surly and sloppy impostor. (no, I do not like Matt Barnes...) We've had no answers for the PF position for the past two seasons. We keep trying to force in ill-fitting pieces there and it isn't helping anyone. Koufos is not a PF. Cousins would have been during C-Webb's era but he's a poor fit there now. Cauley-Stein isn't ready to be a featured player. Hopefully Skal grows into that role in the future because that position has been a mess for us since Webber was traded.

I also don't think these viewpoints need to mutually exclusive -- that it's either all Cousins' fault or he's blameless. Is Cousins' attitude a part of the problem? Absolutely it is. And a lot of Kings fans are way past their limit with tolerating his antics. I totally understand that. That doesn't mean trading him is going to solve our problems though or that he is the problem because he's carrying a team of nobodies right now and (for the most part) looking like a franchise player while he does it. That doesn't make him any less of a pain in the ass, but unlike George Karl he's got the goods that make people want to try and put up with him. (Note: George Karl had it when he was younger, but that's not the guy we hired.) I'm at the point now where I think trading Boogie should be on the table. Our future is looking pretty bleak and all options should be considered. But it's also pretty clear, to me anyway, that our losing ways have nothing to do with Cousins "not being good enough" to carry the team and trading him would be symptomatic of the organization's failure to build a team around him not his own failure to develop into a franchise talent because he's done exactly that by every measure.
 
#28
I may be in the minority but if they trade Cousins and the losses continued to pile up (which I agree they would), that new fresh product would be old and rotten very, very quickly.

As it is, the only reason I'm even considering traveling from the middle of the forest again this season is to see DMC. If he's gone, I'm not sure I would bother.
i've been in that minority for the most part, as well. however, it will have been seven years of losing with demarcus cousins after this season. i've never laid the blame for that at cousins' feet, and i've always believed that the negative impacts of his behavioral issues were overstated when it came to the win/loss column. but it's still seven years.

this franchise just wasn't up to the task, if you ask me. if they had drafted a less mercurial and hot-tempered star in cousins' place, they still wouldn't have been up to the task of building a winner around him. so maybe the best idea is to start over, and see if they can learn how to build a winner from scratch, rather than trying to patch one together with a superstar for whom the clock is presently ticking.

beyond that, i also very much want to find out what demarcus cousins is truly made of, and it's impossible to tell while he's stuck in KANGZ-land. i'd love to see him in a place like boston. that's a talented young team who competes on the defensive end. how far could they go with cousins at their center, even while giving up a couple important pieces to get him? the nba fan in me desperately wants to know, even though the kings fan in me has long wanted it to work out right here in sacramento.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#29
...beyond that, i also very much want to find out what demarcus cousins is truly made of, and it's impossible to tell while he's stuck in KANGZ-land. i'd love to see him in a place like boston. that's a talented young team who competes on the defensive end. how far could they go with cousins at their center, even while giving up a couple important pieces to get him? the nba fan in me desperately wants to know, even though the kings fan in me has long wanted it to work out right here in sacramento.
The Kings fan in me slaps the crap out of the NBA fan if I even start to think about something like that, but as someone who was a Celtics fan for over 20 years before the Kings came to Sacramento I admit it's tantalizing to ponder.
 

Kingster

Hall of Famer
#30
Cousins' attitude has been a moot point, a side issue, for quite a long time. The issues that overwhelm the issue of Cousins' attitude are that Sacto is a FA backwater, terrible league-wide FA rep, lousy history of 1st round draft picks squandered, letting Isaiah Thomas and Tyreke go for nothing, the greenhorn management team currently in place, mortgaging of future 1st round picks, and the Gay injury. All of which means there is nothing to trade except for Cousins and there is no means by which this team can be salvaged in the next few years. As far as I am concerned, Cousins has been dead man walking with this organization for quite some time now. It's just a question of whether people recognize it. The only way to start anew is to start anew, which means blow it up, get a marquee GM in here who you can believe in, get some draft picks in the upcoming draft, and watch the flowers grow in a couple of years.