in the postgame interview, i remember westphal saying that cousins was open for a second but casspi ran by him and might have either blocked the pass lane or something. i dont know if he was covering for donte or what but i didnt have the game dvr'd to watch again
Just finished watching this in slow motion back and forth at least 20 times.
Harden was on Tyreke who was in the middle of the key, Cousins and Casspi were both at the top of the key, with Casspi a bit further out.
When Cousins went to get position in the lane, he went right next to Harden. If Donte had thrown the ball early, it's possible that Harden could have reached from behind and gotten a hand on it, because Tyreke didn't make his move till Cousins had made his.
So Donte had to wait till Tyreke made his move to draw Harden away.
Now you can see that the first option probably was to Cousins, because Greene moved to pass the ball to him. The biggest problem was that Casspi ran right in front of Cousins, and that presented two different issues.
The first is that Casspi's man (Green) followed Casspi by going behind the screen. But when he did this, he was watching Donte and actually hesitated just a moment to see if the pass was going to go into Cousins. Green actually had his hand on Collison's shoulder as he ran by, and it looked as if he was prepared to provide help to Collison if he needed it.
The second issue is that Casspi ran right in between Donte and Cousins. It's very possible that Casspi inadvertantly interferes with that pass, or obscures Cousins' vision which makes the pass harder to catch.
And because Green was spying where the ball was going to go, Cousins would of had two defenders betweeen him and the rim, so his best option would have been to pass it out to Casspi for the open 3 in the corner. But my guess is that Cousins would have forced up a shot to tie it.
So I don't think that Donte really had a good window to get the ball cleanly to Cousins, once Cousins had made his move and positioned himself to receive the pass. And even if there was a really narrow window, it safer pass by far was to Tyreke.
If Casspi had run to the other corner, then Cousins would have had a legitimate issue, because then Greene could have made a clean pass. But Casspi ran right through the middle of where the pass had to be, and he kept his man in the area as well making it even harder for Cousins to get off a good shot.
With what has transpired, I really, really wish that Tyreke had knocked down that shot.
If Cousins doesn't go on the road trip, then he won't be playing again till after the All Star break, and that's a long wait. Hopefully they'll be able to get this all settled and deal with the situation rather than making it worse.
