Your right, he had clashes with Calapari, but other than what you saw during a game, nothing else went public. And to this day, both Calapari and Cousins have a very good relationship. The very day Calapari recruited Cousins, he warned him that he was crazy (meaning Calapari) and that he was very demanding, so expect to be yelled at. Cousins respects Calapari, but I doubt he has much respect for Westphal.
If Cousins did indeed ask for a trade, then he handled it badly. But I'd like to point out that a lot of players in the NBA have asked to be traded from time to time, and they wern't benched because of it. I'm going to wait till all the details are out before making a judgement. But ask yourself, why did this have to become public? Westphal is a little man. By the way, this exact thing happened in Seattle with Gary Payton. I also seem to remember another center for the Kings named Hawes that had a similar clash with Westphal. I think Westphal is intimidated by players that question what he's doing.
Calapari said once that Cousins was one of the smartest players he ever coached. He said that whenever they practiced something new, Cousins would always ask why they were doing it that way. He said once he explained why, then Cousins was fine with it. You can be the judge as to whether Cousins is right or wrong for questioning, but I'll say it again, Cousins isn't the problem here. Everytime something went wrong last season with Cousins, it was made public by Westphal. As much as you can, you keep this stuff in house. Otherwise you create a firestorm. Westphal did this same stuff in Seattle. Throwing players under the bus for being overweight or out of shape. His problem there was, he was up against Gary Payton who had more juice than Westphal did. Frankly I'm sick of this guy.