First you surmised that there was a problem in the locker room. Then you surmised that Cousins was the reason for that, and gave three possible reasons as to why. All three were negative. While I admit that there seemed to be something bothering Cousins, and he admitted as much, when he said that he was having a problem staying focused because of something that was bothering him, I'd hardly say that adds up to a problem overall with the team. It could be something as simple as the front office telling him that their going to trade IT, and because IT is a close friend, its affecting him emotionally. I could think of a 100 different reasons, and none of them negative. Thus my response!
Ok, pure speculation on the locker room part, although many others on here have said the same. I was really just talking about cousins, cause he clearly was mentally not there before the break. Whether that affects anyone else but him I can't say and didn't mean to imply otherwise. We are clearly a worse team when he is not engaged. He could just still be hurt too.
I've never shown any anti-cousins bias before so I was just a little surprised you reacted like that. Wasn't my intent to blame the guy for everything although I may have worded it poorly.
I stand by that on the court as starters, our pg and cousins does not work. Especially defensively, but they don't do much for each other offensively either. More surmising on my part, but I think the current trade rumors strongly indicate the FO doesn't think it works either,
or they've done what I and many others were worried about, puffed up the stats of a mediocre pg to the point they just can't sign him anymore. We did the same with MT, let him run wild and get some nice stats, and we are still paying for that mistake. You don't want another MT, Landry, JT contract hampering the team. I still see our pg as a super bench player, who now (more surmising) may be asking for that borderline starter money that we just can't afford. The problem is we are already paying for bench guys. Super or not, we can't take on another. Which is why I think it's a very bad thing if cuz/little man are good friends. Cause they're not good for each other on the court. And the reality is we desperately seem to be trying to move our pg and have let the league know.
Of course, I'd take our pg over MT and Landry in a heartbeat at the same money. It'd be closer with JT. But you can't have 4 guys at that money (5 with Williams). God damnit that Landry signing was horrible. I can understand JT and MT (although that signing put tyreke out of position) cause we wanted to retain talent. Landry we went out and got despite him filling zero needs of this franchise. Inexcusable. Doing nothing was a better move. It makes it very tough to have money to sign our pg. Our pg is clearly out producing the other members of the 5-7 million crew, but it's hard to take on yet another contract like that unless you're really sure he's the long term answer or can move out all the dead weight. The dead weight trade (for rudy) already happened. Hard to pull that off twice. Unfortunately, we decided Landry was to be our off the bench scorer already. We've got three more seasons of him. Which makes him almost impossible to move, considering he's shown next to nothing on the court for whatever reason.
Landry was redundant the day he signed. Still is. He's the scorer off the bench. So is our pg. Unfortunately, one has a long term contract, the other does not. In my view, we are now left trying to trade the better player cause we can't afford him. And that's a real shame. The FO decided Landry was their guy before they even knew what they already had, that for similar money they could have kept our pg this offseason. Now we are talking luxury tax to keep him, and I'm not sure Vivek is quite willing to really put his money where his mouth is. Not for a 5'9 pg anyway.
Ramble on...
