DeMarcus Cousins

[bajaden]

His footwork has been an issue, but he's learning rapidly. The reason he gets called for so many travels is that he doesn't get a low enough center of gravity to keep his pivot foot down; he has quick feet and often tries to go through moves going as fast as he can, so his pivot foot doesn't stay planted. Its understandable, thats the AAU mentality in him to throw out these moves as quickly as possible as opposed to being methodical and calculating.

That being said, he's showing vast improvement in it lately, and it has a lot to do with his recent surge in production. I'd hazard a guess that he averaged 2-3 travels per game throughout November and December; he only had one travelling call that I can remember last night. I can't help but wonder if Bill Walton is coaching him directly because his learning curve has been incredible.

The next step in his development would be to add signature moves he can consistently count on, like a jump hook, because this "invent finishing moves as you go along" is nice until the opposing defenses start taking away your comfort zone.

Thats not the kind of footwork I'm talking about. Your talking about mistakes, and I'm talking about skills. I'm talking about dropsteps, stepbacks, and at times smartly not establishing a pivot foot, which he's very good at doing. A lot of players immediately establish a pivot foot, and it takes away their advantage of being able to go in either direction off either foot. Traveling is just traveling, and its just a mistake. It has nothing to do with footwork, anymore than a player leaving his feet without anywhere to go with the ball does. Not worth arguing over, so I guess I'll stop.

 

[UK_King]

had to laugh at this obvious typo on twitter.

 

[mac]

If you watch the game carefully, sometimes the player that does the work doesn't always get the rebound. There was at least four occasions where Cousins blocked out two opposing players and Casspi ended up with the rebound. The stat line doesn't always tell the whole story. By the way, I thought Casspi was excellent last night. He brought a lot of energy to the game.

I don't really agree with you here. Carl Landry does a good job boxing guys out too, but still receives criticism for not rebounding enough. I'm fine with going either way, but we should be consistent in judging both of them.

 

[est.1999]

The only difference is that Demarcus can come up with big rebounding games where Carl hardly ever does.

 

[Bricklayer]

Nobody but Cisco perhaps has an excuse for their rebounding yesterday -- he's a terrible rebounder, but asking him to outrebound Josh Smith is a bit much. Everybody else should have been able to match or beat their opponents. And its not about blocking out. That's always selectively invoked, but if it was some sort of magic bullet we as a team wouldn't have gotten smashed yesterday.

 

[HighFlyingMonkey]

Thats not the kind of footwork I'm talking about. Your talking about mistakes, and I'm talking about skills. I'm talking about dropsteps, stepbacks, and at times smartly not establishing a pivot foot, which he's very good at doing. A lot of players immediately establish a pivot foot, and it takes away their advantage of being able to go in either direction off either foot. Traveling is just traveling, and its just a mistake. It has nothing to do with footwork, anymore than a player leaving his feet without anywhere to go with the ball does. Not worth arguing over, so I guess I'll stop.

Its all about polish really, but it seems like we're just differing on what exactly is a footwork mistake and not, so agree to disagree

 

[IfAt1st]

I don't really agree with you here. Carl Landry does a good job boxing guys out too, but still receives criticism for not rebounding enough. I'm fine with going either way, but we should be consistent in judging both of them.

QFT.

I see Landry boxing out and not getting any credit (leading to a teammate's rebound), more than anyone else on the Kings.