[Game] Kings v. Pelicans - 3/16/16 - 7 PT, 10 ET

Only LeBron and Curry I think can lead a team regardless of talent to the playoffs. Those are two exceptional greats. The other players mentioned? Don't think so.

Durant/Paul/Westbrook/Kawhi/Paul George/Butler wouldn't be enough.
Nah come on Paul George right now has a team with similar talent (2nd best player is Monta who gets ripped on this forum as a chucker when I suggested we trade Gay/Rondo for George Hill/Monta I was laughed at) and they are in the playoff picture and your grossly underrating KD and Paul they would easily take this team to the playoffs. Westbrook without KD has also been decent and close to the playoffs not sure about Lenoard but as much as I love him as an all around player. Butler has also been good at taking injury prone Bulls teams to the playoffs as the best player on the team.
 
There's plenty of examples where guys are not even stars and lead there team to the playoffs Andre Igoudula/Andre Miller lead a team to 41 wins as the two best players. Look at Lillard (is a star) this year even Gordan Hayward despite the Jazz missing half it's roster for a good chunk of the season has led a team to near 500.

There is something missing when it comes to Cuz I can't put my finger on it but something is off. I heard for years on here how if the Kings were in the East Cousins would take us to the playoffs but we sort of are now and same old same old.

Why is this just on Cousins?

The Blazers are pretty much the “Warriors light“, which actually proves, that two guards able to create paired with a bunch of athletic finishers are a terror to deal with in todays NBA.

Now Cousins is not a guard.


The Jazz are a great defensive team, that are comfortable creating from the wing positions?

Is it Cousins fault, that we suck defensively and nobody on our roster besides Rondo can create out of the pick&roll?

We suck as a team, our playstyle is messy, we have no clear cut gameplan, we tend to improvise when things get tough, everybody just throws the ball to Cousins and says “go do something“.

Cousins is putting up great numbers, because of the way we use him.
But paired with our defense, what we do is just not winning basketball.
Implying it's all on Cousins would mean, that he actively forces us to play like we do, because he wants to put up great numbers.

Possible, but very unlikely.

No, I believe we suck because we have trouble finding a way to play big man basketball in todays NBA and because we failed to assemble a roster, that allows a well thought out way to w i n games.

I mean look at the Blazers or Jazz. Every move they made points into the direction of the playstyle, they wanted to play.
Did Vlade and Karl and Vivek even have the same idea of how this team should play before the season?
 
I don't know why you talk about the playoffs specifically but there are planty of examples of carrying a bad team to better results:

Paul George is leading a team with a lesser roster than ours imo and already have 36 wins,
Westbrook led a bad OKC team to 45 wins last year- and when he played they were 39-28 (0.582),
In 2013/14 Kevin Love took a Minnesota team (with a worse roster than we have now imo) to 40 wins- when he played they were 39-38,
Harden led a bad roster to 45 wins in 2012/13.

I could go on, now of course you can nitpick about everyone of this situations (though I think they are valid), but the point is the claim that no other player have carried such a weak roster to more than 30 wins is ridiculous to me, and it becomes far more ridiculous comsidering how many here predicted a 45 wins season.
 
It's not about talent on paper.
It's about how the talents fits together and how the talent fits the most common playstyle you face.

Shoud we ignore, that the Pacers are a very good defensive team, while a guy like Solo would easily be our best defender if we would have traded a bag of chips for him, when the Pacers wanted to get rid of him?

Meanwhile we pay guys like Butler or Dukan.
But hey lets blame Cousins...
 
Nah come on Paul George right now has a team with similar talent (2nd best player is Monta who gets ripped on this forum as a chucker when I suggested we trade Gay/Rondo for George Hill/Monta I was laughed at) and they are in the playoff picture and your grossly underrating KD and Paul they would easily take this team to the playoffs. Westbrook without KD has also been decent and close to the playoffs not sure about Lenoard but as much as I love him as an all around player. Butler has also been good at taking injury prone Bulls teams to the playoffs as the best player on the team.


Unless you got drafted into this franchise already on its 5th coach in 5 years, on this team, in this city, in an arena falling apart, in the middle of a relocation saga that dragged for years, with horrible drafting, horrible coaches, bad free agent pickups, letting the good draft picks leave for nothing, the worst owners in sports (every year he's been here and it continues) there's no comparison.

The only comparison you can make is Mitch Richmond who, once, got this team to the playoffs, never got to .5oo. It was a similar hell here in his day (he'd greet players with "welcome to hell).

Arguably it's worse here now than even the 90's. The latter Mitch years Petrie arrived and things started changing. Slowly.

And Mitch is better (an actual hall of famer, unlike our coach, who may get in, may not) than some, not all, of these so called instant winners people are listing. And Mitch was a stud the day he got here with 3 20 plus ppg seasons already. Not a 19/20 year old kid. Mitch was 26. Older than cousins is now.
 
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It's not about talent on paper.
It's about how the talents fits together and how the talent fits the most common playstyle you face.

Shoud we ignore, that the Pacers are a very good defensive team, while a guy like Solo would easily be our best defender if we would have traded a bag of chips for him, when the Pacers wanted to get rid of him?

Meanwhile we pay guys like Butler or Dukan.
But hey lets blame Cousins...
I do hope we get Solo in the off season as our defender
 
One of the best talents in the league. The best players in the league win no matter the circumstance. (Curry, Lebron, Durant, Westbrook, Khawai, Paul) those guys win, they have the intangibles that Cousins severely lacks.

I am always on the fence whether people have selective memories or are intentionally ignoring history for the sake of their argument.

I'm going to restrict myself to in prime examples, so as to avoid all the normal "oh he wasn't good yet", or "he was too long in tooth" explanations. So:

KG
03-04 wins MVP
05-06 goes 33-49
06-07 goes 32-50

07-08 wins NBA Finals

Kobe
99-00 wins NBA Finals
00-01 wins NBA Finals
01-02 wins NBA Finals
04-05 goes 34-48, going through 2 coaches, the first of whom he fired
07-08 wins MVP
08-09 wins NBA Finals
09-10 wins NBA Finals

DWade
05-06 wins NBA Finals
07-08 goes 15-67, while playing 51 games, and being coached by Pat Riley
11-12 wins NBA Finals
12-13 wins NBA Finals


Barkley
91-92 goes 35-47
92-93 wins MVP


And these are all Top 20-30 all time guys.
 
Yes, if you swap Cousins with any of those guys mentioned we are instantly a playoff team and to not believe that would be stupid. Each and every one of those guys can lead and every player on our roster would play better. Those guys inspire their teammates, whether it be vocally(Lebron, Westbrook, Paul) or how they handle their business and come to play every single night (Durant, Leonard, Curry). Actually aside from Kahwai [sic] all of these guys qualify a good leaders vocally and leading by example. I mean to say Curry wouldn't make this team a playoff team is blasphemy...
How do you know that? James and Paul are the only two guys you named who have actually proven that they can do that; you just sort of assume that the other guys can. Stephen Curry sure as hell didn't look like the best player in the world, when he was playing with Monta Ellis and Dorrell Wright and Andris Biedrins. The first time Kevin Durant made the playoffs, he was on a team with Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, Jeff Green and James Harden. Westbrook has never played a season without Durant; who makes whom better in that situation? And, while I'm on the subject, I feel like it's noteworthy to point out that the only time in Russell Westbrook's NBA career that he's had to play more than four games without Kevin Durant, he missed the playoffs. And, again with Leonard, it's hard to declare him as a great leader who could win in any circumstance when the only team he's ever played for won sixty games the year they drafted him.

Do I think that Curry or Durant could lead this team to the playoffs with George Karl as the head coach, and the only personnel change being them here instead of Cousins? What reason would I have to think that? Neither of those guys has ever led a team of marginal talent to the playoffs before; I would rate Damian Lillard or Paul George, or even Joakim Noah, much higher in that regard. Could they lead this team to the playoffs with a different coach? Probably. But, then again, I think that Cousins could have led this team to the playoffs with a different coach, too.
 
How do you know that? James and Paul are the only two guys you named who have actually proven that they can do that; you just sort of assume that the other guys can. Stephen Curry sure as hell didn't look like the best player in the world, when he was playing with Monta Ellis and Dorrell Wright and Andris Biedrins. The first time Kevin Durant made the playoffs, he was on a team with Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, Jeff Green and James Harden. Westbrook has never played a season without Durant; who makes whom better in that situation? And, while I'm on the subject, I feel like it's noteworthy to point out that the only time in Russell Westbrook's NBA career that he's had to play more than four games without Kevin Durant, he missed the playoffs. And, again with Leonard, it's hard to declare him as a great leader who could win in any circumstance when the only team he's ever played for won sixty games the year they drafted him.

Do I think that Curry or Durant could lead this team to the playoffs with George Karl as the head coach, and the only personnel change being them here instead of Cousins? What reason would I have to think that? Neither of those guys has ever led a team of marginal talent to the playoffs before; I would rate Damian Lillard or Paul George, or even Joakim Noah, much higher in that regard. Could they lead this team to the playoffs with a different coach? Probably. But, then again, I think that Cousins could have led this team to the playoffs with a different coach, too.
This is called crushing it.
 
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