Here's the bottom line. The Kings finally have a size advantage on most teams. Tonight's matchup is a prime example with Ben Wallace starting at center for Detroit. Overall we had an advantage against the Suns. But have we been using our advantage? I think I can safely say no. In the one post match up between Cousins and Channing Frye it was obvious that Frye had little chance of guarding Cousins.
Now I've watched basketball for a long time and there's one constant. If a team finds a weakness, they exploit it. Does Beasley ring any bells? Minny kept going to Beasley over and over again. And they wern't going to stop, until we stopped him. Which we never did. So the other night when Cousins made Frye look almost defenseless on that one possession, how many times did we go back to it to exploit it? Zero!!!!!
Aside from the points in the paint scored by Tyreke, most of our scoring is coming from the perimiter. I can't recall any NBA championship team that won solely on perimiter scoring. Reason being is too many times, one too many nights, the ball doesn't fall for you. There's a reason that most good post players almost always shoot better than 50% from the floor and that even your best perimiter players only shoot somewhere between 44 and 46%. Example, Kobe for his career is a 45.4% shooter while Duncan is a 50.8% shooter.
So while were sort of on the subject of Duncan, how many of you can remember when he came into the league? For those interested that don't remember or know, he wasn't considered the most athletic guy coming out of college, but he was considered one of the most fundamentally sound players coming out of college. He was a center at Wake Forest, and basicly a post player, or back to the basket player if you will.
San Antonio, by hook or by crook landed the big guy. Their only problem was exactly how to play him. They already had an all star center in David Robinson, who also was one of the better defensive centers in the NBA. Well they just plugged him into the lineup next to Robinson and let the chips fall where they may. I think that worked out fairly well. Now I'm not saying that Dalembert is Robinson or that Cousins is Duncan. But there are similarities, even if they be small one's. Duncan was quite able to guard the PF's of the league with Robinson having his back. On offense they were almost unstopable.
All I'm saying is I wouldn't have a closed mind. The Kings have strengths they didn't have last year. The problem, is that they're not using them. Even if you don't want to start them together, make Cousins the first man off the bench replacing Landry. Give them 5 or 6 minutes together and see how it works. If it does, expand on it and let Thompson be your main emergency back up at both positions if one of them gets into foul trouble. The main thing is to keep a big lineup on the floor at all times.
I still get befuddled when I think of Nellie going small, and just about every bad team in the NBA going small to match up with them, instead of going big and hammering them in the post. Bottom line is that almost every championship team I can think of had a post presence and the offense was balanced between the post and the perimiter. Right now the Kings are almost exclusively a perimiter team. 18 3pt shots attempted in the last game tells it all. How many baskets were scored in the post by someone other than Tyreke? Not many! It has to change, and it has to change soon.
I would at least try Cousins and Dalembert starting. JT and Landry is plenty of size off of the bench when you consider the scrub big men other teams throw out there. Our bench as it stands has no player as aggressive as Landry on offense ... I just really think thats were he can be most effective.
