The Frontcourt

Glenn · May 7, 2011

Perhaps we should have a breakdown of all rookies, 6'9" and over with over 2 assists per game and see how he ranks. I'd be very curious about that.

http://bkref.com/tiny/s7RHE

Couldn't figure out how to take into account minutes per game played but despite his limited minutes because of fouls he came in 14th out of the top 100.

pshn80 · May 7, 2011

I think we started out here with the thought that our front court was pretty good to go forward with. That they were very competitive now and should get better. That another quality big besides our big three would shore things up. That's the way I look at it.

Dalembert and Thompson had good years which of course was encouraging. Cousins showed great promise as a rookie. He also showed that he needed to improve a great deal and in several ways. He would be a fool not to see what he needs to do and he would be a fool not to work on improving in the off season. He is still wrestling with work effort and ethic. I hope he leans in the right direction. If he repeats the season he had this year it will not do at all.

I don't think DeMarcus is a fool. I am optimistic about our front court future. Also I hope our threesone is playing for us when the new season starts.

Larry89 · May 7, 2011

Our frontcourt looks bright, but I am unsure of the future of playing DMC at PF and Dalembert at Center? Will it work out with DMC at Center? We have seen the lakers with Pau/Bynum actually playing worse when playing together, DMC playing out of position worries me

MassachusettsKingsFan · May 7, 2011

Larry89 said:

I think position is kind of meaningless when your talking about bigs as long at the styles match. I've always though that DMC and Dallys styles match up well. I wanted them to start together from day one, and its all because of Dalembert athleticism. For example, A defensive center like Perkins wouldnt work with DMC because he isnt mobile enough to defend the quicker 4's. Dally works so well because we have seen him defend the quickers/smaller guys like Griffin and Randolph with success.

This rotation of JT/Dally/DMC is just perfect on so many levels. They can all play with each other, they can all rebound, they can all score in different ways, and JT was starting to reallly play some good defense towards the end of last year.

pshn80 · May 7, 2011

MassachusettsKingsFan said:

Good take on their playing together and their relative talents. I think they're a good match and can develop together. Let's pray for a better, improved performance by Cousins.

vikinginferno · May 7, 2011

Larry89 said:

Simple. Dally plays the 4. It's a lot like how Camby could play some power forward. Cuz actually has been playing the 5 for the most part with Dally. Dally has almost always been guarding the power forward and guarded by the power forward while Cuz guards the center and is guarded by the center. I'm really not sure why everyone always says DMC is the power forward when they are in the lineup together. Just because Dally is an inch taller doesn't automatically make him the center.

Lockehead · May 7, 2011

Daly+Cousins is a GREAT front court. Think of it this way; Cousins is focused on the offenseive end, while contributing to the defensive end and getting better at it. Dalembert is focused on the defensive end, but is finding his way in the offensive end.

In my opnion, the only thing holding back Cousins from total domination is conditioning, and learning the NBA game. The kid is simply one of the most talented, and by talented i mean skilled and not physically gifted, players i have seen in recent drafts, altthought he does have very quick hands and feet. The only thing holding him back is NBA experience, and conditioning. The kid could barely run the court at the beginning of the season. He was overweight, and young. In the 2nd half of the season, hes learned to transition back on defense and not take any plays off. The kid learns FAST. This kid is going to be great. I will be very dissappointed if he doesnt become a top 3 center in his sophomore season.

MassachusettsKingsFan · May 7, 2011

Lockehead said:

I'll agree with you on the conditioning .. it needs to get better, but I dont think thats all he needs to work on.

And the reason I love Cousins so much is that I see many ways he can improve .. and he is already really really good. Everything on defense needs to get better. He cant keep getting himself in foul trouble. He needs to work on his shot selection, at times he can get a little jumper happy. Needs to stop trying to thread the needle on passes over and over again if its not there .. just too many turnovers all together. Some of its bad decision making with passes, some of it is frustration offensive fouls .. some of it is trying to dribble through traffic when no lane is there. I'd like to see him catch the ball deeper in the post, but that has as much to do with him as it does the players passing him the ball and the plays called.

His potential is incredible if he can just tighten these things up.

Lockehead · May 8, 2011

MassachusettsKingsFan said:

I dont mind him working in the high post. As we have seen, he knows how to make the best of it by making passes, moving the ball around, or beating his defender off the dribble. That is a HUGE skill. How many 7 footers do u know that can beat his man off the dribble. And when he does, thats usually a sure basket or foul. I have a lot of confidence in Cousins' skill. Simply put, he is a VERY smart ball player. He knows how to beat his man, and he knows to work with his team. I dont mind him operating from the high post and making passes, because as we have seen, he HAS made plenty of passes/assists that way. As i i said before, one of the main things holding him back was his conditioning. If hes able to execute his moves, and make his decisions quicker, faster, and with more authority, and by that i meaning QUICKER and with more POWER, then hes going to be TOUGH to guard. And our team is going to get better because of him.

Bricklayer · May 8, 2011

vikinginferno said:

Think its probably because Dalembert a) has beena career long center; b) plays the defensive lane clogger position, which is usually associated with centers; and c) its been so long since the league has had offensively talented centers that as soon as somebody flashes any offensive skill they are called a PF.

Bricklayer · May 8, 2011

Some more stats btw:

Post All Star break, which is in other words post removal of the Landry impediment which unleashed our true frontline beastiness:

-- We outrebounded 19 of 29 opponents (19wins, 1 tie, 9 losses).

-- Over that span, we were +4.48 rebs/game, which would have placed us easily at #2 in the NBA (on the whole season we were +2.7, which was good for 4th).

-- No team in the second half of the season beat us by double figure rebounding. We outrebounded 8 teams by double figures, including 3 by 20+.

-- Furthermore, get this: we went 11-18 after the break. In games we outrebounded the opposition we went 11-8. In games where the opposition tied or outrebounded us, we went 0-10.

Here's how that translated: we got huge. We smashed people with our hugeness. When our bigs played their game and played big, we became tough to beat, and this against a murderor's row of competition. When teams were able to neutralize our edge inside, we lost (Spurs and Denver gave us the most problems, each getting us twice -- fairly random teams, but possibly pace related, although we also crushed the Warriors and Phoenix).

Glenn · May 8, 2011

If we remember back to the season, remember that the beginning of the season was a prolonged period of playing "easy" teams. We did poorly. This left the last part of the season against a tougher schedule. We did better. The team got tougher after Dally's agent complained about Dally's time and almost predictabally Westphal tried a new lineup of Dally and Cousins. Who would have known they would mesh so well. It was predictable in the sense that a defensive player was on the court with an offensive player and that was a fine match. What was not known is that it seemed to create a bond between the two. The are both very good rebounders. Left with the other off the court, their individual rebounding figures would have been higher but as a duo, it was very, very good.

I don't recall a time in the entire Kings' franchise that rebounding was this steady. More rebounds, more shots for us. Simple concept. How many years did we bemoan our lack of rebounding.

Some of the better teams in the league are using two "centers" as the two bigs. The terms pg, sg, center, pf are now becoming restricting as they are losing meaning. There simply seem to be bigs and the rest. Having two bigs not only give us an advantage against most teams, it is a necessity against others. The era of the power forward being the center may be ending. I think we are all learning this and I am preaching to the choir.

What I liked about Adelman is that he didn't seem constricted by pre-defined expectations of players depending on what their label was. He adjusted to the skills of the player. That is an absolute necessity on the present team. Reke is called a pg but he's just a guard who needs to be matched in the backcourt with someone with complimentary skills. Same with the bigs. This question of who is the pf and who is the center is an artificial convention dating back 60 years. It doesn't take into account what happens on the court. If you need to call a player a center, let it be Dally. All I care about is that the two of them play their roles and the position definition is meaningless.

Insomniacal Fan · May 8, 2011

Glenn said:

I didn't make the list attempting to imply anything, I did it to follow up on my initial question. My initial question was "Why was Demarcus' FG% so low?" Mac suggested that it's normal for rookies to struggle here. I thought that was an interesting point, so I looked into it by comparing Cousins to comparable rookies. Some non-comparable rookies are part of the list too, (Kevin Durant as you pointed out.)

I could have worked harder to make the list cleaner; but the list, and the relative rankings of players on it is not the point. The list is there to show that Demarcus had a low FG% for a low-post scorer, even accounting for him being a rookie.

Now, AFTER, reading some of the discussion about that, I have formed an opinion about why his FG% is so low; but for that to happen, I had to establish that it was a relevant thing to talk about.

ESP47 · May 9, 2011

Part of Cousins problems came from coaching. But I can see what the coaches were doing by letting Cousins go at it and try and develop himself down in the post. We ran 1 on 1 Cousins plays all year so its not like he was just being a ball hog and forcing up bad shots all the time.

I don't know any exact stats, but I'm guessing Cousins 1 on 1 post play only worked out to a FG % of about 30%. It led to a ton of turnovers, a ton of bad shots and all around bad play from Cousins. Whether or not this helped him will remain to be seen because it seemed like it just demoralized him and made him feel like a failure for the most part.

If we retain Thorton, we need Cousins to take a scoring back seat. I want to see something closer to 12pts on 48% shooting. We can't have him shooting low 40% as a nearly 7 footer. Thats completely unacceptable for a guy that size. If he stops the 1 on 1, he can keep his assists just as high with only half the turnovers. He made a lot of turnovers on bad passes but the majority of the time it was because he was going 1 on 1 and doing spin moves that led to TO's.

If Cousins starts the season off shooting 40% again, we need to change his role in the offense so he can get his confidence back. I'm sure he'd rather go 4-8 and score 10pts rather than go 5-17 and score 14pts.

bajaden · May 9, 2011

Glenn said:

If you want to break this down into minutes, it does revise the order somewhat. I won't revise it, but you can see the difference when you look at assists per minute.

Bird: 1 assist every 7.9 minutes
Odom: 1 assist every 8.7 minutes
Griffin: 1 assist every 9.9 minutes
Gugliotta: 1 assist every 9.1 minutes
Daugherty: 1 assist every 8.8 minutes
Webber: 1 assist every 8.9 minutes
Kukoc: 1 assist every 7.1 minutes
Malone: 1 assist every 10.4 minutes
Duncan: 1 assist every 14.3 minutes
Gasol: 1 assist every 13.4 minutes
Laettner: 1 assist every 12.6 minutes
Laimbeer: 1 assist every 11.3 minutes
Bowie: 1 assist every 10.3 minutes
Cousins: 1 assist every 10.7 minutes

Kukoc becomes the leader in the per minute stat, but Bird stays up there in 2nd place. But as you can see, Cousins would go up from 14th to 10th. This is probably a fairer stat since everyone doesn't play the same amount of minutes.

bajaden · May 9, 2011

MassachusettsKingsFan said:

I've said this before, but I'll say it again. At Kentucky, Cousins never strayed more than 5 feet from the basket on offense. So his setting up in the high post or on the left elbow 11 to 12 feet from the basket is by design, and not by his personal choice. Obviously to take advantage of his passing skills, similar to what Webb and Vlade did. As with everything, you have to give up something to get something. What he gives up is being closer to the basket where he's just one bounce of the ball and a move from a basket.

Once again, I think familarity and experience will win out in the long run. Just keep putting the same players on the floor together and the mistakes will start to diminish. I think experience will also reduce a lot of forced shots and poor decisions. And, as you said, better conditioning, and more polish on all aspects of his game.

bajaden · May 9, 2011

ESP47 said:

Couldn't disagree more. Your looking at a guy that has the potential to be one of the top 3 centers, if not the best center in basketball. The last thing I'm going to do is put a governor on him. I'm not about to take a guy that can be a 20/10 guy every night, and tell him to stop being aggressive on offense. He's going to make mistakes, but thats how you learn. His turnover rate was considerably less toward the end of the season than the beginning of the season.

Plus a some of his poor shots and turnovers were aided by his teammates. How many times was he used as a last second bailout by a teammate. I can remember several times when the ball was passed to him with 3 or 4 ticks left on the clock. What was he susposed to do with the ball, eat it? How many times did he set up on the left elbow looking for cutters, and there weren't any. Once again the clock is now down to 6 or 7 seconds and he has to do something with the ball. I'm not totally excusing him. He should have made some of those decisions earlier. But thats part of the learning experience. You might be able to learn how to fly a plane using computer programs. But you'll never become a good pilot unless you get in a real plane. There are no shortcuts.

He has a lot of learning to do. But you have to let him go through the process. The last thing you want to do is put a muzzle on the big dog.

Prince_XY · May 9, 2011

Glenn said:

I did. And probably Dime Dopper ( or was it The Hammer? ) too - to a certain extent. And Brick was convinced in the middle of the season.

And I've been burned in this forum by the all-knowing gurus like Vlade and Bajaden for advocating the Cousins/Dalembert tandem playing more minutes together. Both insisted Cousins and Dalembert are C's just because they are natural centers all their life. Not only that. They thought they are too slow to guard the quicker PF's and they would just be drawn outside negating their effectiveness to play inside the paint. And this is, as if PFs only play outside the paint.

Bajaden even suggested we have to get rid of Dalembert early in the season!

The Hammer · May 9, 2011

Prince_XY said:

It was me. I'm going to go ahead and take all the credit for first putting that out there and advocating for it. Loved all the **** I took for it, and it did stir up quite a discussion. While he wasn't inititially violently opposed, eventually Brick came around... and then you know once Brick announces his opinion...

But they've even worked better together better than I imagined. I had no idea they'd be able to work so well defensively against so many different types, although I had suspicions as such.

MassachusettsKingsFan · May 9, 2011

Prince_XY said:

Ugh. Nothing I hate more than arrogance. This goes for "The Hammer" too. I wish this forum had some sort of archive so we could go back to that long long thread we had going during the offseason about the frontcourt. Im mean seriously... there were what.. 8 total combinations for a starting frontcourt. DAMN you better take all that credit!! howd you ever pick it!

I remember ALOT of people advocating for Dalembert and Cousins, myself included. It wasnt that hard to figure out either. With Landry and Cousins, it made all the sense in the world to have one of them start and one of them on the bench (both post scorers) and once you decided Cousins would be a better starter ( you could hide Landry being undersized much better on the bench ) Then it was between JT and Dally. Dally is just as mobile as JT, just as good a rebounder, and a much better defender ( not to mention he was a vet, good to have on the floor with young players.)

So bravo, you selected the best pairing. 1/8 chance ... but please dont tell me you, or anyone else started the Dalembert/Cousins movement.

Bricklayer · May 9, 2011

Prince was early on it.

rainmaker · May 9, 2011

MassachusettsKingsFan said:

Seriously. I remember having the conversation about starting both in training camp. We were talking twin towers in september. I campaigned harder then just about anyone to put Landrys a** on the bench, in order to start Cousins. Had it in my sig. Many agreed. Some didn't. Point being, the conversation started even before the season started.

The Hammer · May 9, 2011

MassachusettsKingsFan said:

Oh come on. Surely you don't think my comments are devoid of humor and sarcasm? Me demanding full and only credit is just a self characature as a form of humor and highlighting that *minor* tendency in people in general.

I find it fun to be overly demonstrative about being an *** because it's just... funny...

And just so people know... the general tone and tenor I like to adopt in my interactions around here is that of... a guys locker room/sitting around playing poker and drinking and talking sports/shooting the ****... etc. Being loud, comically arrogant, and opinionated is much more fun to me that try to be polite and civil. All in good humor and fun.

vikinginferno · May 9, 2011

The Hammer said:

Oh come on. Surely you don't think my comments are devoid of humor and sarcasm? Me demanding full and only credit is just a self characature as a form of humor and highlighting that *minor* tendency in people in general.

I find it fun to be overly demonstrative about being an *** because it's just... funny...

And just so people know... the general tone and tenor I like to adopt in my interactions around here is that of... a guys locker room/sitting around playing poker and drinking and talking sports/shooting the ****... etc. Being loud, comically arrogant, and opinionated is much more fun to me that try to be polite and civil. All in good humor and fun.

and yet you go into Hulk rage when someone jokingly calls you MC Hammer... seems to me you only like it when you are the one being the comic.

Bricklayer · May 9, 2011

Like I say, to be fair here, Prince and The Hammer were arguing for it almsot as soon as we got those guys -- here is a thread from early July, a week after Daly and Cousins arrived basically:

http://www.kingsfans.com/forums/sho...to-touch-the-trophy!-quot&p=759719#post759719

I've mentioned before that I was initially sceptical myself. Not adamant, but I certainly wasn't the originator of the idea. Think my own tune started changing a bit after I saw Cousins in summer league and realized he wasn't going to be an interior shotblocker. But others were definitely vociferous (and annoying) before I joined the fray.

Spike · May 9, 2011

But why is it OK to interchange post players, yet still need a "pure" PG?

I don't think it's worth quibbling over. Ultimately, you're going to want to get the strongest unit out there, even if it means your best PG has the size of a SF and your two Cs are in the post. FTR, I didn't think the Daly/Cousins combo would work as well as it has, but now I don't really care how it shakes out. Wins are wins. Ask Al Davis. OK, don't ask him now, because he'd probably be really confused about it.

The Hammer · May 9, 2011

vikinginferno said:

I totally agree.

uolj · May 10, 2011

MassachusettsKingsFan said:

FYI... All the threads since Sep 2004 are still here. There is the search feature you can use, or you can go look at the Thread Display Options at the bottom of the forum of your choice and change the "Show threads from the..." option to "Beginning" to have all the threads in that forum listed. You can also go to Forum Actions > General Settings and then scroll down to the Default Thread Age Cutoff option and change it to whatever you like, which will permanently change that setting for you in all forums.

But I don't know if it's really that serious in this situation.

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