I always thought Cousins needed a new setting, away from the dysfunction of Sacramento. Just a tough organization. Incompetent owner creates bad front office, which cant assemble a good roster, cant bring in good consistent coaches, are in an unattractive free agent location. Lot going against it. Cousins HIMSELF is a huge problem. His foul temperament is completely OFF-putting. You CAN'T have him being the LONE big GOON LEADER, with no other strong minds or signs of competence around him. Totally REGRESSIVE leadership style. Gotta have someone else with the keys to the car too. Change was needed for BOTH sides. Buddy Hield figures to be decent at best, with small sliver of being VERY good. STILL, if Hield just plays out as an average 2 guard with INSPIRED team play, that actually can still be addition by substraction for the Kings. They need a culture shift, dark clouds blown away, fresh outlook as much as they need pure talent additions. Fans respected Boogie enough but I think they'll take to a TRUE rebuild even through crappy front office. This is "PROVE YOUR WORTH" time for Boogie. Its straightforward can you ACTUALLY WIN, or are you a career LOSER with nice stats? There's lots of reason to be skeptical of a big man heavy lineup in TODAY'S game. Both Cousins AND Davis leading teams as best big man at position have produced PLENTY LOSSES. Why would it work together? BUT its still admittedly FORMIDABLE potential. Davis is already a problem for defenses. A motivated Cousins is a LOAD to deal with. League isnt QUITE yet all Midget Ball. CERTAIN kind of size can win.
Multiple potentials are greater than a couple potentials I knew this proverb from somewhere, oh right, you have it in your signature.
By who's standards? Yours? He is whatever position he feels most comfortable in and with his skillset, he can play fine in both roles.
Exaggerate much? Holiday's been playing well but he's not ever going to be part of a "Big 3". Pelicans have 3 players worth a damn surrounded by trash with a terrible coach and GM. They're not a threat.
Ooooh...I would think the Union would scream over that. Teams doing trades to strip players of max rights. Maybe something that only the drafting team can pay??
from CBS... Thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement, Cousins was eligible to sign a designated-veteran-player contract extension with the Kings this summer. This was built into the CBA so teams could offer their star player more of an incentive to re-sign with them. This long-term super max deal is only eligible for players that want to re-sign with the team that drafted them. Players that were traded while on their rookie contract are also eligible for the same deal with the team that acquired them. But the Kings apparently didn’t want to give Cousins that long of a contract for that much money, so they traded him to New Orleans. And now Cousins is not eligible to sign a designated-veteran-player contract extension with the Pelicans, since they didn’t draft him and he is no longer on his rookie deal. The Pelicans can only offer Cousins a five-year, $180 million deal, which is about $30 million less than what he could have earned from the Kings if Sacramento didn’t trade him.
The dude is just insane. Sure, Hield who is 23 years older in his rookie year putting up 8.6 ppg, 1.4 apg, 2.9 rpg, with 37% 3 point shooting (which isn't bad... but wait for the comparison) has the potential of a Curry who was 21 years old his rookie year putting up 17.5 ppg, 5.9 apg, 4.5 rpg with 44% 3 pt shooting. People forget that Steph didn't just come out of nowhere. he was REALLY good from day one. And he went from really good to dominant. Maybe Hield will go from meh to ok!
Man...I'm still pissed about this trade. Pelicans straight up hand-wrapped the best big man in the league. Kick the Kings out of the NBA for incompetence.
Stein reporting that the Raptors offered Jonas and a first for Cousins http://www.espn.com/espnradio/play?id=18734507
How many competent rebounding bigs are left in the league that can shoot? Cousins and AD are far and away the best two big men. The rest of the decent 3pt shooting bigs in the league include Marc Gasol and KAT. Ibaka, Horford, and Aldridge all have range but none of them are great rebounders so it's a moot point when you shoot like a good shooting big and rebound worse than a lot of guards and small forwards. Maybe Myles Turner one day can get there but he is still an average rebounder. Saying the Pelicans would get "torched" is complete hyperbole.
Twin tower lineup of cousins and Davis is gonna be a heavy load for a lot of teams. Pick and roll/pop between both of them will be unstoppable. They both can put it on the floor.
