In other words, Thabeet wasn't good enough for the D-League team, we had to sign Cousin to replace him.
I would say something about your name, but dreams make more sense. Hill got minutes when Scola went down. When was that, 6 months ago? No, wait... Nobody is going to cut Hill. Cousin, OTOH, is not assured of a 12th man role on ANY team. It's not like other teams didn't have a chance to sign him. They had that chance, and NOBODY took it. Oh, wait, a couple of teams did.. and they CUT HIM. Sure, it's possible that Cousin will have more of a career than Hill. It's also possible you're Daryl Morey.
Not to toot my own horn...but... http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=199626 And I did see him play in college. Morey thought he was good, and well I guess great minds think alike.:grin:
We need a lot more posts like this. There are examples of players that start slow, but suddenly turn up the intensities of their careers after failing to impress for a while. After a couple of years, David Robinson was clearly better than Hakeem, and always would be. But then, Hakeem kicked into high gear. Craig Ehlo was the 12th man white guy here. We let him go, and he ended up being a starter on pretty good Cleveland teams. Dennis Rodman. Rajon Rondo. Nicholas Batum. Hey, even Chuck Hayes surprised us with this last season. A player can get a lot better than originally thought after entering the NBA. But, it is pretty rare for a player to go his whole rookie season without even catching on with a team, and turning into a rotation player. The success stories of this group tend to be the Von Wafers and the Mike Harrises; players that hang around, continuing to get short tenures on a team from time to time. These are the exceptions. Jermaine Taylor might be beating the odds. Between Thabeet, Hassan Whiteside, and Cousin, I think the probability is low that two of those become rotation players. I'm going to guess the odds are 50-50 that one or more do. I think it would be great if Cousin can do it. But I think he's just a shot. We take enough of them, one of them might hit.
We have to take a long-term view of such a player. As long as he makes steady progress, we should leave him down there, and take another look a year from now.
I made the other thread on this guy because he is easily the least talked about rocket on this forum, and the guy looks like he has a truckload full of potential. i think CD, mchale, olajuwon or some legendary center somewhere can mold this guy into a true player. You just don't get rid of seven footers who can shoot fallaway jumpers, and block shots like that. i imagine him and D-Mo can work really well together in the post offense (unless they both turn out to suck).