Why are Rockets fans in love with Cousins yet hate Josh Smith?

this was less than a week ago
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Why are Rockets fans in love with becoming the Atlanta Hawks of the West(or the Memphis Grizzlies)?

If you're gonna spend anywhere from $10 to 15 mil on player, make it worth your while(or money)! Yeah, getting a superstar(let alone star) or elite player is few and far between but what good is it to have a capped out roster, where the ceiling is [maybe] the 2nd round?

With all due respect to these players, I just don't get the love affair with the Josh Smith, Al Jefferson, & Paul Millsaps of the world.

"We got 15 million in cap room, hurry, go throw it at Josh Smith!" <---PASS.

 

Meh, just because a few people make some posts about Cousins doesn't mean that we're in love with him. "If you love it so much then why don't you marry it?" hehe

 

It's because Cousins is still very young and has so much more potential to realize than Smith. Smith is what Smith is.

 

Would seriously love to roll the dice on Cousins - he's also on a SUPER reasonable contract while Smith will likely want MAX. Smith is good - much better than our "power" forwards but he is an idiot and is inefficient as hell w/o having a back-to-the-basket game. He's the type of athlete we want though.

Cousins has that athleticism, is as good a defender, and can literally do anything as a big man. Shoot jumpers - yes. Post-up game - yes. Defend/block/alter shots - yes. Handle the ball even - YES! He's also an idiot and a headcase. But Harden/Lin/Cousins/Parsons would be an amazingly fun experiment to watch. One would hope McHale or Harden or Lin could reign Cousins in a bit, but with his talent, Cousins should be a top 15 player.

 

1) Cousins is so young that he's eligible for 2013 draft had he stayed in college(yes, he's that young). The upside is tremendous. And he can grow with our young core together.

2) He's on the rookie contract(with team option next year), so we can still add another max player with some cap room manipulation. It's easy to trade or get out of his contract if things don't work out.

3) His PER last year and this season are above 21(none of our players achieved that except harden), which means his production on court is already on star level at such a young age under rookie contract.

 

Yea his IQ is terrible, but Synergy says Cousins has a post-up game. 25.1% of his plays are post-ups; total 171 possessions; 0.82 ppp.

The rest of his offense is spread out between (~10-15% each) ISO, Spot-up, Roll man, and offensive rebounds. Cousins has 118 offensive rebounds this season.

Cousins is actually a very good defender when he wants to be. When you see bad defense from him, it's cause he's sulking about calls or what not.

His Synergy defensive numbers: overall 0.78 ppp, good for 59th in the league.

And he's got great post defense: 0.69 ppp, good for 29th in the league (107 possessions in total).

He's got bad spot-up defense - he is huge - can't quite close out; maybe too lazy at times: 1.03 ppp, 197th in the league.

 

I probably do need to watch more Cousins and will make a point to do over the course of the next few weeks. But you can't just discount Synergy stats by saying they are just "advanced stats." Synergy is just the compilation of data by a group of ppl pouring over game tape. When Synergy says Cousins has 171~ post-up possessions, it means a guy in a room watched ALL of Cousins and made a note on every single time Cousins posted up. Some advanced stats like PER or WS/48 might be misleading. But I'm not even referring to those, I'm purely looking at # of possessions, types of possessions, and if he scored. That's not advanced stats, that's having someone else watch the game for me.

 

Cousins reminds me of Eddy Curry -- and we already have Royce White. Josh Smith is a PF with a SF's mindset. We have enough of those too.

 

And you definitely don't need to change your opinion. I was just making my opinion known. Fun discussion :grin:.

last little nugget: (it doesn't say much, it's just a highlight reel; but he does have some game in the post ).
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hw0tsEmlyWg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Age and potential sums it up.

Smith is what he is, which is a good player but he wont get any better. What concerns me with Smith is that even after all these years in the league he still doesn't have to ability to recognize what he can and cannot do out there and makes needless mistakes and bad plays.

Cousins on the other hand is off-court drama waiting to happen for the most part. He's young and can still mature, but his actions aren't predicating that as of right now.

Not a huge fan of either one in all honesty, but I would be happy if the Rockets picked up either since both make our team better.

 

Oh it's definitely not the most polished game. He's still young and has time to learn. He hasn't been in the best of environments in SAC in his defense. But also he's just not that motivated either - chicken and egg problem. His body should be more jacked. But imagine that body, that strength, and his handles + McHale giving him some moves.

Most big guys early in their career just won't have those post moves. Very rare - part of the reason Sullinger was interesting in the draft. I think KG early in his career had it, but he learned that as he went along. Only Cousins' 3rd year.

 

can you make posts that correlate to your username
Cousins plays better with his back to the basket, sure he can face up for the short jump shot, but his expertise is with his back to the basket.

 

he has a good low post game, better than Dwight, calipari coached him well in that department.