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OAKLAND, California – The honeymoon period is officially over.
Warrior coach Steve Kerr and various players have admitted that the DeMarcus Cousins' debut on January 18th had energized the team, helping them get through the tough days before the break of the stars. with a new sense of purpose and direction.
Two games after the break, a close win against the Sacramento Kings and a lethargic defeat against the Houston Rockets without James Harden, the Warriors and Cousins were confronted with questions and problems that must be resolved before the playoffs playoffs.
The lifting of the minute limit for Cousins was supposed to be a party for the Warriors – their great, skilled man would no longer have to beg to frustrate Kerr for not taking him out, or to remain anxious during off-hours then that his teammates had the fate of the game in their hands.
Instead, Unlimited Cousins look a lot like Cousins Limited: they play about the same number of minutes and keep looking in the final minutes. Kerr told us just as much before the Warriors 'win over Sacramento on Thursday: Cousins' first game without restrictions.
"We have a lot of guys who are already playing well and playing at a high level, I think the main thing that means, I guess, is if [Cousins is] is fine, I do not have to watch [Warriors director of sports medicine and performance] millstone [Celebrini] and say, "Can I leave him there?" By cons, I enjoy playing Kevon [Looney] and I like to play Draymond [Green] to five sometimes and changing the look. So I do not think it will look very different, but whoever plays well will play on the floor and the group that gives us good minutes will stay longer. "
Cousins did not finish the game against Sacramento, perhaps predictable given the frantic pace of the Kings and the current Cousins' level of conditioning, but he's not over against the Rockets either, even after Green left the match with an ankle injury. Instead, Kerr chose to close the match with the little used center of the second year, Jordan Bell.
After the Kings game, Green said he knew that Cousins wanted to be in the last minutes and he insists that his time come.
"At this point, he's probably starting to piss him off," Green said. "But I know that he's going to close some games – that's how the cookie crumbles.There's gonna be some games that he and Andre are closing, and I No, there will be games where he and I close and André will not, and there will be games, you know, the way we closed tonight, I think it's coming. "
But that's where the problem lies.
Why are the Warriors, who have had the ultimate success with their devastating shutdown group that kneads their opponents – the range of death turned into Hamptons Five after Durant's arrival – would they mess with what makes them so unique?
If the Kings and Rockets games are an indication, it is difficult to consider Cousins on the field in the final minutes of the playoffs. Both teams have consistently targeted the Cousins in the pick-and-roll, where he has struggled to keep up with the pace of quick switches on the switches. Against the Kings, the Cousins cleared the baskets to faster players like Buddy Hield, Bogdan Bogdanovic and De Aaron Fox – either because he could not keep up with their game speed or because he did not stock up fast enough.
The Warriors resort to a strategy whereby cousins fall back into pick and roll painting while the goaltender's original man follows the game and throws daring opponents into midrange pulls . The problem is that elite guards such as Russell Westbrook, Donovan Mitchell or, as we saw on Saturday, Chris Paul, will hit those pull-ups or use the space as a track to get to the rim and make a mistake on Cousins. And if Cousins go to an island against an elite penetrator … well … it probably will not be pretty.
And that's not to say what we could have seen if Harden had not been dismissed because of a neck trauma and flu-like symptoms on Saturday. We have seen Harden eviscerate even the biggest defenders of the perimeter, so it's scary to think about what he could do against the Cousins. On the other hand, look at this Looney video that first fought Damian Lillard 's training attempt, and then went back to challenging his 3 – point scoring.
This does not mean that Looney will stop all the choices or that the Cousins will be scored each time, but even if Cousins gets back into shape, it would be difficult to see him sticking to the best markers of the West Conference ends in a tête-à-tête. In contrast, Kerr said the pick-and-roll defense is one of the reasons why Looney has carved a spot in the NBA.
"He has a good instinct, a lot of length, discipline, he stays on the ground, he does not get tired much," Kerr said of Looney's bulletproof defense. "He played a key role last year for us and continued to do so this year."
But there is a reason why Looney is a 15-20 minute role player and that Cousins is a permanent contender of the NBA when he is in good health. Even in the absence of the finishing ability that he usually posts and has struggled fiercely from the 3-point arc, Cousins got an average of 14.1 points and 7.6 rebounds in just under 24 minutes per game. There have been times when it has just been impossible to stop on the block, and it provides a 3 point threat to the central position that the Warriors miss for almost all their dynastic run (screaming at Mo Speights).
The question is whether offensive prowess can offset defensive struggles, and until now, it was at best debatable. Cousins was a minus-17 in the Rockets defeat and is a minus-41 in his last five games. This is a busy statistic given that Cousins have many minutes with the second unit – but this proves to the evidence that Golden State has not yet figured out how to click with Cousins.
The big man is well aware that the teams will continue to target him, more frequently as the team approaches the playoffs, but he thinks his ability to defend the pick-and-roll will continue to progress with the rest of his game.
"The guys are attacking me in the pick-and-roll, it's obvious," said Cousins. "I just have to be ready for that, be prepared for it and try to stay out of any nauseating problem, Jesus Christ … Obviously, I'm like a gray area when it comes to that – you know , try to contact me and only know that the guys are turning to me Nobody in this league will be sorry for me, and I know it so I will fight as much as I. I can and I do what I can, but it's still a process for me … it's frustrating like hell. "
Cousins has always been an elite at taking loads and his fast hands get a lot of deviations, thefts and blockages in the paint, so it's not like he's been bad at defending himself. As we see every year, the biggest concern is that when the playoffs take place around a team, your greatest weakness is asserted ad nauseam until you make a change. If the answer to teams that target Cousins in the pick-and-roll is to play it less, you have to wonder how it will handle that as the team goes further in the playoffs.
"Of course, he's frustrated," Kerr said. "I mean, let's think about what DeMarcus experienced with this year-old injury, this frustrating free will, so it's not an easy thing, a very difficult injury that needs to come back." the first two weeks, the excitement, adrenaline, wear begins and it is at this time that we really need to be able to rely on the execution. So we're going to work with him and he can do better – he knows he's certainly frustrated, but he's an emotional guy who wants nothing more than winning and competing, so we have to help him and he must also help himself. "
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