David Aldridge, NBA.com
The Sacramento Kings can give you a headache behind your eye.
There they were on Thursday, doing what good teams do — dismissing an obviously inferior Los Angeles Lakers team through two-plus quarters, scoring at will, taking advantage of turnovers, doing what it wanted. DeMarcus Cousinswas putting on a show for the national TV audience, posting and driving, passing and dropping 3-pointers. A disgusted Byron Scott decried his Lakers’ lack of heart at halftime.
By midway through the third quarter, the Kings were up 27. A fourth quarter of rest for the team’s top players, Cousins and Rajon Rondo and Rudy Gay, was imminent.
And then … Kings Gonna King.
With Cousins in foul trouble, he couldn’t be aggressive. But that was just one guy. The rest of the team went through the looking glass with him. All of a sudden, it wasn’t just Kobe Bryant, in his last game in Sacramento, making crazy shots. It was D’Angelo Russell and Jordan Clarkson, with some Larry Nance, Jr., thrown in, while Bryant was on the bench. The Lakers scored, again and again and again, the 27-point lead dwindling slowly, then all at once. When Clarkson hit a runner with 3:49 left, the Lakers led by one.
The Kings did rally behind their leaders down the stretch, with Rajon Rondo, Rudy Gay and Cousins all making big plays. Rondo made a floater with 21 seconds to go to put the Kings ahead and then ripping Clarkson for a steal, leading to two Cousins free throws in the final seconds.
The Kings won … barely, with coach George Karl saying “I just need someone to cover the dang basketball,” as he walked out of his postgame presser.
“That just goes to show that we’ve got to work on our pick and roll defense,” Gay said afterward. “The last two games, our pick and roll defense has been terrible.”
Afterward, Cousins spoke in the locker room. He didn’t yell or scream. And Rondo approved.
“He gave a great speech,” Rondo said.
That dynamic could mean a lot for the future of the franchise.
After six months together, “Boogie” and Rondo, the “Connect Four King” have hit it off, famously. (No, Rondo didn’t think about letting the kid win even one Connect Four game, in which he claims superiority over all humans. “Then, he’d have a story for the rest of his life: ‘I kicked Rajon Rondo’s ass when I was eight,'” Rondo said in the layup line before the Lakers game.)
Throughout his years in Boston, it was Rondo who was the talented but often impossible teammate, who drove coaches and teammates to distraction with his smarts about the game — combined with his insistence that he was always, always right. If that meant breaking off plays, freelancing on defense when coach Doc Rivers and assistant coach Tom Thibodeau screamed at him to be where he was supposed to be, that was part of being Rondo.
Kevin Garnett loved him … and also wanted to kill him. Ray Allen mainly just wanted to kill him.
Now, it’s Cousins — ridiculously skilled, but whose temperament can drive even those who love him to distraction — who is in need of wise counsel from older heads. It may make former Celtics burst out laughing, but in Sacramento, Rondo has become that guy.
“That was part of the reason I wanted to come here,” Rondo said. “If I didn’t have a guy like KG in my ear all the time, a coach like Doc, who knows where I’d be in this league — if I’d even be in this league. I’ve been wanting to play with Cuz for four or five years now. I think he’s the best big — he is the best big in the game. And with a little bit of direction, even as far as his knowledge of the game, he can take even a bigger step in this game. I’m enjoying it. He’s listening, he’s embraced it.”
You ask Rondo if Cousins is a better student for him than he was when he was driving Garnett and Rivers crazy.
“He has his moments,” Rondo says. Then, to Cousins: “some of the (bleep) you do, I’ll be like, I know I wasn’t this bad.”
Yeah, he was.
“Me, I’m a believer in, when the ball goes up, you have to get back,” Rivers said recently. “Yet Rondo was a 6-1 guard that offensive rebounds. If I didn’t have a heart attack, Thibs was having one every game. Finally, he was doing it so much, and doing it so well, you had to give in, and said ‘just be careful doing it down the stretch of games.'”
But here he is, after bombing out in just four month’s time with the Dallas Mavericks under coach Rick Carlisle, using his frame not just to crash the glass, but to be a human buffer between Cousins and Karl.
We know how badly things began when Karl was hired in Sacramento last spring. There were reports that Cousins didn’t want Karl to coach the team (Cousins has denied this). This summer, there were reports that Karl was pushing GM Vlade Divac to trade Cousins (Divac and Karl have denied this).
Then there was Cousins cursing out his Karl early in the season, after a bad home loss to the San Antonio Spurs that dropped the Kings to 1-7. Cousins apologized, and then said he didn’t want Karl fired, but Divac didn’t back Karl’s request that Cousins be suspended for the tirade.
There have been small signs recently of a thaw. Cousins said last week on ESPN’s “Jalen and Jacoby” podcast that he and Karl don’t need to love each other, they just have to work together. Divac’s insistence that both are here for the long haul, and will be here when the Kings move into their new Golden 1 Center downtown next season, means Cousins has to be right.
I asked Cousins after the Lakers game what he needed from Karl to make the relationship continue to work.
“Getting him to lead these troops is the biggest thing,” Cousins said. “Putting egos aside, putting personal goals aside. Our main focus is the team. That’s it.”
And what does Cousins need to give Karl?
“The same thing,” Cousins said. “The same thing.”
Cousins, famously, is a little slow to trust. He grew to like and respect ex-coach Mike Malone. But after just a year on the job, owner Vivek Ranadive — wanting to play fast like they do down the road in Golden State — fired Malone early last season. It baffled Cousins like it did almost everyone else in the NBA. The Kings were 9-6 when Cousins missed nine games with viral meningitis, after which Ranadive fired Malone. It made the rest of last season another bitter slog.
But this season, Cousins has been a little easier to smile, a little more willing to show people more of himself. (“I’ve been in those shoes,” Cousins said of the car giveaway. “I mean, people that really know me, they know I have a weak spot for families in need, kids in need, basically kids from the ‘hood, in general.”)
Part of his ease comes from the work he’s already put in, starring on the gold medal winning U.S. World Cup team in 2014 and making his first All-Star team last season. Part of it comes from just getting older and maturing.
And part of it comes from Rondo. Cousins trusts his teammate, in all ways and areas.
“I know his intentions,” Cousins said. “His intentions at the end of the day are the same as mine. I can never have a disagreement with a guy like that. Every night we try to go out and do whatever it takes to win the game. You have a guy like that on the floor with you, it’s hard to have disagreements … I know his heart is to win the game. That’s why he’s the most unselfish player I’ve ever played with.”
Cousins has expanded his game. At Karl’s urging, he’s slowly adding the 3-pointer to his bag. He’s hardly a knockdown shooter from there, but his 32 percent is a career high — well above the 25 percent he shot last season, which was way higher than anything he’d shot before.
Through 25 games, Cousins is averaging a career-high 25.6 points per game, but he’s taking fewer shots per game this season than in either of his previous two seasons. And Rondo is a big reason why.
He leads the league in assists, with double-figure dimes in 23 of the 35 games in which he’s appeared. He’s second to Draymond Green in triple-doubles (four) and can still things that very few people with a basketball can see on a court.
“Not to knock any of my former teammates, but he knows how to make the game easy, where I don’t have to fight for a basket,” Cousins said. “His IQ at the defensive end. And it’s not even just on the floor. His mindset coming in is helping mine grow as a professional. He’s helping me in more than just one way.”
But Rondo hasn’t changed all that much in one key area.
“You can’t stop him from talking,” Cousins said. “That’s a voice you hear constantly. It’s annoying, but it’s great. All day.”
Rondo credits the presence of veteran Caron Butler as much as anything he’s doing to help the team improve.
“What’s big and what goes unnoticed is Caron’s on the bench,” Rondo said. “I think he’s telling them. So I’m out here doing it, or making a play or certain reads that they can learn from. I see Caron, when I watch film going back, I see Caron over there, with the young guys, pointing. I’m pretty sure he’s talking the game … it’s contagious. I always feel like I can teach. Hopefully I’ll be a GM one day, or even a coach, teaching the game to the young guys. They’re like sponges. They’re very welcome and receptive. It’s not like a bunch of knuckleheads.”
Rondo’s still got his shortcomings, though. He’s part of the Kings’ struggles in their pick and roll coverage. And Sacramento’s non-defense is part of why the Kings, while still in the race for the playoffs in the Western Conference, have so much work to do to become a complete team.
The Kings have talent. Cousins is, clearly, the best center in the game. Gay has had wild swings this season but he’s still averaging 18 points and almost seven boards per game. Only a handful of starting small forwards, including Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James and Paul George, do better board work.
Divac gave up way too much to the Philadelphia 76ers in a summer deal that also sent Nik Stauskas, Carl Landry and Jason Thompson to Philly — the Sixers can swap first-round picks with Sacramento in 2016 and ’17, and got a protected ’18 first-round pick from the Kings as well — in order to create salary cap room. But the salary dump netted Rondo and reserves Marco Belinelli and Kosta Koufos, a Karl favorite.
They have been engaged many times this season, sweeping the season series with the Toronto Raptors, winning at Indiana, beating the Houston Rockets, and beating the Thunder last week in Oklahoma City. But they’ve also had ridiculous losses, including a home loss to the then-2-31 Sixers just before New Year’s.
After the win over the Thunder, the Kings went into Dallas and played toe-to-toe with the Mavs, leading by seven in the second overtime with 1:20 left. But they couldn’t close, and Dallas scored the last eight points, including a Deron Williams game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer.
“The crazy thing about it is, it’s weird to say, but it was probably one of the best losses for this team,” Cousins said. “Usually, after a loss, the locker is down, it’s moody. But we came in after that loss, and the guys were pretty upbeat. We knew we played a good team. We knew it was a good loss and a loss we could learn from. I wasn’t disappointed at all. Not to make excuses for our team, but we had two starters out, and played in a pretty tough environment. Dallas is a pretty good team.”
True. But those are the kinds of games the Kings will have to win the second half of the season if they want to make the playoffs and end their nine-year postseason drought, the second-longest current streak in the league (Minnesota is at 11 and counting). This morning, the 15-22 Kings are two games behind eighth-place Utah in the Western Conference — though Rondo thinks that’s small potatoes.
“Me, I’ve never said anything about (the) eighth spot,” Rondo said. “I’m trying to get to five or six. I’m not setting the bar so low that I just want to get in. Who wants to play Golden State first round?”
Offense isn’t the problem. Per NBA.com/Stats, Sacramento leads the league in pace (102.18 possessions per 48 minutes), is third in points per game (behind Golden State and Oklahoma City), is seventh in effective field goal percentage, and is 12th in offensive rating — despite not shooting or making a ton of threes.
But the defense is just dreadful.
The Kings giving up a league-worst 108 points per game. Strangely, Sacramento is doing that despite not allowing a ton of 3-pointers — the Kings are just 22nd in the league in opponent 3-point percentage.
But it’s a combo platter of awful — starting with the bad screen-and-roll coverage, which leaves Cousins exposed having to protect the front of the rim time and again. It’s left Karl to give Seth Curry bigger minutes of late, because Karl believes Curry is the team’s best on-ball defender. Karl also wants to play Koufos and Cousins together and put Gay exclusively back at the three, but couldn’t use that lineup while rookie big Willie Cauley-Stein was out with a hand injury.
“We’re trying to figure each out, honestly,” Gay said Thursday. “Everybody says that we can’t figure this out, we can’t figure each other out. We’re still in transition. This team has vets mixed in with younger players, and we’re trying to feel the curve as much as we can.”
The talent divide isn’t going away. Cousins obviously is a half-court guy, yet Karl wants to run. Rondo makes Cousins better, but teams will continue to go under every screen and roll the Kings run and make Rondo hit jumpers, and foul him whenever they can — he’s shooting 50 percent from the line (better than last year, still not good).
“We’ve got so many different styles on this team; trying to figure out how to put it all together, it takes time,” Gay said. “Luckily this year, the Western Conference is wide open. You always, just being human, you feel like you’re always in it. We didn’t think the Western Conference was going to be like this. We want to fight to get in there. Luckily, we’ve had some pretty bad losses, (but) we’re still in striking range.”
There are factors on their side. The Kings have played the league’s sixth-hardest schedule so far this season. Small forward Omri Casspi, who missed time last week with back spasms, has had a terrific season, posting career highs in points, field goal and three-point percentage and rebounds, and will be important down the stretch. Cauley-Stein’s length will help down the stretch, as will Quincy Acy‘s toughness at power forward.
And, they have Cousins and Rondo. And Rondo has an itch to pay it forward, bringing the championship experience he gained in Boston.
“I talk a lot more,” Rondo said. “And I think everything happens for a reason. I was put in the situation in Boston for a reason. I sat back and learned from some of the best players to ever play this game, and I find myself saying a lot of the same things that were told to me as a young player, and I say things to DeMarcus, or Willie, or all the young guys. It’s a blessing that I went through what I went through, and now being able to share the same knowledge that was shared to me, I think it’s my duty.”
