re: Sign and trade cousins for derozan

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They can and would certainly roll out the Hamptons 5 v that pair for stretches.

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oh i know they would, and it would be up to Cousins to destroy Draymond every time down the court and make them change. If he doens't do that, then they have no reason to change. Cousins isn't Capela, or DJ, or Gobert, or Adams, or Nurkic. Maybe when Towns gets more mature he could be an unstoppable force against Draymond. None of those guys require a special big defender to stop them from scoring. Draymond can hold his own with all of them. What should happen in a real game reffed by competent refs, Draymond would be either be in foul trouble in no time, or get scored on constantly by Cousins in the post. We know Cousins can pass the ball, it's merely him seeing the game and knowing what he as to do to succeed. I know Rondo gets left open and people complain about that, but here's his playoff stats:

3P% when wide open (Defender > 6'+) 47% (shot just under 2 a game in this scenario)
He shot 42% from 3 for the playoffs, taking 2 a game, so basically every 3 he took was wide arse open. Wasnt' that small of a sample size being 9 games.

If Rondo can be playoff Rondo, you have Jrue, AD out there, and find a competent SF that can shoot, hell just having Miller out there hitting like we know he can, the Warriors without a big to slow down Cousins can't stop that, assuming Cousins is playing under control, which may be a big assumption, but that's the vision we all had when we acquired him.

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and when Cousins is the lone big, the Pels would be in trouble.

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I agree.

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There's a reason slower bigs disappear every single year in the playoffs. They are too easy to target defensively. Cousins, for all his gifts, is no different than other less mobile bigs

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I agree there too, but it's not often those slow bigs have the best shot blocker in the league to play with to patrol the paint. If the Warriors want to let Steph play one on one with Cousins all game, then that's an easy way to get them out of their offense. If he wants to hit 10 3's from 5 feet behind the line in Cousins face, then fine, we lose, oh well.

You can't stop the Warriors. All you can do is try to force them into tough shots and hope they miss. I had no problem with Jrue's defense on Durant. If he wants to take jumpers all day with a hand in his face, then so be it. He does that if the guy guarding him is 6'4" or 6'8". You simply make him work for it and hope he shoots a low percentage. If he's on, or Klay is on, they are extremely difficult to beat, and there really isn't anything anyone can do about that. Both of them take contested shots all game. The reason they kill teams is because they start shooting well, and then start passing well and start getting layups. Let them shoot. If they beat you, they beat you. Make them shoot 50% from the field taking jumpers all day. just don't give them the points in the paint. that might not work at Oracle, but it's probably a good recipe in the Smoothie King.


The point of all my rambling is Cousins has to force them to play a big, and if they do, it increases your chances to force them into tough jumpshots on their end of the floor. Really wish we could have seen what we looked like with him against them in the playoffs and how much he could influence how the games were played. If his offense can outweigh his defense, making them play a slow big to defend him, then it really changes their offensive philosophy and makes them becomes more one on one than the team whipping the ball around getting 30 assists a game.