All Star Game Notes: DeMarcus Cousins
By Rafe Wong
The NBA All-Star game, Kobe Bryant’s final All-Star appearance, took place yesterday at the Air Canada Centre during Valentine’s Day. The Western Conference ended up defeating the Eastern Conference with a final score of 196-173.
Throughout this game, there were a lot of highlights that were showcased by the NBA’s best. Some of these high points were Russell Westbrook, who won his second consecutive MVP award for this game by recording 31 points, 8 rebounds, and 5 assists. Another key performance was by Paul George who scored a whopping 41 points.
With this game being an exhibition match, meaning that the contest isn’t taken that seriously (especially on defense), the list goes on and on of all the notable offensive performances displayed by the players in the game. But here at “A Royal Pain” we like to talk exclusively of Kings topics, which leads to me to discussing DeMarcus Cousins performance.
Fortunately, for Kings fans, the game of stars featured Sacramento’s very own Cousins, who now has had two All-Star appearances for his career.
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Last night, he was able to finish the game recording 11 points, 4 rebounds, and 1 assist. He also finished the game with a +/- of +10 and shot a perfect 5/5 from the field.
Although Cousins wasn’t able to get much playing time, only playing 12 minutes, he was able to display, well Boogie type plays.
The first highlight happened when the East lead the West 63-56 with 7 ½ minutes left in the second quarter. Stephen Curry threw the inbound pass to Cousins where he was open at the top of the key.
Without hesitation Cousins then launched a shot way beyond the three-point line where it resulted in a make. Cousins has shown massive improvement in his perimeter shooting from previous years, and he was able to showcase that improvement on the grandest of stages.
Another highlight happened with over four minutes left in the second quarter. During this time Cousins played the role of point guard, where he took the inbound pass and ran coast to coast for the uncontested two-handed slam.
Overall, Cousins second career All-Star game was a success. He was able to finish the game solid statistics wise with the limited time that he had, plus was able to make a couple of highlight plays.
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Hopefully, this weekend resulted in the Kings big man being able to relax both physically and mentally. The Kings are currently behind 4.5 games from the 8th seed in the West, and a dominate Cousins will definitely be needed in these last 29 games if the Kings still have what it takes to earn a spot in the playoffs.