Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
Oh, he definitely put up monster numbers, and there were some games that he was fantastic. I'm not insulting what he did while he was in a Pels uniform: overall, he played very well, and there was far more good than bad, and that goes double for his offense.
The issue is, at least for me, is that when you show you can do it, I want you to do it.
Take Westbrook and Curry for example. I know Curry is a not-very-good man to man defender. He isn't good at it overall. He was mocked for calling for switches off of Fred VanVleet in the finals, and yeah, that's pretty wimpy. But I've seen him try to defend people, and it just isn't good, so at least he understands his limitations and works with them. That's fine.
By contrast, Westbrook is a poor defender a lot of the time, and I cannot forgive it in the same way that I give Curry a pass, because I know Westbrook can do it. I've seen him play smart, aggressive, smothering defense on other guards from time to time. He is fully capable, it's just that much of the time, he can't be bothered. Takes too much energy away that he could be using to nick rebounds from Steven Adams, I guess. That's frustrating to me. Not fine with it.
Boogie was frustrating that way. He was never going to be Hakeem Olajuwon on defense, but he was perfectly capable of playing at least reasonable defense when he could be bothered. Just couldn't be bothered very often, is the issue.
It's worth noting that I find lacklustre defense a lot more of an issue than a lot of people, so maybe there are others who didn't care about Cousins phoning it in on D.