How NBA ready is DeMarcus Cousins? He'll have plenty of chances to show tonight.
With injuries to Samuel Dalembert, Hassan Whiteside and Darnell Jackson there will be plenty of minutes to be played by Cousins. This is the first step in Cousins showing he can play extended minutes against NBA players.
The longer Dalembert is out, the more Cousins has a chance to show he needs to play major minutes and not be brought along slowly.
We saw during summer league in Las Vegas how Cousins' play tailed off when fatigue set in. Then again, he'd played six games in seven days.
Cousins didn't have to play major minutes at Kentucky in part because the Wildcats won a lot of games easily.
He averaged 23.5 minutes at Kentucky, which is why some question his conditioning. I know Cousins spent a lot of time this summer looking to get in better shape and using his new found wealth to move from a college student diet to one that's healthier.
But Cousins, who looks to be in good shape, will have his fitness questioned because that - whether fair or unfair - was a knock on him coming out of college. It was also something the Kings said needed to improve when they drafted Cousins.
Kings coach Paul Westphal touched on how much Cousins might play tonight in the preseason opener against Phoenix with a bit of humor after Monday's practice.
Westphal was speaking on how much Jason Thompson might play center.
"With Jackson and Dalembert both out we'll see (Thompson) quite a bit because it might be kind of ugly if DeMarcus had to play 48 minutes, or 40 minutes or 30 minutes," Westphal said.
I didn't take that as a shot at Cousins, rather an acknowledgement the rookie needs some time to fully grasp what kind of shape he'll need to be in. And there's nothing to be gained by running Cousins into the floor for the sake of it and letting his play become sloppy because of fatigue.
Tonight will be the first chance to see just how far Cousins has come since Vegas.
--Jason Jones
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