So DeMarcus Cousins and Jerry Colangelo ended up having a verbal tiff after the USA Basketball camp. Cousins is on the Select team working out with USA Basketball, and although he made a go at trying to make the team, it was clear the depth was too great to get on the team this time around.
After the camp, Colangelo said this.
"He's got a long way to go, in terms of his game, but this is great experience for him," Colangelo told News10 on Friday. "Some people were pushing for him - if he really had a chance to make this team, and if you saw today, that would have been a little bit of a stretch."
Cousins had this counter.
"I asked him how I was being immature," Cousins said, after an afternoon practice session with Team USA. "He never really gave me an answer. He just said it was his opinion. I told him I'm just trying to come out and play hard."
I'm not sure how much thought Colangelo put into his comments. There was little chance Cousins was going to make the team anyway, so he was probably just feeding into prior conceptions of Cousins as an immature player who needs to continue developing. It does seem a bit arrogant and off-putting, particularly if Cousins claims that he never addressed those concerns. That sort of issue should stay in-house.
Does Cousins need to continue to develop? Yes. But so does everyone else, including some of the players past and present on Team USA. Every basketball player needs to learn, adapt, grow, develop and evolve. That's the nature of the game. There's no reason to keep on singling out Cousins because he's the popular punching bag of the NBA as long as he continues to show upward progress, which it seems he's showing plenty of this offseason.
I expect better out of the director of United States men's basketball.
Talk about Cousins and Colangelo with Kings fans at Sactown Royalty.
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