DeMarcus Cousins very nearly punched Steven Adams in the head
DeMarcus Cousins and Steven Adams have both developed reputations over the course of their NBA careers. The Sacramento Kings All-Star is widely viewed as one of the league’s most combustible individuals, an exposed nerve whose emotions can boil over at a moment’s notice. The Oklahoma City Thunder center’s certainly less notorious, but in NBA circles, he’s regarded as one of the NBA’s premier irritants, a tough defender who gets into opponents’ heads, whose physicality has prompted the likes of Zach Randolph, Vince Carter and Larry Sanders to retaliate their way into ejections or suspensions, and who was recently named by players as the NBA’s second-dirtiest player.
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Combine those two elements in the heat of competition — like, for example, Monday’s game between the Kings and Thunder — and sparks might start to fly. They very nearly did with about 9 1/2 minutes left in the fourth quarter, when the two got tangled up vying for a rebound of a Dion Waiters miss with the Thunder boasting a 16-point lead:
Whether 100 percent intentional or not — and Adams tends to live on that line — hooking Cousins’ right ankle as he goes to the floor and holding onto it as Boogie tries to break free is exactly the sort of thing opponents talk about when they refer to the New Zealand-born bruiser’s bona fides as a supersized pest. Adams’ persistence clearly grated on Cousins’ nerves, and the difference between Cousins and a lot of other players is that you can often see his decision-making process, or lack thereof, play out externally and in real time; in this case, his immediate reaction to Adams getting his Kurt Angle on was to cock his right hand back and prepare to run the Kiwi’s fade. (If such a thing is even possible; irritating though he may be, Adams has shown in the past that he’s got a jaw plenty strong enough to deal with the repercussions of his actions.)
Thankfully, Cousins held his right hand, regained his composure and walked away, as what could have been a very bad scene that was everyone’s fault resulted in only a personal foul for Adams and a delay of game on Cousins, which was good, because the Kings definitely needed more of those on Monday.
Credit to Cousins for not going nuclear, showing the same sort of restraint he did while suiting up for Team USA against Lithuania in the 2014 FIBA World Cup and electing not to sock the Toronto Raptors’ Jonas Valanciunas after an elbow in the paint:
Now someone just needs to help Cousins apply that method of conflict de-escalation to lower-key instances — a call with which he disagreed, for example! — and everything will be cream cheese. Well, except for the Kings’ continual losing, which seems like it’ll continue unabated and leave Sacramento outside the Western Conference playoff picture for the 10th straight year. That’s the kind of thing that makes fans fighting mad. Here’s hoping they’ll take their cue from Boogie, take a deep breath, walk away and count to 10 before doing something they’d regret.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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