Things have not been cheery for Sacramento Kings' star DeMarcus Cousins since the firing of coach Michael Malone. The team has fallen apart, the team's play-by-play announcer is questioning the direction of the club on the radio, and Cousins has been noticeably frustrated since Malone was replaced with interim coach Tyrone Corbin. Part of that could be the fact that he was coming back from viral meningitis and he had to get his conditioning back up to allow his play to continue to shine.
However, his frustration has been obvious in post game comments following losses and we saw frustration continue to boil over in Wednesday's blowout loss to the Boston Celtics. After picking up a technical foul earlier in the game, Cousins got tangled up on a box out by Celtics' rookie Marcus Smart. Cousins tussled with Smart for position before finally just throwing him to the ground.
For some reason, Smart received a technical foul on the play, but Cousins did pick up his second technical foul and was ejected. After leading the league in 2013-14 with 16 technical fouls (tied with Blake Griffin and Kevin Durant), Cousins had only received two technical fouls in 20 games prior to Wednesday's game. He now has four technical fouls on the season and his first ejection.
You can just say, "this is Cousins being Cousins," but that would ignore the improvement he made over the course of his time under Malone. Many of his technical fouls last season could be chalked up to an earned reputation as someone that was difficult to deal with in prior seasons. This year, he simply wasn't having the same histrionics and complaints voiced in games as we were used to seeing with him.
But now the Kings have to deal with this free fall that could include a regression for Cousins' personality when it appeared to be headed in the right direction.
