Despite his antics, DeMarcus Cousins is still a force to be reckoned with

Throughout his six-year NBA career, a lot of the conversation surrounding DeMarcus Cousins has been about his on-the-court antics, rather than his excellent post play.

Recently, Cousins was shown on video getting into it with a Sacramento Bee columnist, which only furthers the narrative that even though he is a physically imposing center, he is a malcontent that no team would trade a lot for.

However, despite his antics, Cousins continues to show us that the low post/bully ball game is not dead yet. A perfect example of Cousins’s low post game is his performance against the Portland Trailblazers on Tuesday night. Against the Trailblazers, Cousins scored 55 points on 17-of-28 shooting from the field, along with 5-of-8 shooting from three-point range. He also grabbed 13 rebounds, and shot 94.1 percent from the free throw line on 17 attempts.

Although the NBA is slowly becoming a perimeter game with big men extending their range towards the three-point line, Cousins showed against Portland that he can do both very well even though his bread and butter is bullying another team’s big man in the paint.

But what makes Cousins’ low post game better is his ability to knock down the three-point shot, which he did at a 62.5 percent clip on Tuesday night. Portland continuously got killed by Cousins on the pick and pop, which cost them in the waning moments of the game.

When you take a look at Cousins’s numbers for the season, he is averaging a career-high 29.0 points and 10.7 rebounds in 34.6 minutes per game. He is also shooting 45.3 percent from the field and a career-high 37.4 percent from distance.

If you take a look at Cousins’s shooting splits from this season, he is dominating at the rim, shooting 58.6 percent. Not many big men in the NBA can contain Cousins in the paint or even push him out of the paint.

For Cousins, it’s just about keeping his cool and playing his game, which he did well on Tuesday night. However, going forward for Cousins, he still has a dark cloud hanging over him regarding his attitude and out of control behavior.

His behavior scares off many teams from trading for him. But at the same time, if he keeps up this scoring pace, does his talent outweigh those issues?

Nevertheless, Cousins is an exciting player to watch, showing us that the bully ball game is not dead yet. It may have left when Shaquille O’Neal retired, but Cousins is keeping it alive.