To be fair to Cousins, he was a 20 year old rookie, one year plus removed from high school. Does his conditioning and attitude leave a lot to be desired? Sure. But adults, full-fledged adults, like Derrick Coleman and Andrei Kirilenko, just to name a few, are far more guilty, for lack of a better word, of squandering talent and ability. As adults, they chose year after year not to work hard to better their bodies and hone their craft and, barring some epiphany that alters AK's second half of his career, will leave behind a legacy of such.
Cousins is still very young and despite all his "issues," averaged 14.1 (albeit on 43% shooting which is insanely awful for a big) and 8.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.0 steals and 0.8 blocks in 28.5 minutes a night.
That would be 17.8 ppg, 10.8 rpg, 3.1 apg, 1.2 spg and 1.0 bpg as a rookie if he played the same amount of time as Al Jefferson. Pretty darn solid. In short, I do acknowledge his flaws. I hope he does himself as well. But he's still very, very young.
