DeMarcus Cousins brutalized the Nuggets in the post early on and finished Friday’s 116-110 win with 37 points, 20 rebounds, two assists, one steal, four blocks, one three and 12-of-15 makes from the foul line over 39 minutes.

Despite being the subject of repeated hatchet jobs in the media calling out his conditioning, Cousins was given 12 straight minutes of run to start the game and had the team on his back the entire time.  A bigger development for Cousins and Kings fans alike was that the Kings started to use him in the post, but naturally they would go away from it and let the Nuggets hang around in the game. 

This was the big Michael Malone game in Sacto too, and Malone artfully discussed the Kings’ deployment of Cousins saying, “They haven’t posted him up a lot. Tonight they went to him in the post all night long and we had no answer.”  If the Kings start subscribing to Basketball 101 and using their best player where he’s most useful — they’ll slow down opposing fast breaks, put opposing frontcourts into foul trouble and help all of their offensive players get better looks. It sounds simple but the Kings are two-thirds of the way through the season and they still haven’t figured it out.