Cauley-Stein offers a Dunk of the Year contender, Kings excel without Cousins

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Willie Cauley-Stein wants to know what you think of his dunk. (AP) Sacramento Kings All-Star DeMarcus Cousins earned a great deal of criticism on Monday night when he earned his 16th technical foul and an automatic one-game suspension in the final second of a loss to the Chicago Bulls. The incident showed Cousins at his worst — he could not reign in his emotions when he only had to wait one second to vent without punishment and cost the Kings a game without their best player because of it. Cousins was always going to hit 16 technicals at some point this season, but these circumstances were particularly egregious.
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So, naturally, Sacramento really didn’t seem to miss Cousins much at all on Wednesday night at the Golden 1 Center. The Kings battled back from a nine-point deficit after the first quarter and out-scored the Celtics by 10 in the fourth to come away with a well-earned 108-92 win. They also had one of the best dunks of the season so far — this throwdown alley-oop from center Willie Cauley-Stein:

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The Kings looked solid in virtually every aspect of the game. They shot 50 percent from the field and 40 percent from beyond the arc, held the Celtics to 39.7 percent shooting and 17 turnovers, and had five players score in double figures. Leading scorer Darren Collison (26 points on 12-of-21 FG) saw a lot of positives, too:

Darren Collison: "I thought we did an unbelievable job of really coming together. Nobody was complaining about the calls…"
— Scott Levin (@KingsSLev) February 9, 2017
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Yikes, that comment might not go over well with the infamously temperamental Cousins. However, it looks like Collison was just giving him a hard time:

@HPbasketball in fairness, DC also called him the MVP about 4 times in the same interview
— Adam Reinertson (@adamrhino23) February 9, 2017
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At any rate, Collison and all the Kings know that they’re unlikely to win many more games without Cousins in the lineup. We’ve seen lots of teams perform well without stars for short periods of time, but at some point the lack of talent catches up with them.
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Nevertheless, a good performance against a solid playoff team isn’t likely to do much for Cousins’s reputation. We’ll see how he responds when he returns to face the Atlanta Hawks on Friday.

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Eric Freeman is a writer 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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