George Karl has kind of been all over the place in regards to who he is going to start alongside DeMarcus Cousins in the frontcourt when the season begins. His options are Kosta Koufos, Rudy Gay or Willie Cauley-Stein and just over a week ago it seemed like Koufos was the clear favorite to start. Fast forward to now and Karl is reportedly leaning towards starting his rookie Cauley-Stein, according to Aaron Bruski of NBC Sports.
Karl is very non-committal about who he plans to start in the frontcourt but as of right now he says that starting Cauley-Stein is "probably where I'm tilting right now." This is very interesting considering he was talking up Koufos last week saying that he thinks him and Cousins play really well together.
If this was reported a few weeks ago nobody would have batted an eyelash because when the Sacramento Kings drafted Cauley-Stein everybody saw him as a player that would fit great with Cousins but in the past couple of weeks all signs pointed to this not being the case. On top of Karl's Koufos comments there was also a report that Cauley-Stein was nowhere close to being in game shape and that he might start the season playing a maximum of 14 minutes per game. Obviously Karl doesn't see that as a problem considering he might start him but Cauley-Stein has acknowledged he wasn't in the best shape but he is getting there.
While the recent events make this development somewhat of a surprise starting Cauley-Stein makes the most sense logically and his play during the preseason has only helped confirm that. Cauley-Stein was drafted sixth overall by the Kings for his defense and so far this preseason he has been active on that end deterring shots around the rim.
Cousins is a beast on offense and a very good rebounder but starting Cauley-Stein alongside him will allow the All-Star to move over to power forward where he will be able to focus more on his offense. Cauley-Stein was a consensus first team All-American in his final year at Kentucky as he averaged 8.9 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.7 blocks in less than 26 minutes per game. Starting the former Wildcat is probably the right choice by Karl, it just comes at a weird time as everything leading up to these comments seemed to point the other way.
