If DeMarcus Cousins can't handle the Sacramento media, there's no way he'd withstand the Boston media

With Boston's struggles so far this season, a glaring need for more top-tier talent and more than enough assets to trade for a stud, making a deal for someone like DeMarcus Cousins gets more appealing by the day.

Cousins has long been a reported target of the Celtics because he's young and incredibly talented. Who wouldn't want a guy at a position of need who averages 28.1 ppg, 10.8 rpg, 3.5 apg and 1.4 bpg at age 26? He also happens to have another year left on his contract paying him a paltry $18 million compared to what everyone else has been getting paid in this ballooned salary cap. And the Isaiah Thomas connection is very real.

Though I wrote this last year, I had been warming up to the idea of trading for Cousins. Bar fights aside, with Thomas and the addition of Al Horford, an argument could be made that there are enough veterans on the team to keep Cousins in check.

That is, until this latest business involving the Sacramento media. The Sacramento Bee put together a little montage of Cousins getting into it with reporters over the past year.



Here's the column mentioned at the beginning of the video that apparently sent Cousins off. Basically, the columnist wrote about the bar fight Cousins and Matt Barnes allegedly got into earlier this month. The columnist brings up another bar incident that Cousins reportedly got into in May, this time with Cousins' brother Jaleel. Seems like fair reporting, right? Jaleel Cousins is currently on the Dallas Mavericks D-League team. He was reportedly shot with a Taser and arrested during the incident. Sounds notable considering this column is about the older Cousins having issues at a bar. Well Cousins didn't feel that way.

It makes sense that he doesn't like his family members getting thrown under the bus along with him, but it's not like the columnist brought up a relative out of nowhere just to take a dig at Cousins.

Though this particular columnist doesn't appear to be Cousins' biggest fan, scrutiny comes with the territory in professional sports. And Boston just so happens to be one of the biggest markets when it comes to scrutinizing athletes. If Cousins thinks a columnist is annoying, how would he ever deal with the sports talk radio scene in Beantown? Dan Shaughnessy would be salivating at the chance to rip into Cousins at the faintest whiff of disagreement between Cousins and anyone else in the Celtics' organization.

Cousins has earned a reputation as a hothead both on and off the court. If he even so much as gives a teammate in green or coach Brad Stevens the side eye it will make headlines, whether that's fair or not. Could Cousins deal with that? The answer appears to be no.



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