He mad Rob was wondering why Sacramento ran a play to get Demarcus Cousins an elbow jumper down one with 1.9 seconds left in LA this afternoon. The short answer is, they didn't. Cousins was the 4th option on a play, and since Sacramento was out of timeouts, it was either throw him the ball or lose ignominiously by not being able to inbound the ball for a potential game winner. So how were they forced into such a poor look?
This play demonstrates why so many of the looks generated in this situation are ugly. The defense knows it only needs to protect a few spots on the floor: the corner, the top of the key area and the lob. Plus since the refs never want to make a foul call off the ball in this spot, Clipper defenders knew they could be very handsy. McLemore in particular essentially gave himself up once Reddic made contact. So while it's true that Sacramento got a terrible look in this spot, and that Mike Malone could have drawn up something better (maybe swapping Patterson and McLemore in the initial alignment for example,) he did NOT decide to live and die with Demarcus Cousins from the elbow.
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