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Cousins wasn't no damn "good defender" coming out of college. Stop it. He also shot poorly when he first came into the league...is still inefficient and turnover prone. Jahlil is a black hole...but his handle and vision are there. He can already hit the foul line jumper....and is taking bigs off the dribble routinely.
I think Jahlil can become an average defender overall if Demarcus Cousins can. That's definitely fair.
he doesn't have vision.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions about Okafor, that he was a good passer in college, he was a DECENT passer against college defense. but it took him dribbling around with the ball for 4-5 seconds before he could make the correct read. and he had a really low assist rate.
Okafor wasn't a great passer in college and he's even more of a black hole in the pros. and that's reflected in his single digit assist rates.
Cousins was a good defender at Kentucky, and in his rookie year, if you WATCHED him, you could see the instincts, hands, incredible defensive rebounding, the problem was effort and fouling, that's a complete different than Okafor who is slow, poor iq and struggles making the right rotations. much more difficult to fix.
Kentucky had a top 5 defense, with Cousins, and Boogie was a big part of that.
The only way Okafor and Cousins are comparable is the handle and the post game.
All Okafor, has to do become Cousins type is become an elite passer, rebounder, good defender, decent shooter to be like Cousins. That is a LONG way to go.
