During the All-Star weekend, aka: the stupid distraction the NBA has to offer, nothing of note really happened.

• You had your celebrity game, which was steeped with a vanity and a ‘look at me’ mentality that only the combination of stardom and basketball can produce.

• You had your skills competition, which was about as exciting as watching a high school try-out

• You had your dunk contest which, unlike last year, was as forced yet as bland as any in recent memory

• And you had your game, which ended at 192-182. No one tried. No one cared. So I won’t comment on it more.

But…..but but but…..

There was one interesting thing that spawned from this weekend; our friend Demarcus Cousins, the best big man (skill-wise) int eh NBA was traded for some draft picks and some magic beans.

I find this very interesting. Obviously big deals like this are always fun to talk about. But it also goes to show you how off the media and some front office personnel are about winning.

In my years of following and attempting to memorize as many moments in sports as possible, there is one thing I have learned:

‘If your best player is a problem, you have no chance of being a great team’

And by ‘problem’, it could mean they don’t work hard, they berate the team, they berate the coach, they don’t lead their teammates, etc. This is especially true in basketball, where there are so few players on the playing surface at one time and a single player can mean all the difference.

Demarcus Cousins is all of those problems and more.

In fact, he is the biggest problem in the entire NBA. He is sooooo good, yet he is soooo bad. He is the talent that gets GMs fired for not getting them at that moment (IE: Mitch Kupchak today) and GMs fired when they get them 3 years down the road (IE: the guy Vlade Divac replaced for the Kings).

Sure, the Kings are maybe the worst run franchise in all of sports (I will do a breakdown why later, but having a uber-egotistical owner that hit it big in Silicon Valley and thinks he knows more than everyone yet knows so very little never helps) so it is natural for all the NBA media to turn against the Kings in this trade; selling your best player for pennies on the dollar looks like bad business.

But trust me, he is nothing but trouble. He is a loser. This was true in college when he disappeared in the Elite 8 (5 TO’s vs West Virginia, nice work choker), this was true with his stint at the Kings, where the best big man cannot even get his team to sniff .500 and mowing down coach after coach in the process (look what Malone is doing with an undermanned Nuggets team), and he will be the death of Alvin Gentry at New Orleans.

The Pelicans will not be greater than a 3 seed in Cousins time there, Gentry will be fired in 2 years or less, and this deal will be seen as a waste of time for the Pels.

Don’t believe me? Think talent wins over attitude all the time?

Well, I’ll bet you a shiny quarter on this. And I don’t want one of those crappy ‘State’ quarters, with a state landmark on the back. I want one with the eagle on the back.