You miss the point. The criticism was justified.
Boogie was playing bad and he would be first to admit it. Turnover prone. Foul prone and shooting 39%. Boogie was leading the team with uneven play and high usage inefficiency. And that poor play was manifesting as frustration and disproportionate anger towards officials. He hacked Curry then when nuts when foul was called.
Any rational observer (instead of an apologist) would take exception to this performance relative to Boogie's potential. Now there is a difference between:
(1) Cousins is a bonehead and insufficiently capable and I want him off my team AND
(2) Cousins can act like a bonehead (and play that way) but sufficiently capable and I want him on my team.
In the first case you are passing judgement on him as player (person). In the second case you are passing judgment on his performance. This is important distinction because the player is the player and what you see is pretty much what you get, whereas performance is subject to change (improvement).
I would contend that 95% of the Kings fans who were critical of Boogie and I put myself into this category, identify with (2). In other words there was recognition of amazing talent and extraordinary skill and sense he was not measuring up (due to injury, decision-making, conditioning, system, new teammates, etc).
When fans were "venomous", the frustration stemmed from knowing how much better Boogie could and should be.
How much better is Boogie playing in month of January than December? 50% ? 70%? 100%? The stark contrast in performance does not invalidate the criticism he received in December, it justifies it.
It is those who wanted to excuse his play in December as "pretty good" or "not the problem" who look erroneous now. There is logical inconsistency to this because his dramatically better play is the primary reason we are winning now. The system and play sets have not radically changed. It is Boogie who is healthier more confident and playing smarter in the context of the same framework.
Have you ever heard of the phrase "the vocal tyranny of the minority". There are a few idiots (or more
) over on Sactown Royalty and ESPN.com who will rant against Boogie whenever the opportunity arises. I would say this is 1% of the fan base. They fall into category (1) above. These are the exceptions not the rule.
These are the dummies who thought Derrick Favors was better than Boogie pre-draft or who thought we should have built our team around Tyreke instead of Boogie who is obviously the more dominant force. They are entrenched in their opinion regardless of overwhelming evidence to contrary. It is pride and ego that prevents considering an alternate perspective that would discredit everything they asserted to be true.
Other fans who fall into category (1) above are not Kings fans but NBA fans who talk trash out of ignorance and secondhand accounts and probable envy that Boogie is not on their team.
The point that I am making is that there is no real anti-Boogie crowd that the pro-Boogie crowd needs to rally against. If there is they are very few in number and not real fans anyway. The real fans were chanting MVP last night.