So, About That DeMarcus Cousins Trade…
It’s been a few months. Let’s take a look back.
It’s probably fair to say the reaction to the DeMarcus Cousins trade in February was not exactly positive.
After trading Cousins to the Pelicans, NBA writers, fans, and even fellow players (notably Bostons’ Isaiah Thomas) lambasted the Sacramento Kings for basically just giving up on their superstar big man, taking back almost nothing in return.
The story got weirder the day after the trade, when Sacramentos’ General Manager Vlade Divac flatly admitted that he had a better deal just days prior that he did not accept.
It seems odd that Divac would personally undermine his own negotiating skills, but perhaps internal frustrating explains this.
A few days after Vlades’ comments, Buddy Hield, who came to Northern California in the trade as the Kings centerpiece, admitted that much-lampooned Kings owner Vivek Ranadive was fixated on him prior to the Draft.
He even said that Ranadive told him “we’re still gonna get you” during a match between Sacramento and the New Orleans Pelicans. This is a player who, at the time, was averaging 8.6 points per game on 39.2 percent from the field and 36.9 percent from three.
Basically, what all this adds up to is an organizational mess, which can also quite easily sum up the franchises’ last 11 years.
Many people, both within the league and outside it, have long noted Ranadive as an owner who meddles where he shouldn’t, and perhaps overrating his own personal knowledge of basketball. Totally absorbed by his own ego, Ranadive is obsessed with leaving his own footprint in the sinking sand that is his Sacramento Kings.
Unfortunately, the current hapless franchise will likely never take anything other than a capital L for this decision to trade away arguably the most talented big man in the League.
No matter how Cousins plays in New Orleans it may never validate the Kings decision, especially when they admitted to taking the second best package out there after hesitating on the deal. But under the circumstances, the Kings are doing the best they can.
Although Sacramento didn’t exactly light the league on fire after the Cousins trade (they went 8–17), it was the unanticipated emergence of three of their young stars that captured the headlines.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise. The Kings’ popular announcer Grant Napear tweeted directly after the trade of Boogies’ negative effect on the team.
In freeing up minutes for their youth, and, believe it or not, the addition of Buddy Hield, Sacramento have taken unfathomable strides forward since letting loose their loose cannon big man.
Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the ghost of Cousins is oft-maligned big man Willie Cauley-Stein. Taken with the 6th pick of the 2015 Draft, Cauley-Stein struggled for minutes behind Cousins in his rookie season, and what limited action he saw took a nosedive this season from 21.4 to 13.
After the All-Star break and taking on the mantle as the teams’ best center, Cauley-Stein saw his minutes skyrocket to 32 per game, his points to 10.6 and his rebounds to 6.6.
His passing from the high post to connect with a teammate either posting up down low or spotting up for three has been a pleasant surprise for Sacramento, who now need not reinvent their playbook without Cousins’ distribution skills. The raw scoring, rebounding, defensive talents and passing skills of Cauley-Stein will all hopefully take an uptick next year, as he prepares for life as the Sacramento’s main man down low.
Battling with him for that mantle of best big on the Kings will be the even more surprising Skal Labissiere, who, post the All Star break, truly let the lightning out of the bottle that saw him projected a first overall pick in college.
Just four weeks after the trade, the Haitian big man went from bench project to a 32 point, 11 rebound double double against the Phoenix Suns, showcasing the mouth watering talent we all knew was there, even if it was buried quite deep down.
As impressive was how that explosion took place. Labissiere went 11-of-15 from the field, 9-of-11 from the free throw line and came away with 2 steals in a performance that depicted a player well beyond his years.
Whilst he didn’t go for a double-double each and every night for the rest of the season, Skal averaged a respectable 11.6 points and 5.8 rebounds the month after the trade, flashing the potential brilliance Sac Town have on their hands.
However, arguably the biggest beneficiary of the trade was the aforementioned Buddy Hield. Since coming to Sacramento, the Bahamas born guard has upped his scoring to 15 points per game and his rebounds to 4.2, whilst dropping his points on an astonishing 48 percent from the field and 42.8 percent from three.
Whilst he may not yet be hitting the Stephen Curry highs that his bumbling owner predicted for him, he may be starting to echo the presence that Kings legend Mitch Richmond had around NorCal, and that’s more than enough.
Even Greek centre Georgios Papagiannis, laughably drafted by Divac and Ranadive at 13th overall in last years’ Draft, is starting to see an improvement in production his very limited time on court. At least without Boogie on the team, Papagiannis has grown enough confidence to tell reporters that his name is pronounced “Yor-gos”, not “George-os”.
This is all a lot to take in — the very concept that the Sacramento Kings might finally be on the up seems intrinsically impossible, after 11 years of on the down, or merely masquerading otherwise.
But with young talent impressing after the Cousins trade, and more than $30 million of dead salary tied up in Rudy Gay, Tyreke Evans, Darren Collison and others coming off contract, there is reason for optimism at the Golden 1 Center.
2016–17 might have yielded the 11th campaign in a row without Playoff Basketball in Sacramento, but guess what — they didn’t take place in New Orleans either, Cousins’ new home.
But I’m not about to make this about New Orleans. The Pelicans were the ones that took the initiative to try and build potentially the scariest big man combination of all time, even more so than Tim Duncan and David Robinson.
It’s their job to convince Cousins beyond his current deal, and so they may look to aggressively build a contender on the fly this offseason. That might need to include firing Alvin Gentry, who has failed to convince so far in his stint at Head Coach.
If a Kings fan listed out what he’d like to see from his team for the rest of the season post the now infamous Boogie trade, I reckon they would’ve hit all the KPIs, and then some.
You’ve done alright Sacramento, there’s a long way to go but you’ve down alright.
