Boogie Cousins to NOLA: The Many, Many Threads That Made This Trade Possible
The trade that transformed two franchises woke up the whole NBA world during the All-Star game, but the story that led to this trade is much more complicated than it appears
DeMarcus Cousins now plays for the New Orleans Pelicans, and has for some time now. This trade has become the subject of nearly-countless analyzations and breakdowns, but the full story of what happened on that Sunday night goes far beyond a first-round pick and Buddy Hield. The true complexity of the Cousins trade can only be fully appreciated by looking at his career so far, the intersecting trajectories of the Kings and Pelicans, the ownership in Sacramento, and even the geographic location of the All-Star Game.
In this piece, I’ll examine every angle, or thread, in an attempt to bring together the most complete account of what really happened. As mind-bogglingly lopsided as the trade looked (and still does look), there’s so much more to this story than meets the eye. Yes, the Kings got fleeced. But this process goes back for years.
This is the first of my series called Basketball Stories, a long form look at some of the most compelling narratives in the NBA.
Thread #1. DeMarcus Cousins
No player in the NBA is easy to describe in a few words, but Cousins defies almost all categorizations. He has elite talent, despite being perpetually stranded on a terrible team, and has built up a reputation of being a terrible teammate over the years as well. However, to counterbalance these facts, he also is — by all accounts — a genuinely nice human being who dedicates considerable time and energy to community outreach. And even if his commitment to Sacramento was largely financially incentivized, there’s no denying that he legitimately wanted to be a part of the Kings’ future for years to come.
ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz recently wrote a fantastic profile on Cousins’ tenure in Sacramento, and summed up many of the star’s personality traits well:
Being a member of Cousins’ “trust circle,” in the words of a former Kings assistant, is the great Rorschach test that determines how you see Cousins — as a manifold, deeply emotional, bighearted man full of contradictions or a volatile, needlessly aggressive bully who is accountable to no one or nothing — not even his immeasurable talent.
Those who follow the NBA know that Cousins is all of these things. One of the game’s most talented players, someone who consistently struggles with attitude problems, and someone who often makes life for those around him extraordinarily difficult. Next to Arnovitz’s piece, all attempts to define and describe Cousins feel woefully inadequate, but the idea of a complicated, often contradictory figure stands out above all others. DeMarcus Cousins is three things: Immensely talented, immensely difficult, and, ultimately, immensely complicated. And despite all of this, he was Sacramento’s franchise cornerstone for essentially all of his tenure there. The story of this trade starts with a profile of this individual.
Thread #2. The Sacramento Kings
For every fatal flaw that marks DeMarcus Cousins, there is another equally-bad one that marks the Sacramento Kings. The franchise has been just as dysfunctional as its best player over the last few years, prompting fans and analysts to question where the blame for its constant failure should lie. Given the gift of a franchise player like Cousins, one would expect a team like the Kings to build around him, especially given the high draft picks Sacramento has received during Cousins’ tenure. Unfortunately for nearly everyone involved, that hasn’t been the case.
The Kings have never finished with a winning season with Cousins on the roster. They also haven’t drafted well (with Cousins standing as a notable exception) over the same time period. To make matters worse, the ownership has been unstable and the coaching position has resembled something like a revolving door.
Here’s a list of the last five coaches of the Sacramento Kings. There’s an easily-identifiable trend here, as candidate after candidate has left town in a hurry. It’s certainly possible to place some of the blame for this at Cousins’ feet — he isn’t easy to coach, by all accounts—but something like this can’t happen unless the organization is already in a bad place. Cousins may have contributed to the general malaise around the franchise, but he’s far from the only cause.
It is a damning failure that the Kings drafted a player of Cousins’ caliber and still remained so bad. Years of top-10 draft picks and a top-1o talent resulted in nothing more than years of losing seasons and rotating coaches. Maybe one season in the playoffs would have made things turn out better, or maybe even the development of another All-Star level player. But none of these things happened, and now the Kings are left with much less talent on their team than they shipped out in the trade.
The Kings are the second level of this story. There’s so much more to uncover about their management and history, but the key here is to understand just how bad circumstances in Sacramento have been during Cousins’ time there. If this team were better, they could have maximized his value. The inability to do so is another crucial part of this story.
Thread #3: The New CBA/Money
It’s probably fair to say that the NBA’s leadership wasn’t thrilled by Kevin Durant’s decision to leave Oklahoma City for Golden State this summer. In the new CBA that was agreed to recently, there are now clauses to try and keep star players (like Durant, and like Cousins) in small markets like Oklahoma City and Sacramento. These clauses mean bigger and longer contracts, hoping to use money to keep elite talent in less-than-elite markets.
When these details came out, most people assumed that this would mean Cousins would be a King for life (or at least a very long time). The Sacramento Kings could offer Cousins a more lucrative and long-lasting contract than any other team, and Cousins made it clear on multiple occasions that he wanted to stay on his (then) current team.
This video sums it up best:
“I love Sacramento,” Cousins says. “This is where I want to be.”
Then, in perhaps his most memorable interaction with a reporter ever, Cousins flips the microphone around to ask the nearby journalists if they want him to stay. After getting one journalist to admit that no, he would not want Cousins to stay, Sacramento’s star laughs, and proclaims “Well, guess what. Guess what, people. I’m here.”
This is another layer to the complex puzzle that is DeMarcus Cousins. Despite all his personality quirks and the constant state of hostage that he sometimes held the franchise in, his loyalty to the Kings and Sacramento was never in doubt. Financially motivated? Yes. But that simple fact alone shouldn’t negate everything else. Cousins planned to sign that new contract, and to stay in Sacramento for years to come.
And this is another moment where things get really interesting. Everyone assumed that the new provisions for massive contracts would help teams like Sacramento keep players like DeMarcus Cousins. But it did the opposite. The Kings knew that they could keep Cousins around if they wanted to, but the ownership balked at offering an extension worth over $200 million. This was far from the only factor that led to a trade, but the Kings’ unwillingness to offer this amount of money was a crucial factor.
If Cousins’ complicated personality is the first thread of this story, and the Kings’ general incompetence the second, the new CBA is the third. Sacramento has been unable to capitalize on a top-10 talent on its roster, and the financial commitment associated with keeping Cousins on that roster for the next few years helped to push the needle toward trading him. Was this the only factor? Absolutely not. But this is definitely an important part of the story.
Thread #4: The New Orleans Pelicans and Buddy Hield
The first three threads in this story have all been about Sacramento, or Cousins. In other words, they are all internal. Once the New Orleans Pelicans entered the scene though, this all changed. New Orleans found itself in the perfect situation at the perfect time, and got Cousins for a surprisingly-cheap package.
The Pelicans have one of the best players in the league in Anthony Davis, but, similarly to Sacramento, have been unable to capitalize on his talent. The team has struggled to surround Davis with adequate role players, and also whiffed on last year’s first-round pick — Buddy Hield—in the eyes of many. While most analysts view Hield as someone who has a future in the league, many of these people claim that he was picked far too high given his talent level.
However, the Pelicans were able to offer Hield and this year’s first-round pick for Cousins as All-Star weekend wound down in New Orleans. This looks like a paltry package for a player as good as Cousins, and that’s how most of the league viewed this exchange. Crucially, though, a key decision maker in Sacramento saw things differently.
Thread #5: The Sacramento Kings (Again)
There are two key decision-makers in this scenario — General Manager Vlade Divac and Owner Vivek Ranadive. By most accounts, Divac has wanted to trade Cousins for a long time, and was constantly shut down by Ranadive. But this time, Divac finally managed to gain Ranadive’s permission.
Why? Buddy Hield. While most of the league sees Hield as someone with the ceiling of a competent (if that) starter, Ranadive sees “Steph Curry potential.”
Divac leveraged Ranadive’s fixation with Hield into a trade, changing the future of the franchises in New Orleans and Sacramento.
What this all means:
If you think of these threads all combining to form one composite whole, the story gets a little weirder with each new layer. Is it weird to have a difficult star or incompetent management? No, not at all. Cousins’ unique personality complicates everything, but Sacramento’s dysfunction was still pretty “normal” until the All-Star break.
But then you add the new CBA, a document that was intended to keep players like Cousins in markets like Sacramento. It clearly didn’t, and it’s failure to do so may result in entirely new negotiations once the next bargaining period begins. We may never know how much new salary rules moved the needle on trading Cousins, but it seems clear that any effect the new CBA had pushed the team in that direction.
And then the two weirdest parts of all: The Pelicans had the perfect player to trade, a player that the team has been criticized for drafting since the season began. From a pure talent perspective, several players who were drafted AFTER Hield have higher ceilings. He may end up being a perfectly nice player, but he was still drafted too high. And none of this matters, because the Kings — or really, Ranadive—valued him enough to swap Cousins in an insanely lopsided trade. For any other franchise, misusing a top draft pick could be devastating for long-term hopes. For the Pelicans, it netted them a top-10 player less than a season later.
This isn’t a definitive account of what Really happened during the All-Star game. Like a sweater filled with odd-colored threads, this story looks different every time someone pulls at it. But these five different angles all combined to build this monumental trade, and each of them looks pretty essential right now. If Cousins wasn’t so good, this trade wouldn’t have had nearly the impact it did. If Sacramento wasn’t so poorly-managed, the team would have surrounded him with talent and won a playoff series or two. If the new CBA didn’t increase the monetary cost of keeping Cousins around, the Kings may not have elected to trade him. And if New Orleans hadn’t drafted the perfect(ly overrated) player to include in this trade, Ranadive may not have pulled the trigger.
And now we’re left with this. Two franchises altered, and potentially more intrigue coming in the next season or so. Sacramento and New Orleans will continue, but this trade changes their futures for years to come.
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