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Apparently, the Golden State Warriors were not already good enough.
After using four stars to win a third title in the last four years by beating LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, they made yet another numerical superiority in a free agency to steal the show from a four-man times. his new fit with the Los Angeles Lakers. DeMarcus Cousins is now on board a one year contract worth $ 5.3 million, as reported Yahoo Sports & # 39; Shams Charania to give the team an All-Star at each of the five traditional positions.
Yes, this means that the Warriors have essentially changed from JaVale McGee to Cousins. Yes, that means that they used the mid-level exception to add Cousins shortly after the Lakers built around James using the MLE on Lance Stephenson. Yes, this means that the league's supersteam is becoming even more super.
But this move is not as simple as it seems.
What it means to the warriors
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From the point of view of skills, this is obviously great news for the Warriors: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green are already made for an unfair collection Talented But Cousins, when he is healthy, is one of the best players in the game, and he plays a style that should match the system deployed by head coach Steve Kerr
. tweeted, the Warriors had coveted a big score:
Marcus Thompson @ ThompsonScribe
Like me and @timkawakami have discussed several times about the Warriors Plus / Minus pod, the Warriors have missed They believe that it is the next level for the franchise
Well, they found one.
Cousins is four times All-Star and twice all-NBA representative coming out of a season with the New Orleans Pelicans in which he has made 2 5.2 points, 12.9 rebounds, 5.4 badists, 1.6 interceptions and 1.6 blocks. That was the lowest number of points per game that he published since his efforts for the Sacramento Kings in 2014-15, but he caught up with the slightly diminished volume by reducing 47.0 / 35.4 / 74.6 – the intermediate number arriving on a huge 6.1 attempts of three points per contest.
Oh, and Cousins was also playing some of the best defense of his professional tenure before suffering the Achilles injury that allowed him to get on board a contract of one. year. His level of effort has sometimes fallen into disrepair, but he sought to take advantage of his physique and his surprising speed alongside Anthony Davis, en route to a defensive box of more or less 3.6 .
Of course, we do not know yet how much of this skill he will keep.
Cousins will probably not make its debut in the Bay Area until late December or early January, given the typical recovery time of an Achilles breakup, although it told that he was targeted. a return to the training camp. It's not as if the warriors needed to rush him either; they do not lack talent in his absence. But when he comes back, he will still try to defend himself against an illness that has seriously affected the careers of many people before him – a much more difficult task than coming back from an ACL tear.
Yet, if he is able to serve as a compelling simulacrum of his self-pre-injury, he will turn the Warriors' juggernaut into a super-mastodon. You have to almost send doubles to help against Cousins when he plays bully-ball from the post … except that you can not do that against a range of gold including three of the most murderers in the history of the NBA on the perimeter. And if it hits a three, it's over.
This is not yet the best news, because the risks here are so ridiculously minimal.
What if Cousins does not return to form? Well, it's not as if he needed to take on a larger role than the one McGee had filled in during the last title. And if he becomes unhappy and begins to demand more keys? Just ship it for a second round pick because it only goes up on a one year contract.
The disadvantage for the Warriors is nonexistent. The advantage, on the other hand, is astronomical, exactly what you could expect from one of the largest teams in the history of the NBA to evolve at the center of a backup mercurial to an All-NBA talent without sacrificing any one of remarkable.
What it means to cousins
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The disadvantage is more prevalent in focusing on the individual.
Cousins can not be blamed for finally wanting to get the proverbial monkey off his back, even though the method of doing so is rather questionable. If the world of basketball hated Durant's decision to join a busy team …
But the results could still outweigh those costs
The big playoff player for the first time in his career should now be considered in advance, he might have to deal with an asterisk before the story forgets how he finally spent the 82nd part of a season. In all likelihood, he will end up with his first ring. But if he is trying to turn this one-year pact into a long-term agreement that will ensure him a huge financial windfall, the logic becomes more and more blurred.
To prove that he exceeded the Achilles injury, he needed keys
Cousins has never been a pbadive contributor, demanding rather rock again and again so that he can launch treys, go to work on the blocks and show his flair of distribution as the main facilitator. He has never posted a utilization rate lower than 27 percent, and he is now coming out of a season with pelicans in which he would have ranked No. 4 (at 31.9) on this particular ranking where he had recorded enough games to qualify.
Noah Graham / Getty Images
Sacrifices must come now. They are totally unavoidable. Especially because he will join the fray in the heart of the 2018-2019 season after the Bay Area representatives have already set a pace, and that it will not change their way of operating suddenly and will force Curry, Thompson and Durant to take fewer shots. If we look at a scenario of too many cooks, it will be the one that is left in the cold, breathing the aroma of spheres tearing the nylon while sitting on the bench.
Can he work as a spot-up center using his talents in a more specialized way? Sure. He comes out of a campaign where he scored 1.01 points per possession score to finish in the 58th percentile, and his outstanding pbading has long been one of the most underrated and overlooked skills of the league.
But it's still not the ideal way for him to prove that the godless impious one is behind him. Winning with the Dubs can not help change his reputation can not win through the league and his myriad of fans, either.
What it means to the rest of the league
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Parity is dead … for the moment.
We will not speculate on what this does for the popularity of the league, although you will see these taken everywhere in the interwebs in the coming days. Nor do we want to blame the Warriors for making fun of their competition, because it would be rather difficult to ask the defending champions to reject an agreement that Cousins has agreed to simply because it would make life even more difficult for their principals. competitors.
But if the balance of competition seemed to be off in 2017-18, it would be downright absurd in 2018-2019.
The Lakers held the public spotlight for a brief moment before the Warriors pulled it off right away. LeBron James was ready to storm the West conference with Los Angeles crews, but this should be the end of the team's climb to the top of the hierarchies. Once again, the best player in the world will fight against a superpower that will let him outmatched, and the seemingly inevitable loss will further diminish his legacy in the eyes of those who do not want to realize how difficult this hurdle is.
Essentially, warriors declare war on all other scenarios. All that matters (yet) is whether a challenger can dethrone the champions, and this task becomes downright Sisyphean. Just look at the All-NBA cast between the Warriors' starting quintet and the entire East Conference by Dan Favale of Bleacher Report:
Dan Favale @ danfavale [19659014] Combined All-NBA selections since 2014-15:
The eventual departure of five of the warriors (Steph / Klay / KD / Dray / Boogie): 13
In fact, it's the first time in decades that a team has five stars from the previous season. Cue Marc Stein of New York Times :
Marc Stein @ TheSteinLine
These five Celtics in 1975-76 who were All-Stars the previous season: Jo Jo White , Charlie Scott, Dave Cowens, Paul Silas and John Havlicek https://t.co/IZd67UmBKV
And thus begins the battle for a silver medal.
James and the Lakers will be competitive, although this diminishes the chances of a Kawhi Leonard exchange where the Lakers would sacrifice existing badets. Cousins do not come to Hollywood, and the odds are against them. The Houston Rockets will scare the Warriors, but they lost Trevor Ariza while the Warriors have added one of the best NBA centers.
Although the Boston Celtics are overloaded with talent, we are talking about new contributors. . No matter which of Jayson Tatum, Kyrie Irving Jaylen Brown, Al Horford and Gordon Hayward could work as the best Beantown player on any given night – but could have trouble playing with Golden State ( baduming Cousins recovery). Ditto for the Philadelphia 76ers and their tandem emerge from Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons.
The target is firmly on the back of Golden State, as is always the case for the defending champions who have a list littered with superb talent. But now, if everything goes as planned, this target could be covered with Teflon, covered with a layer of armor and surrounded by an impenetrable bubble suit until Cousins Gets up and leaves during the offseason of 2019, unable to return to an expensive list to pay for his services at full strength.
Well … maybe …
At this point, can we really exclude something for this team?
Adam Fromal covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @ fromal09 .
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