DeMarcus Cousins Rips Mike Dunleavy Jr., Says He's a 'Clown' and 'Scared'

DeMarcus Cousins won't be sending Mike Dunleavy Jr. any Valentine's Day chocolates this year.

Tensions were running high during the Sacramento Kings' 99-70 home victory over the Chicago Bulls on Monday night. Joakim Noah was ejected midway through the third quarter and left the court while dropping a parade of F-bombs, and Cousins was also whistled for a technical foul at one point.

There was also plenty of on-court beef between Boogie and Dunleavy. According to The Sacramento Bee's Jason Jones, "Dunleavy pushed Cousins as he ran down the court at one point, and Dunleavy also complained on a foul that Cousins tried to injure him."

The game-long scuffle left Cousins buzzing afterward.

"He’s a clown, and he’s scared,” Cousins posited in a video posted by Cowbell Kingdom that was brought to our attention by Ben Golliver of SI.com. "I wouldn’t even waste my time on him if I ever saw him outside of the gym. He’s a clown."

Waste his time doing what, exactly? Fighting? Chest-bumping? Teaming up to win three-legged sack races at a local picnic? 

Let's go with fighting, since Cousins and Dunleavy have mixed it up before.

Last March, Cousins was ejected for elbowing Dunleavy—then on the Milwaukee Bucks—in the head after both players locked knees on a previous play, something to which Boogie took exception.

That time it was Dunleavy who had a message for Cousins after the game, from Jones:

"

I’m not even going to begin to reason with someone like that. I don’t know where to begin. I don’t even know what happened the first time around. I thought I was just trying to box him out, a bunch of bodies fell and collapsed and there was a timeout. Next thing you know he starts barking at me. We try to run a play and he elbows me in the head. I don’t know.

He came up and confronted me about whatever. He’s just always talking, always running his mouth, you know? He should leave people alone.

He came up to me and got in my face about stuff. And we’re here to play basketball and this guy’s got other stuff going on, obviously.

"

With both players' distaste for one another still on display nearly one year later, it seems we have an individual rivalry brewing. 

Chicago and Sacramento meet again on Saturday, March 15 at United Center, giving us one more opportunity to see Dunleavy and Cousins, two unlikely adversaries, go at it again. The key for Cousins, who is easily angered, will be keeping his cool during gameplay.

"They’re a physical team, and they kind of get under your skin," Kings coach Mike Malone said following the latest debacle, via Jones. "DeMarcus has to handle the calls, and not getting the calls, better. I can see he’s trying."

He most certainly is.

One technical foul against Dunleavy's team this year compared to an ejection last year is something Boogie likes to call progress.

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