What Painful 2014-15 Season Has Taught Us About DeMarcus Cousins
It's been another run-of-the-mill, unfulfilling season for the Sacramento Kings, another trip through Punxsutawney by way of California's capital.
The Kings have already sealed their ninth straight foray into the NBA draft lottery. If they finish any worse than 4-4 over their last eight games, they'll end the campaign with fewer than 30 wins for the seventh year running.
The team brought on its own court misery, the product of discord off of it. There was not one, but two midseason coaching changes—from Mike Malone to Tyrone Corbin to George Karl—to once again expose the swamp of drama left behind by the previous regime that team owner Vivek Ranadive and general manager Pete D'Alessandro are still working diligently to drain.
And of course, there's the budding superstar in DeMarcus Cousins, whose development, as both a player and a person, seemed subsumed by the chaos that surrounded him.
"I think I carry more weight than the average player," Cousins told The Washington Post's Michael Lee in March. "Coming in, I never was in a great situation—coming at such a young age, not really understanding the business. I came in, franchise that’s been doing bad for a long time, I came with my own baggage, some earned, some given to me or whatever."
Cousins' own baggage might well include the in-game attitude that, rightly or wrongly, has made him something less than a referee's best friend. He is on course to lead the league in personal fouls for the fourth time, and finish among the top five in technical fouls for the fifth time, in his five NBA seasons.
| 2010-11 | 4.1 | 1st | 14 | 5th |
| 2011-12 | 4 | 1st | 12 | 2nd |
| 2012-13 | 3.6 | 3rd | 17 | 1st |
| 2013-14 | 3.8 | 1st | 16 | T-1st |
| 2014-15 | 4.1 | 1st | 12 | T-3rd |
The former stems, in large part, from Cousins' physical style of play. At 6'11" and a hulking 270 pounds, Boogie is bound to attract more infractions than the average big man. According to NBA.com, his 6.4 touches per game within nine feet of the hoop are the ninth-most among his peers. Moreover, per Basketball Reference, about two-thirds (66.7 percent) of his field-goal attempts have come from 10 feet out or closer. Given his imposing size and strength, along with his shot profile, he's naturally going to draw a lot of contact.
Not all the whistles are going to go his way, though. It's there that Cousins' frustration can—and too often does—boil over, enough to grant his opponents free trips to the stripe.
But Boogie's penchant for picking up technical fouls isn't about some flagrant disregard for proper on-court etiquette. Rather, it's the byproduct of Cousins' passion for the game and sheer competitive spirit.
"I care; I really care," Cousins told The Washington Post. "I take my job serious. I love to play the game. It ain’t about the money, not about the fame. I care. The biggest thing I can admit is I’m not perfect and I know that."
Such an admission is a big step for Cousins, perhaps precipitated by his experience with Team USA this past summer. After failing to make the squad for the 2012 London Olympics on account of his poor approach in practice, Boogie returned to USA Basketball training camp this time around a changed man.
Jerry Colangelo, the chairman of USA Basketball and Cousins' most vocal critic in 2012, told The Washington Post in the above report:
"I saw a young man growing as a person, as a responsible member of a team, and I could see some leadership oozing out a little bit. What developed was some trust and I think for him, that’s important. I think in his life and his career, there may have been — in fact, there has been — a lack of trust. Not blaming anyone, but just that it wasn’t there. He’s the kind of guy that needs to have that kind of relationship, not only to be happy, but to perform to the best that he can.
"
Like so many of his USA Basketball teammates, Cousins parlayed his part in his country's gold-medal triumph at the 2014 World Cup of Basketball in Spain into a transcendent season. Through the first 15 games of the 2014-15 campaign, he looked like an early MVP candidate, averaging 23.5 points, 12.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 2.6 combined blocks and steals while leading the Kings to a 9-6 start.
But a case of viral meningitis knocked Cousins out of commission for nearly three weeks. By the time he was ready to play again, Malone, the coach he had bonded with, was gone, replaced on an interim basis by Corbin. The Kings, meanwhile, had careened to 11-14, well on their way back to the depths of the Western Conference.
As frustrating as those circumstances must've been for Cousins, they didn't stop him from doing what he could to dominate. He played well enough to be the first player chosen by commissioner Adam Silver as an injury replacement for the Western Conference in the All-Star Game, and he chipped in 14 points and seven rebounds in his 18 minutes to the West's winning cause.
Even the All-Star break wasn't without controversy for Boogie, though. Before the time off, reports surfaced (via Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski) that Cousins' agents, Dan Fegan and Jarinn Akana, weren't too keen on the Kings orchestrating yet another internal shakeup. Cousins was painted as an impedance to Karl taking over for Corbin.
"I felt like a line was crossed and I was trying to figure out how I’m going to deal with it. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m in Sacramento," Cousins told Lee. "And not to sound arrogant, but what’s bigger than my name in Sacramento? It could be a damn forest fire in Sacramento, my name will come up. 'It was near DeMarcus Cousins’s house!'"
Despite Cousins' dissatisfaction with how the drama played out, he's continued to perform at a high level for Karl—and then some.
| Mike Malone | 15 | 32 | 23.5 | 51.2% | 8.3 | 12.6 | 2.4 | 1.5 | 1.1 |
| Tyrone Corbin | 25 | 36 | 23.9 | 44% | 9.1 | 12.4 | 3.9 | 1.8 | 1.6 |
| George Karl | 17 | 32.7 | 24.8 | 47.5% | 10.1 | 12.8 | 3.5 | 1.8 | 1.9 |
Cousins has never had a problem putting up big numbers. He's been a double-double machine ever since he set foot in the Association in 2010 at the tender age of 20. Last season, he was one of five players to average at least 20 points and 10 rebounds and finished third in the league with 53 double-doubles.
He has really improved on the defensive end. Once a liability there, he now stands as no worse than a solid stopper, particularly in the paint. According to NBA.com, the center has held his opponents to 47.1 percent shooting at the rim—eighth-best among players who've faced at least eight such shots per game—and has depressed their accuracy within seven feet of the hoop by more than seven percentage points on the whole.
What's more, Cousins is one of three players who currently rank among the league's top 25 in both blocks and steals. The other two? Rookie stopper Nerlens Noel and Defensive Player of the Year front-runner Draymond Green.
Cousins showed off the full depth and breadth of his game on April Fool's Day. In what was his finest all-court performance to date, he tallied a massive triple-double (24 points, 21 rebounds and 10 assists) to go along with six blocks and three steals against the Houston Rockets.
This happened not long after word of the Kings possibly shutting Boogie down for the rest of the season first broke.
"I think Cousins likes to play and I think he's doing it because he wants to play at a higher efficiency," Karl said, per ESPN.com's Michael Wallace. "It gives me an opportunity to experiment a little bit. At home, I'd like to go in and (let Cousins play) every game. But on the road, I might experiment a little bit more."
That experimentation yielded Cousins' outstanding showing in Houston, but it wasn't enough to secure a win. The Kings lost 115-111 despite having seven players score in double figures. Unfortunately, they didn't have any answers for James Harden, who lit them up for a career-high 51 points on Wednesday.
Games like this make it abundantly clear that Cousins can only carry Sacramento so far. The onus is on the Kings to retool the rest of the roster this summer so Karl can fashion a competent supporting cast for Cousins in 2015-16. To that end, according to Basketball Insiders, the front office could have upward of $10 million in cap space with which to lure a high-caliber role player or two to Sleep Train Arena.
As Grantland's Sean Fennessy wrote, the Kings' bigger building chip will be cashed before free agency begins on July 1:
"...if the season ended today, the Kings would finish with the sixth-worst record in the league, putting them right in the Justise Winslow/Willie Cauley-Stein zone, two players who make too much sense for this team. Either a slashing wing or a rim-protecting colossus will do."
The former would help to subdue torch-handy scorers, perhaps to a greater degree than Ben McLemore and Rudy Gay have. The latter would ideally provide Cousins with the frontcourt support he needs while finally rendering Jason Thompson, a vestige of Sacramento's sordid past, nigh on irrelevant.
Whatever the Kings higher-ups decide to do this offseason, one thing should be plainly obvious: Cousins is the cornerstone in Sacramento. As such, everything they do should be geared toward maximizing his prodigious talents and easing his burden, lest they be left Boogie-less when his contract comes due in 2018.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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