NBA Trade Rumors: DeMarcus Cousins Drama Shows Risk-Reward of Enigmatic Stars

The Sacramento Kings are a dumpster fire franchise. They've shuffled through four coaches, reorganized the front office with alarming fluidity and kicked the can down the lottery road ever since Vivek Ranadive took over as majority owner in 2013.

Their 2013 first-round pick, Ben McLemore, was losing playing time to James Anderson earlier this season. Their 2014 first-round pick—Stauskas? STAUSKAS!!!—has already been jettisoned to Philadelphia. Their 2015 first-round pick, Willie Cauley-Stein, is a living and breathing human on the Sacramento Kings but has already been dumped from the starting lineup and is now behind Kosta Koufos in the rotation.

Oh, right, and their coach and star player seem to hate each other.

The relationship between George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins was seemingly doomed from the start. Cousins' camp reportedly pushed against Karl being hired in the first place. Karl reportedly clashed with Ranadive over whether to trade Cousins this summer. That snafu reportedly caused Ranadive to consider firing Karl for the first time. 

Then, everything was calm for a bit, cooler heads prevailed and—HAHAHA. Just kidding. The Kings put up public fronts, then started 1-7 and all hell started breaking loose again. Cousins reportedly cussed Karl out in front of his teammates, leading Kings brass to have another meeting about firing their head coach before ultimately sitting on their hands.

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Notice all those "reportedly"s? That is not the sign of a healthy organization.

What's both understandable and disappointing is how much the surrounding insanity has devalued Cousins around the league. The Kings have shown very little interest in trading their star player—Karl's the more likely one to go, per Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders—but other teams aren't jumping to buy low on the enigmatic center.

In an article aimed at explaining why the Boston Celtics haven't engaged with the Kings, Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald exposed a larger league-wide attitude toward Cousins. 

"Leaving his problems out of it for a second, there’s no question the kid is good. But they’ve had him way overpriced," an executive told Bulpett. "I don’t even want to think about what they’d want from Boston. You know what they asked the Lakers for? The No. 2 (overall) pick last draft, the one the Lakers used on DeAngelo Russell, and the Lakers’ top pick from the year before, (Julius) Randle. Do you believe that?”

Here's the thing: The executive quoted above speaks of Sacramento's proposed package with incredulity. It's as if a request of an unproven No. 2 overall pick and a No. 7 overall selection coming off a season-ending injury is a ridiculous request for a foundational talent.

I'm a well-documented Russell supporter and like Randle as an NBA starter, but I'd toss both overboard in a second for Cousins. Keep in mind that the Cavaliers gave up consecutive No. 1 overall picks for Kevin Love—a player who is at least a tier down from Cousins. Granted, one of those No. 1 picks was Anthony Bennett, who is bad at basketball, but there were plenty who thought he was salvageable last summer. 

You can make an awfully compelling case that Cousins is the NBA's best center. He is averaging 27.5 points, 11.1 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game while adding in 2.3 assists and shooting 41.2 percent from three-point range. The Kings outscore opponents by 3.1 points per 100 possessions when Cousins plays and are trounced by 9.3 points when he sits, per Basketball-Reference.com.

That's been the case each of the last three seasons, which one would reasonably assume is the beginning of Cousins' peak. Yet he's still just 25 years old. His sudden three-point range—and surprisingly high efficiency rate—has been a godsend, allowing the Kings to keep a decent offense on the floor despite starting Human Spacing Vacuum Rajon Rondo at point guard.

"It's more just building confidence behind it," Cousins said last month, per Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com. "I felt like it would help the team, spreading the floor a little bit more, so I tried to add it to my game this season."

Cousins has also made real strides as a defender when he's engaged. Opponents are shooting 7 percent worse when defended by Cousins so far this season; they were 3.4 percent worse last season, per NBA.com. There are moments where his body language leaves something to be desired and he takes plays off, but criticisms of him as a basketball player ring hollow. He's a post brute who can stretch out beyond the three-point arc, passes beautifully out of the high post and defends at an above-average clip. Take away jumping-out-of-the-gym athleticism, and Cousins is a near-perfect modern NBA center.

Yet he's viewed as damaged goods. Ask around the league. If you throw a stat sheet in front of any executive's face and ask if he or she can build a franchise around this player, the answer would be an unequivocal "yes." Ask executives if they'd sacrifice a handful of lottery picks, and you'd get the same answer.

Tell that same executive DeMarcus Cousins is available, and he'll probably go "let me get back to you." This isn't an apologist column saying Cousins is blameless or one that goes ALL-CAPSY and tells him to start acting like a role model for children.

Cousins is, by all accounts, a difficult person to reach. Even the two coaches with whom he most famously got along, John Calipari and Mike Malone, butted heads at times. But he's also such a uniquely gifted player that there is no way the Kings will ever get full value in a trade. To trade him is to commit to a full-scale rebuild, during which they would hope to get someone who can reasonably approximate Cousins' skill level.

They're damned if they do, and they're damned if they don't. That's the beauty and curse of building around DeMarcus Cousins.

Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter