Boogie Down Pelicans – DeMarcus Cousins Future Unclear
The New Orleans Pelicans’ mad science experiment of twin tower big men when every other team is going with small ball. Has ended in a heap after 65 games when DeMarcus Cousins tore his Achilles this past Friday in a game against the Houston Rockets. The problems that the Peli’s face now is multifaceted. An achilles tear is no longer the career ending injury it used to be. But players that come back from it are different in how they play their game.
The achilles tendon is the largest tendon in the body and Cousins is probably the largest player in mass that has suffered this injury in the history of the NBA. At 6’11” and 270 lbs his lower extremities anchored by his achilles tendons are under a considerable amount of strain. As typical when encountering limits of the human body you either can’t physical do something anymore or something breaks. Unfortunately, the warning signs for one or the other are not always apparent and prevention can be tricky.
Fortunately for DeMarcus his is on the right side of 30 for this type of injury and his game is less reliant on athleticism than players in the past that have typically suffered it later in their careers such as Kobe Bryant, Dominique Wilkins, Elgin Baylor, Wesley Mathews and his former teammate Rudy Gay. Boogie should make a full recovery and be ready for the 18-19 NBA season. But where will he be playing? Cousins was having a solid season. No better or worse than seasons past. But for once his productivity was contributing to a team with legitimate playoff hopes and in a 7 game series matching up against Cousins and Anthony Davis is something no team wants to have to deal with. Because of their versatility there is no solution that can contain them for more than a game or two.
At 27-22 and having won 7 of their last 10 games the Peli’s were starting to roll and the twin towers experiment was starting to show some real promise. So despite the limited success, minuscule sample size and the question marks surrounding what the end result of Boogie’s recovery will be. Do they roll out the Brinks trucks and give DeMarcus a max deal possibly in the $200Mil range? Does DeMarcus want to even stay in New Orleans? Can the Pelicans still make the playoffs and if so how does that effect their strategy for the offseason.
It would seem that in a vacuum New Orleans has little choice but to offer a “max” deal and anticipate a best-case scenario where Cousins is both happy with being a Pelican and recovers to at least 90-95% of his former effectiveness which is a high probability. First and foremost they should continue to play hard and attempt to make the playoffs. Tanking or doing something insane like trading Anthony Davis is not even an option as the culture change will definitely impact their ability to not only resign Cousins but to make any free agent moves what so ever.
The Pelicans don’t have enough scoring depth to make the playoffs without a trade for another player. It will be interesting to see what they come up with over the next 2 weeks because now is the time to make a move and even if the move doesn’t pan out the effort will go a long way in determining their future with Cousins and their fans.
