The wait to see the most super “super team” ever is almost over. DeMarcus Cousins, who signed a one-year deal with the last summer, is scheduled to make his team debut Friday in Los Angeles against the Clippers.
Cousins, a 6-foot-11 center who averaged 33.3 points, 7.1 assists and 17.0 rebounds per 100 possessions with the last season before his injury, gives Golden State a significant upgrade over Kevon Looney and Jordan Bell, two 6-foot-9 forwards who have been filling in at center since 7-foot Damian Jones was lost for the season with a pectoral injury the first week of December. Cousins not only makes the Warriors better for 2018-19, he gives them their best scoring threat at center since Joe Barry Carroll (1982-83 to 1986-87) and Nate Thurmond (1970-71 to 1972-72).
“He’ll start,” coach Steve Kerr said after Thursday’s practice. “I’ll start him. After that, everything’s on the table. We have to figure out what the rotations will look like, how many minutes he can play. We’ll have to play around with the minutes, the combinations, the sets.
“We haven’t had a player like him here before. So it will be new; it won’t be as simple [as] plug him in and he’ll fit right in. We’re going to play through him some so there will be a period where we all have to adapt. Fortunately we’re halfway through the year, we have a lot of games to figure this out.”
Golden State will field a starting lineup flush with star-studded talent. is a five-time all star and three-time scoring champ, earning back-to-back MVP awards in 2015 and 2016. , the 2014 MVP, is a four-time scoring champ and an eight-time All-NBA team member. Draymond Green was the 2017 defensive player of the year and has been named to four all-defense teams. Klay Thompson is a four-time all star and two-time all-NBA team member. When Cousins joins them on the court, Golden State will be the first squad since the 1975-76 to boast five players who were all-stars the season before. And among the starting five, only Green has averaged fewer than 31 points per 100 possessions over the past five years.
Having so much talent on the court at one time likely means fewer shooting opportunities for Cousins this season, but that doesn’t mean his impact won’t be felt: Kerr’s offense, a blend of the triangle offense he ran under Phil Jackson with the and the motion offense he ran under Gregg Popovich with the , requires passing from all five players, especially the big men, who in turn look for the guards coming off screens until a quality shooting opportunity opens up. Just four percent of Golden State’s offensive possessions end with the ball in the hands of the roll man, the second-lowest in the NBA this season, while a league-high 13.1 percent of possessions end with a player coming off a screen. To put that in perspective, the have the second highest rate of screen possessions with 7.5 percent.
The threat of so many proficient perimeter shooters coming off screens will create space for Cousins around the rim. And Cousins is a decent 3-point shooter in his own right with a career mark of 34 percent. But where Cousins will have the most impact for Golden State is in the low post. His 48 percent shooting from the post in 2017-18 was the fifth-best mark among players with at least 200 post possessions and he generated 1.1 points per pass from the post as well, which could increase given Golden State’s perimeter threats.
The space the Warriors’ other stars figure to create for Cousins should allow him to operate in single coverage far more often, too. During his 2017-18 campaign, Cousins was forced to take 55 percent of his catch-and-shoot attempts with a defender close by. Looney, Bell and Jones saw 22 of their 26 combined catch-and-shoot attempts unguarded this season. And with Cousins’s three-point range, Curry and Durant will also have freedom to create via isolation and get better three-point opportunities — quite the luxury for the best offense this season. Curry, who is having a “down” year, is notoriously tough to play man-on-man: He leads all NBA players (minimum 30 possessions) in isolation efficiency in single coverage (1.3 points per possessions) and scores 1.4 points per attempt with a 71 percent effective field goal rate on unguarded catch-and-shoot attempts.
The net result for the Warriors could be as much as two to four points more per 100 possessions, which would help bridge the gap between them (plus-5.6 net rating, third best in 2018-19) and the (plus-9.1, first) and Boston Celtics (5.8, second). In 2017-18, Cousins was worth 5.5 BPM, a box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team, which is notably greater than the production provided by Looney (3.5 BPM), Jones (3.1) and Bell (1.2) this season. And if Cousins provided similar production to the Warriors as he did the Pelicans last season he would be worth almost twice as much as all three combined in terms of wins above replacement.
