On February 20, 2017, the New Orleans Pelicans went against the trends of small-ball of the league and they went for a transfer with which to relaunch their project. The franchise added DeMarcus Cousins, one of the most dominant centers in the competition, to play alongside Anthony Davis, a move that gave the Louisiana team a notable athletic boost. Although its impact in its first months was not excessive, with the arrival of the 17-18 season the team managed to position itself in the noble zone of the West and begin to look upward, but fate condemned us to eternally wonder what could have happened by condemning Cousins with an Achilles injury.
«It could have been something very special, because at that point in my career I had never had a partner as talented as him. And at that moment what he wanted was a teammate with whom he felt he could go to war,” said the center during his visit to Paul George’s podcast. «I was convinced that we could do something big. We had very different profiles, it was something the league had not seen. We could have been like Tim Duncan and David Robinson if everything had gone right. “I don’t imagine the franchise breaking the project, because we were very dominant.”
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Cousins suffered the injury that changed his career on January 26, 2018, when the Pelicans, with a record of 27-21, were fighting for the top seed in the West. Although in his absence New Orleans managed to reach the playoffs and even qualify for the second round after eliminating the Blazers, this was one of the moments that made the project begin to crack, since the Louisiana team did not start so well the following season and the rumors of Anthony Davis’ transfer to the Lakers ended up devouring the team. Leaving this duo as one of those what if of the recent era.
All in all, the comparison with Duncan and Robinson is perhaps too hasty for a couple that in their short period of time never became so overwhelming. Who knows how far they could have gone with more years to build around them, but Cousins has perhaps aimed too high this time.
(Portography: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
2024-03-04 15:00:00
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