Cousins or no, Warriors will be champs

David Thorpe takes the long view on Golden State's big man.

By David Thorpe

Last July 2, the Golden State Warriors were still basking in the afterglow of their latest championship when they announced that they’d signed DeMarcus Cousins to a one-year, $5.3 million deal. Cousins would be out for many more months recovering from a torn Achilles tendon. But before the injury he had been a starter in the All-Star game, and one of the NBA’s best big men. NBA cognoscenti everywhere threw up their collective arms (“This is a RE-MARK-ABLE upgrade,” sighed ESPN commentator Jalen Rose.), Twitter imploded and the fireworks usually reserved for the 4th of July metaphorically started two days early.

Was there really a need to play the 2018-19 season at all—even the playoffs? After all, what would anyone get when you add perhaps the league’s top center—when healthy—to a team that was already seen as stacked with Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green, four starters that already mesh together perfectly on both ends of the court? But for …