Barnstorming: The Biggest Battle

Who would you rather have — Anthony Davis or DeMarcus Cousins?

For a few years now, this has been one of the NBA’s favorite parlor games. It’s a little like rock, paper, scissors, except there’s no paper, the scissors are made out of cast iron, and the rock is sharp enough to shave with. Do you prefer Cousins’ strength and fire? What about now that he’s a competent defender and making 35 percent of his three-pointers? Or do you prefer the stretchy athleticism of Davis, the limitless defensive potential and the increasingly rangy jump shot?

There are other variations on this game (Turner…Porzingis…Towns…shoot) but it’s most compelling with Davis and Cousins. Both are big men in whatever traditional sense of the word is still allowed by the modern game, but both are malleable enough to stretch that positional definition as well. Cousins is 25-years old, Davis is just 22. Both have already arrived in that narrow slice of production that holds the league’s best players, but they have arrived there on a steady upward trajectory that implies they are not nearly done.

The problem with this game, is that it’s entirely abstract. For all these two do, none of it matters much in the grand scheme, especially this season. So we are left with games and imaginings.

Last night, Davis and Cousins met for the 13th time. Cousins was typically enormous, in both literal and figurative ways, finishing with 40 points and 16 rebounds. Davis finished with 31 points, 10 rebounds and, most importantly, a 115-112 win. It was sort of a collaborative exhibition of their individual brilliance — each showing off size and skill, athleticism and refinement, strength and finesse. Cousins didn’t make a three-pointer, but he did chip in four assists and four steals. Davis did that thing where he flies down the lane and dunks with two hands, leaping from a place no human being should be able to dunk from.

And for all that grunting and sweating and jostling and scoring, the New Orleans Pelicans earned their 24th win of the season (the Kings have 25). Talk about sound and fury signifying nothing.

For all that Cousins and Davis accomplished in their latest matchup, and across their careers, their teams have precious little to show for it. Sacramento and New Orleans are a combined 46-121 this season. Davis has played a total of four playoff games, Cousins is still waiting on his first. These two teams, over the careers of these transcendent big men, have won a whopping .374 percent of their games. Both Davis and Cousins are, again, toiling away in the bottom half of the Western Conference on teams indisputably headed backwards (or, if you’re feeling charitable, sideways).

The Anthony Davis era in New Orleans has been marked by injuries and disappointment. Over the past two seasons, he has played fewer than half his minutes with Jrue Holiday. Same for Ryan Anderson. The Pelicans have struck out on Austin Rivers, overpaid Omer Asik, and overestimated Tyreke Evans. The jury is still out on Alvin Gentry as the man to mold this mess, but suffice it to say he has not been the transformative force New Orleans was hoping for. To be fair, Davis has contributed to the disorder at times — he’s never been healthy enough to play in more than 68 games and the game-changing defensive ability he flashed in college has not been quite as good, or let’s say as consistent as advertised. All he’s done is sit in the center of this storm and become one of the best offensive players in the league, a high-efficiency, high-volume scorer capable of taking apart a defense in a variety of ways.

In Sacramento, chaos has been a constant companion. Cousins is playing for his fifth coach in six years — the longest stretch of time he’s spent with any coach was 141 games of Keith Smart. There is not a single teammate who has been with Cousins for that entire six seasons. He has had the chance to experience the ownership styles of both the Maloof brothers and Vivek Ranadive. Basically Cousins has spent the entirety of his career to this point on a team moving in six different directions at the same time. He hasn’t been perfect himself, his fouls, his temper, his passive defense have often been one of this counter-directional pulls. But Cousins has also been the one anchor of consistency, providing a bruising presence on offense, a devastating post game that oozed all the way out to the perimeter without losing its fundamental viscosity.

This matchup — Davis and Cousins — should be fireworks. It should be appointment viewing. It should be the kind talent measuring contest that the league builds television schedules around and that writers like me hang narrative arcs upon. Davis and Cousins are certainly doing their part — remember when Cousins hung 24 points, 20 rebounds and 13 assists on Davis last April? Probably not. It was Sacramento’s 49th loss of the season and a win that brought the Pelicans one step closer to a four-game sweep in the first round of the playoffs at the hands of the Golden State Warriors.

Wasted may be too strong a word for what is happening to DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis. They are still doing good work, scoring points and blocking shots, it’s just not in the service of a cause quite as noble as we, or their teams, would like. And as easy as it is to point fingers and poke holes in the logic of New Orleans and Sacramento, each franchise is a victim of both circumstance and their own missteps. Still, when Anthony Davis plays DeMarcus Cousins, there should be something on the line, something bigger than pride and lottery position.

In an ideal world, this question — who would you rather have — should matter. It should be an academic exercise, not an abstraction. It should be a discussion that builds on evidence of success, rather than untested hypothesis. It should be an invitation for well-founded treatises on team-building strategies and defensive systems. It should lean on heroic tales of playoff success, on weighty matchups won or loss. It should be a conversation with worth having.