Bracing For Boogie: Inside the state of the Warriors before DeMarcus Cousins’ debut

The Golden State Warriors are playing their best basketball of the season with DeMarcus Cousins set to return Friday against the Los Angeles Clippers. How will he fit in? Everyone is waiting to find out.

DeMarcus Cousins walked out of the locker room wearing a black hoodie under a black blazer — it’s the look now — and was all smiles. The Golden State Warriors had just beaten his former team the New Orleans Pelicans and, yeah, maybe he was smiling about that, but the win also marked the penultimate game to his return to basketball after suffering a torn Achilles almost a full year ago. For the first time in a long time, Cousins had a lot to smile about.

As such, almost all the questions before and after the game were about Cousins. Warriors head coach Steve Kerr doesn’t get impatient with media very often, but he did manage to punctuate his answers in the pregame presser with something along the lines of, I’d rather focus on tonight.

Draymond Green was more direct. After the game, in his walk-off-the-court interview with NBC Sports, Green answered a question about what Cousins could add to a team that had just buried its opponent under a blizzard of 24 made 3-pointers.

“All hell about to break loose.”

The Warriors, and the rest of the NBA, are bracing for Boogie.

THE NIGHT BEFORE BOOGIE

Cousins is expected to make his debut when the Warriors visit the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday. It’ll be the first time he plays since tearing his left Achilles in a game for the Pelicans on Jan. 26, 2018. At that point he was having a career season along with fellow tower of power Anthony Davis, and New Orleans had hope for its 7-footer duo. After the injury, however, they opted not to re-sign him as a free agent. Instead, Cousins offered up his services to the Warriors at a bargain price — $5.3 million for one year.

For the Warriors, this was uncharted territory, and not just by having an All-Star-level center, but also in the matter of approach. The splash brothers and Death Lineup was a case of foresight and Silicon Valley-like disruption. Signing Kevin Durant (if you ask the Warriors) was out of necessity and executed with careful planning. Cousins, meanwhile, conveniently dropped into their lap. It was an impulse buy for a front office that had, to that point, carefully adhered to a scrupulous shopping list.

Last season the Warriors didn’t get much scoring from the likes of David West, JaVale McGee and Zaza Pachulia, but they did get playmaking from West and Pachulia, and the lob threat of McGee was an extra thing defenses had to think about. This season’s triumvirate at center — Kevon Looney, Jordan Bell and Damian Jones — hasn’t been as opportunistic on offense. Defensively, Looney is versatile enough to switch but lacks the size to stand up to bigger centers. Ditto for Bell, and Jones is unproven and inexperienced, and also injured. The Warriors were supposed to make 7-footers extinct. Now they’re relying on at least one being healthy.

The truth of the matter is the Warriors can use him. Despite entering Wednesday night with the best record in the Western Conference, the Warriors needed seven 3-point snowballs from Steph Curry to overcome a 17-point deficit in the third quarter. The Pelicans pushed them to the last few minutes, outscoring Golden State in the paint 54 to 38. Davis, who the Warriors could see in a potential playoff matchup, hung 30 points and 18 rebounds. You could see how the 6-foot-11, 270 pound Cousins could help there.

Still, the Warriors managed to get the win in a game Kerr isn’t sure the team would have won earlier in the season.

“We wouldn’t have won this game a month ago,” Kerr said after Golden State beat New Orleans 147-140. “I think we’re in a different place now. I can feel it as a coach. We’re more connected now.”

The Warriors are the winners of six-straight games, the longest win streak since early November. As they eclipse the halfway point of the season, Cousins is about to make his debut and Curry and Durant have vaulted into MVP conversations.

“I think we’ve done a good job of fighting through those rough stretches of not shooting well. Once we start knocking them down all the rest of our game is on point — the defense, the passing, the communication on defense, along with knocking down those shots because that’s our identity is shooting tough ones with a little bit of space, but we do it efficiently,” Durant said after the game. “We’re in a solid groove shooting the basketball, but once we start missing again I think our defense is going to continue that trend.”

Before this recent win streak, it had been an up-and-down season. The team was frustrated after wins, and even more so after losses. The Warriors have seen their fair share of drama, something they’ve dodged the last couple of years. Curry said the team had been talking about putting together a string of wins, and that would be important for when Cousins returned.

“We haven’t had that many blowouts, it’s been hard-fought games and that’s going to happen the way that teams are playing against us and having all-world nights the way New Orleans did tonight,” Curry said. “But we got to find ways to win and create that edge and I think we’re doing that.

Obviously getting DeMarcus back, we’ve been waiting for this all year and what it’s going to do for our team. A different look going forward. We wanted to welcome him back with a good vibe and I think we’ve done that.”

ASSIMILATING COUSINS

There are a lot of questions about how Cousins will fit into this group but the things he does well — playmaking, scoring in the paint, being big — on its face will be welcome additions.

The Warriors are at times too dependent on jump shooting and rank near the bottom of the league in scoring in the paint. Last season, Cousins ranked sixth in the NBA with 7.9 shots in the restricted area per game, converting 61 percent of the time. That percentage should only go up with more space, which will also lead to increased playmaking.

“Just somebody that can score in the post on anybody and also somebody that can get the rebound and push for us, and I think that’s going to be key,” Durant said of Cousins.

The Warriors have relied on its centers over the years — from Andrew Bogut, West and Pachulia — to be consistent and willing passers. Cousins provides that in spades.

“He is a great passer. Especially at his position,” said Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry, who ought to know. “Him and Nikola [Jokic] are probably the two best passers at that position in the league and two of the better passers in the league too. You will be surprised by the number of passes he will make.”

Where it could get clunky is when Cousins wants to get into the post. Cousins averaged 7.6 post ups per game last season, sixth-most in the NBA. The Warriors will post up quite a bit, but in those situations run its offense through Durant and Green. They’ll have to be comfortable relinquishing some of those playmaking opportunities while Cousins shakes some of the rust off — especially Green, who is playing his best basketball of the season and has 51 assists and just six turnovers over the last five games.

Defensively, there could be issues. Coming off the Achilles injury, Cousins may not be able to switch as seamlessly as the Warriors would like. But he’s big, and that at least should furnish the paint with more interference. Defensive coach Ron Adams has been planning on how to deploy him.

“He has defensive skills to offer us,” Adams told the San Francisco Chronicle. “His movement is good. I think he has pretty good feet, and we’ll try to do things defensively that help him fit into what we do. “Playing against him, this is one of the hardest bodies to work around in the league. He’s just a force in that regard, so that works in our favor. And there’s such a thing as defensive momentum when a team is really playing well, making guys want to give their best because the offense is flowing so well. You see that happen a lot with us. Personally, I feel good about the future with him — but I think we’ll go through a process.”

Getting playing time will also be a process. Cousins will start in his debut, along with the other four All-Stars, but Kerr will likely tinker with his minutes and rotation pattern from there. He will likely give him minutes with the bench so that he can play within his high-usage comfort zone.

“We have thought about how we could use him,” Kerr said earlier in the season before Cousins’ return date was announced. “Some of the actions we run, we’d probably run more often with him than we do right now. I’ve thought about combinations, who we would play him with, that sort of thing.”

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Of course, there’s also the culture fit. Cousins has a reputation (fairly, unfairly, or somewhere in between) for rubbing teammates the wrong way. So far, it hasn’t been an issue. In fact, Warriors players and coaches rave about his involvement with the team during his rehab and mentoring of the younger centers on the roster.

Up until now, Cousins has worked mostly in closed practices. It will be very different when he takes the court for a televised game on Friday, and outsiders will be quick to form opinions.

“I think that’s part of the challenge being on this team. Just trying to weed that stuff out and try and tune out the noise,” Kerr said. “Just remember what is important, and that will be really important coming up with DeMarcus coming back — both for him and for our team.

I think it’s been good for DeMarcus over the first half of the season to see how the Warriors exist. I’ve talked to him about it, it’s different.”

The Warriors players are curious, too. Excited even. As far as basketball goes, adding a player who could potentially do things like Cousins has been something they’ve looked forward to.

“The fun part is in those scrimmages, y’all may not see, but he’s just entertaining to watch and to be around,” Curry said. “There’s always someone he can pick on and just have some fun with and get him going, just get that fire going. It’s going to be great for us to see it on the court in live action and feed off of that energy.”

The team is trying to set low expectations. Asked about Green’s “all hell about to break loose” comment after the game, Durant did the Ross and added Relax.

“I got high expectations and I’m really optimistic about the situation but let’s be real, we’re all human beings, and he’s been out a long time,” Durant said. “For him to regain his rhythm — we’re definitely going to assist him on that — but it’s going to take a while to figure that out. I know Draymond isn’t talking about the first game back, I’m sure that once we get into a groove, that’s what he’s talking about. But I’m excited to see the process of just integrating Cuz into the lineup and him playing a lot of minutes. Once he starts upping his minutes, I’m excited about that and I think he’ll be in a good flow, but let’s relax a little bit.

But for the rest of the league trying to find a crack in the Warriors’ armor, Cousins — and how he fits into a lineup with four other All-Stars — might present an opportunity.