Writing a 1,700 word piece largely defending DeMarcus Cousins just a few weeks ago could provide a cursory indication that I am supportive of the Kings signing him to a four-year, $62 million contract on Friday. However, this strays far from the truth because of the timing and risk involved.

At this point, no one has a clear idea of how good Cousins will actually turn out to be as a professional basketball player and he did not give the Kings a whole lot last season to justify a big deal. That means putting a value on his services for future seasons proves incredibly difficult for even the most optimistic observers. The Kings were fortunate to have at least one more year to evaluate their mercurial high-ceiling center since many franchises have to make their decisions (particularly on big men) without enough information to make the best call.

When teams sit on high-value first round draft picks the year they are eligible to sign extensions, there are three reasonable paths the process could go:

1. The player does well and gets a max offer either from the holding team or another franchise where the holding team can match.

2. The player does not play as well as expected and generates an offer that the holding team can elect to match.

3. The player signs his qualifying offer the following summer (cheaper than the max offer and with no risk beyond the player leaving) and becomes an unrestricted free agent after another season.

While option three represents the biggest downside risk for an elite talent, there has not been much precedent for it actually happening with quality talent. This can be explained by the gigantic risk it represents for both the athlete and his agent. While the risk for the player gets discussed a fair amount, the thought process for agents cannot be understated: since agents only get a proportion of the contracts they negotiate, each summer without a long-term deal marks another chance for the player to fire them and thus lose the big commission. It would not surprise me to find out that this contributes significantly to the decisions made each summer on extensions because it makes total sense. After all, only Ben Gordon has gone without an extension, signed a Qualifying Offer, and then utilized his freedom as an unrestricted free agent.

The league got an opportunity last summer to see the best way to use the RFA process to their advantage when dealing with elite young talents that carry some risk. With an eye on his injury history, the Golden State Warriors (then partially owned by current Kings' owner Vivek Ranadive) made Stephen Curry a four-year, $44 million offer that worked in the uncertainty both sides feel with Restricted Free Agency just a year away. That deal signified both an acknowledgement of Curry’s contributions to the team as well as the possibility that something intervened to substantially weaken his value during the final season of his rookie deal. A contract like that also gives the player a legitimate choice and the team an offer different enough from the max to make it justifiable to give up the leverage Restricted Free Agency provides.

In this case, the Kings sacrificed the extra time for evaluation and the risk that comes with it for a possibly non-existent benefit. Securing Cousins this late in the 2013 offseason did not help them secure any additional free agent talent and we cannot know whether a high-stakes season would have motivated Cousins or sent him into a spiral. Furthermore, the Kings do not get the benefit of additional cap space (the difference between his cap hold and eventual salary) next summer even if they still wanted to give him the max.

What makes this decision most egregious to me is the fact that the contract Cousins received this summer is exactly the largest offer sheet any other team could have offered him next summer. While Cousins’ college teammate John Wall seemed almost guaranteed to get a deal like that in 2014, DeMarcus could go in plenty of different directions in 13-14. Other than a miniscule risk of him playing at a discount in 14-15 and leaving after that season (if they did not trade him before that), there was nothing for Sacramento to be scared of yet they still offered the contract. Heck, Cousins will get $4.5 million more per year than Stephen Curry on contracts signed at the same point in their NBA careers. Pretty remarkable considering Curry’s deal should have been the model for the Kings’ negotiating posture.

I sincerely hope it works out beautifully for both parties but the decision-making process for Sacramento cannot be defended given the nuances of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Grade for Kings: D+

As far as Cousins goes, the contract represents the best per-year amount he could possibly have received on his first post-scale deal. Losing the fifth year knocks it down a smidge but eliminating the risk of performing well this season takes all of the sting out of that proposition.

Grade for Cousins: A