Reading Zach Lowe’s excellent piece on DeMarcus Cousins a little while back got me thinking about Cousins and his ideal role in an NBA system. While Lowe made no misstatements in his piece and did a nice job of bringing together scouting takes and statistics, it felt necessary to paint a different, fuller picture of why “one of the NBA’s most frustrating talents” could be worth the trouble.

1.     Physical Attributes

Much has been made about what position Cousins should defend at the NBA level, including some arguing that he should try to handle power forwards. Among other things, a player’s functional length, agility and degree of focus all help provide a clearer idea of their defensive endgame.

While players grow and change physically during their playing career, the only reliable physical data we have to work with comes from the pre-draft process (thankfully put in a beautiful sortable database by DraftExpress). In a fascinating turn, the player most comparable to DeMarcus Cousins in terms of length is someone from his own class: Larry Sanders. The two players have the same wingspan and only a quarter-inch difference in height. Even their vertical leaps did not differ that much, especially when using reach rather than the size of the jump itself.  These similarities get even more astonishing when you consider that Cousins outweighed Sanders by an even seventy pounds when the measurements were taken and he also beat Sanders in lane agility despite having the fifth-highest body fat percentage of a drafted player in the last 25 years. That agility time does seem fluky though, of course.

These measurements tell us that the deficiencies Cousins has on the defensive end come from something other than his physical attributes, making them both much more correctable and much more frustrating at the same time.

2. What Cousins does well on the defensive end

First and foremost, Cousins has done a nice job as a rebounder during his professional career. Rebound Rate stands out as one of my favorite single number statistics because it filters out noise like pace and tells us exactly one thing: what proportion of available rebounds does a player grab? In his three seasons in the league, Cousins has two seasons in the top 35 of Defensive Rebound Rate during that timeframe (#21 and #33, counting guys who played 15 or more MPG in at least 30 games). The only other players with two or more seasons in that range are Reggie Evans, Marcus Camby, Kevin Love, Dwight Howard, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Carlos Boozer. Pretty good company, especially considering Cousins’ defensive reputation (though we do see some weak defenders on that list). While defensive rebounding can come at the expense of quality man-to-man or team defense, it does change possession and provide value to teams.

By far the most interesting part of Cousins’ defensive game comes from a significantly more surprising place.  Over the past few years, numbers gurus like Kevin Pelton have noticed a correlation between a draft prospect’s translated steal rate and their defensive ability at the next level. Pelton described it in prospect analysis as something that “tends to be an indicator of quickness that translates at the NBA level” which makes sense both in theory and practice. As someone who covered the worst years of the Golden State Warriors’ defensive execution, I know that both steals and steal rate are not direct indicators of defensive prowess and can actually indicate bad traits on that end. However, they do show things like activity and skill that can be useful in figuring out potential as defenders down the line.

Shockingly, Cousins has a simply excellent steal rate each of the past two seasons. Among the 100 best rebounding seasons of the last three years, Cousins has the fourth and fifth best steal rates behind only single seasons from DeJuan Blair, Ben Wallace and Andre Drummond. Comparing Cousins to other big men only makes the numbers more striking:  only eight seasons (the previous three, Paul Millsap, Andray Blatche, Gustavo Ayon, Ivan Johnson and Kenyon Martin) outshine what Cousins has done the last two seasons. While an imperfect measure, it does show his fascinating potential on that end.

What shocks me most about these figures is that Cousins has generated this kind of production without putting forth even close to maximum effort on defense. While it is possible that his steal rate could decline with improved fundamentals and effort, defensive rebounding would only improve (especially if he stays at Center).  Better coaching and effort would lead to an improvement in his disappointing block rate and help the overall team defense in ways traditional stats have trouble measuring.

3. Strange but correctable flaws on offense

I have continued to be fascinated by Cousins because he stands out as the only unfinished true center who has the ability to become a force on both sides of the ball. We have already talked about his defense and rebounding, so offense becomes the last piece in the puzzle. In his only year at Kentucky, Cousins led the entire NCAA in points per 40 minutes pace adjusted while also shooting the second-most free throws in all of college basketball.  That production and aggressiveness has not translated fully as some of the worse parts of Cousins’ offensive nature have ruled during his time with the Kings.

Last season, only 27 players shot more deep twos per game and only one of those prolific shooters (Rudy Gay during his time in Toronto) shot a worse percentage from that range. Even just cutting those shots out of his game would make Cousins a much harder cover since teams would not be able to bait him into bailing them out with bad shots. However, there should be some hope here since a whopping 60.6 percent of those long two attempts were assisted- it could be possible for changes in team philosophy, player placement, and ball movement to literally take the ball out of his hands some of these times. While coaching and development would be better than this approach, it could help in the interim.

Drawing more free throws would also help the Kings because Cousins has become a substantially better free throw shooter since his time in college, improving each year to a respectable 73.8 percent last season. While bigs like Dwight Howard and Andre Drummond’s free throw shooting can be exploited, Cousins does not have this weakness and thus should never need to be taken off the court in key moments for this reason.

Challenges in Evaluation

Players on terrible teams are the hardest to evaluate because of how talent-dependent success is on the NBA level. Improving any individual on a team usually makes the remaining players look better by improving the shots they take and taking some of the sting out of their mistakes. A franchise like Sacramento that has been ravaged by terrible ownership has not maintained that baseline of quality necessary to properly evaluate their players.  In fact, Sacramento was fourth from the bottom in point differential each of the last two seasons.

Competent drafting and new ownership’s willingness to spend to get better should produce meaningful dividends on current talent over a few years. Sadly, those seemingly inevitable improvements will largely come after they have to make a decision on extending Cousins. Those are the perils of maintaining an NBA team without sufficient talent. 

Building around DeMarcus Cousins

Despite all of the positives and correctable negatives discussed above, I have immense trouble figuring out how Cousins could be the best player on a championship team at anything less than his absolute ceiling. While we have seen plenty of All-Stars with heavily varied skillsets but no true mastery in any aspect, that has rarely if ever come to play in the most elite in the NBA. In a way, he could rise up by being a two-way true center in a league that has so few even as starter quality.

In fact, one of the more compelling examples for Cousins to follow would come from someone who plays a totally different position: James Harden. Harden has taken his natural abilities on offense and worked hard to maximize them. Even though Harden had a lower FG% with the Rockets last season than with the Thunder (which often happens when you go from playing with an elite scorer to being the primary player in an offense) getting to the line more often and doing a great job making free throws allowed his offensive contribution to increase without too much of a loss in efficiency despite the changing role. An aggressive and assertive Cousins could have a similar impact on offense as a post player.

With so much more development to come it makes the most sense to build around Cousins by minimizing his weaknesses. Of flaws that can be helped by teammates, his dependence as an offensive talent stands out as one where better surrounding talent could work wonders. Having a primary ballhandler who can create better opportunities for Cousins and shepherd him away from some of the terrible shots could turn his offense around. Greivis Vasquez should be a good test case for this and I would love to see Sacramento go after a point guard in the strong 2014 draft class if they cannot get Andrew Wiggins or Julius Randle. A lead guard who can handle an uptempo system would also keep Cousins more engaged on both ends.

When looking at a long-term power forward, a shot blocking presence should be the biggest priority. Cousins has shown an ability to rebound on the defensive end but his horrendous block rate appears unlikely to become a strength. As such, having at least a weak side shot blocker/changer other teams would need to think about should dramatically help team defense as Cousins improves. While Serge Ibaka would be ideal, someone like Ekpe Udoh could work pretty well in the interim. Unfortunately the Kings have chosen a more offensively-minded group though Jason Thompson showed some defensive promise early in his career.

Cousins infuriates many around basketball because you can see his immense potential even during the darkest moments. Having insufficient talent on the court and less than ideal management off it has made it even harder to figure out how much of that skill and potential will turn into production. Despite all of his flaws, it still feels better to make a bet on a high-ceiling talent turning it around with a change of scenery (even strangely available in Sacramento with new people) because elite players play such a big role in playoff success and championships.