Trade grades: Biggest winners and losers in DeMarcus Cousins deal
The deal
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Pelicans get: Center? DeMarcus Cousins and forward Omri Casspi
Sacramento Kings: D
I think there's a persuasive case to be made that the Kings needed to trade Cousins to have a chance to be successful. If it's possible to build a winning team around his volatile personality, I don't think it was ever going to happen in Sacramento. Cousins simply had too much power in the organization to develop the habits necessary to help the team win.
And yet I can't endorse the trade the Kings actually made. While the seemingly paltry return for Cousins surely reflects the lack of interest around the league in acquiring him, I think it also speaks to the fact that Sacramento views Hield differently than the rest of the league.
Before the draft, Insider's Chad Ford reported that Vlade Divac, the Kings' vice president of basketball operations and general manager, loved Hield and that Sacramento might have taken him No. 2 overall behind Ben Simmons.
So far, Hield doesn't look like that kind of prospect. After a slow start, he has become the above-average 3-point shooter (36.9 percent) everyone expected. However, the rest of his game has lagged. Hield has struggled to score inside the arc, making only 51.7 percent of his attempts inside three feet,? according to Basketball-Reference.com. So Hield's true shooting percentage is just .502, far worse than the league average (.552).
The results are even worse at the other end of the court, where scouts' fears that Hield would struggle defensively have proved accurate. ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) rates his defensive impact as 2.5 points per 100 possessions worse than an average player, putting Hield among the bottom 10 shooting guards. Overall, his minus-4.5 RPM ranks in the bottom 10 among all players. Remarkably, at a single position (shooting guard), the Kings now have three of RPM's bottom 15 players overall: Hield, Arron Afflalo and Ben McLemore.
That slow start might be acceptable if Hield were a one-and-done prospect like No. 2 overall pick Brandon Ingram, whom the Lakers refused to give up for Cousins, according to ESPN's Ramona Shelburne. But Hield is already 23. He's only 10 months younger than McLemore, who's in his fourth NBA season and has long lost the sheen of being Sacramento's shooting guard of the future. He's only five months younger than Nik Stauskas, who also had that designation but was traded two seasons ago.
As a result, multiyear projections based on RPM and my SCHOENE projection system (which compares him to journeymen like Wayne Ellington and Anthony Morrow) suggest Hield can reasonably be expected to perform no better than replacement level over the three seasons remaining on his rookie contract. In that case, he'd actually have negative trade value as opposed to being the jewel of the trade.
In addition to Hield, the Kings get only a single first-rounder, this year's New Orleans pick. That choice would be ninth entering the lottery if the season ended today. With Cousins' addition, the Pelicans probably will pass at least two teams ahead of them in the standings (including Sacramento), and there's a solid chance New Orleans makes the playoffs -- pushing the pick to 15th at best.
The return -- which also includes the Philadelphia 76ers' 2017 second-round selection -- doesn't exactly set up Sacramento with a bright future in terms of picks. It doesn't even truly make the Kings whole given they already owe the 76ers their unprotected 2019 first-round pick thanks to a disastrous cap-clearing deal in the summer of 2015.
Philadelphia also got the right to swap picks this season with Sacramento in that trade, which could come into play if the Kings slide without Cousins. (On the plus side, they're now more likely to keep a first-round pick this season rather than sending it to the Chicago Bulls by falling outside the top 10.)
If Sacramento was truly desperate to be rid of Cousins' toxic presence as soon as possible, I can't blame the organization. But if this trade enables the Kings to turn the page, it doesn't do a whole lot more than that to help them navigate a new rebuilding path.
New Orleans Pelicans: A-minus
Let's not ignore the risk here. Though the Pelicans aren't likely to regret what little they give up in this trade, they might rue bringing Cousins into their locker room.
After writing his thorough feature on Cousins and the Sacramento organization, ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz was repeatedly asked how Cousins might succeed elsewhere. He pointed toward the need for a veteran teammate to whom Cousins would have to defer because of the respect he held in the locker room. That's not Anthony Davis, a rising star who has yet to win a playoff game or develop a strong voice as a leader.
Cousins' relentless criticism has made it difficult for the Kings to develop young talent. By all accounts, he has been a better teammate this season -- but not so much better that Sacramento wanted to keep him.
And yet this feels like a trade New Orleans had to make. I'm reminded of a Bob Whitsitt line when a Seattle reporter questioned his decision to trade away Sonics All-Star center Jack Sikma after Whitsitt took over the team, which went 30-52 the previous season. "Just what is it," Whitsitt replied, "you object to us taking apart?"
Despite the presence of one of the league's top talents in Davis, the Pelicans weren't going anywhere as an organization. With Hield struggling in his rookie campaign, they figured to again look to the mid- to late lottery for the infusion of the top-tier talent necessary to build around Davis -- something they weren't likely to add via free agency. And New Orleans faced the possibility of starting point guard Jrue Holiday leaving in free agency after another lottery season.
Adding Cousins at least gives the Pelicans a path toward contention. I'm fascinated to see how the pairing of two inside-out big men works at both ends of the floor. Neither Cousins nor Davis has been particularly enamored of playing center, so perhaps Alvin Gentry can tell both players they're the power forward in the new lineup and hope they don't talk to each other about it.
Position aside, few teams will have the combination of frontcourt defenders needed to deal with Cousins' strength, Davis' length and the quickness both players possess. At least one and maybe both should have a mismatch on a nightly basis. The coaching staff will have its hands full keeping both players engaged at the defensive end of the floor, but if they do so, Cousins and Davis could be an effective combination there as well.
The rest of the players in this trade matter more to New Orleans than the Kings, who are presumably willingly headed to the lottery. Losing Evans, Galloway and Hield takes a chunk out of the Pelicans' guard rotation, though Hield's departure might be addition by subtraction. Tim Frazier will step back into the backup point guard role for which he's qualified.
Shooting guard will be trickier, and Gentry might turn to big lineups with one of the team's combo forwards ( Dante Cunningham, Solomon Hill and now Casspi) manning the 2. That might be problematic from a spacing perspective; Hill was ineffective at small forward in the bigger lineups New Orleans used to start the season before going smaller and quicker.
Nonetheless, a quick projection based on the multiyear version of RPM -- which can't account for fit -- suggests that a Pelicans rotation with the newcomers (and not Terrence Jones, whom New Orleans seeks to trade, according to ESPN's Chris Haynes) could be expected to outscore opponents by about four points per 100 possessions. That differential would typically translate into around 51 or 52 wins over a full season.
Over the next six weeks, the Pelicans probably need to go about 15-10 to assure themselves of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference -- a 49-win pace during a full season. So I'd put their odds at slightly worse than 50-50 given the challenge of integrating Cousins on the fly and because he'll be suspended a game for every other technical he draws from here.
Winning now would help New Orleans convince the participants in this experiment to stick around. Holiday will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, and the Pelicans traded for Cousins knowing that they would be unable to offer him the richer designated veteran extension Sacramento could have offered this summer. That makes Cousins a big loser in this trade.
A designated veteran extension would have paid Cousins an estimated $209 million over five seasons depending on where the salary cap is set in 2018-19. If Cousins instead re-signs with New Orleans, a five-year deal would pay him an estimated $179 million. And Cousins would leave more security on the table to sign elsewhere, as the most he could get would be $132 million over four years.
The Pelicans have to hope that difference outweighs Cousins' frustration about losing out on the designated veteran payday. Again, New Orleans gave up so little that this wouldn't be a terrible deal even if Cousins leaves in the summer of 2018. (The fact that this year's pick is top-three protected prevents the disaster scenario of missing the playoffs and winning the lottery only to send that pick to the Kings.) But for this to be the huge win the Pelicans hope it will be, Cousins will have to stay.
