Anthony Davis And DeMarcus Cousins- 40 Shots Around The Rim

Ab Stanley

The NBA trade deadline can be dull at times. Usually it’s minor deals for players that will help push an already playoff bound team (hopefully) over the top. Thanks to the Sacramento Kings and the New Orleans Pelicans, we won’t have that problem this year.

Sunday night was the NBA All-Star game and Anthony Davis would have home court advantage and boy did he take advantage. It seems he remembered every sweet spot on the Smoothie King Center floor. He scored 52 points and broke Wilt Chamberlain’s All-Star game record of 42 points (1962) in the process. Grabbing the MVP honors at the end of the game and even better news, learning Demarcus Cousins will be joining him in New Orleans. A trade that sent rookie Buddy Heild, Tyreke Evans, Langston Galloway, and a protected first round pick (2017) to Sacramento for the mercurial Cousins would make the All-Star game almost a side note. It will also make the Pelicans an intriguing situation going forward.

Tag team: 55.5 points 22.7 rebounds and 4.0 blocks per game are the combined numbers of the NBA’s two best big men and the numbers every Pelicans fan see when they hear Cousins is coming to town. The actual games might play out differently. Both players take a tad over twenty shots per game so the question is will there be forty shots a game for them to take? The answer is yes.

Davis is a dynamo able to put the ball on the floor and dribble his way either to separate for a jumper or drive to the hole where he can definitely finish. Speaking of jumpers, he has mastered the lost art of the mid-range jumper and can also extend to beyond the three point line. Cousins is a bulldozer who’s also able to put it on the floor but in his case, he’s going straight for the basket. A good set of moves around the basket whether posting up or facing up separates him from most centers. A nice medium range jumper also keeps defenses honest and he’s also finding his teammates more with a 4.9 assist average up until the break. Both can rebound and defend the rim (Davis is a once in a generation type defender) which make them more dangerous.

There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to take as many shots and put as much pressure on defenses as they want. Both players only had one teammate on their respective teams scoring in double digits and now their on the same team. With so many teams hoisting up threes to win games, it will be nice to see a team bang their way to the rim on mostly every play. How many games they win remains to be seen but could you imagine a win streak and a deep playoff run? Maybe the new thought might be “let’s get two versatile bigs instead of two or three wing players that can score and shoot threes”. Imagine if the league is forced to do so because this duo had literally wreaked that much havoc. Like I said, it remains to be seen. If you start to imagine the upside to this, it almost seems unfair. Maybe not Golden State Warriors or Cleveland Cavaliers unfair but I can’t see a team being able to contend with this one upfront. The rest of the league should be watching …the Bully Brothers are coming.

Ab Stanley

Atlanta, GA

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