Why DeMarcus Cousins' biggest red flag for the Warriors is his Achilles

Sam Amick | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption NBA free agency: The rich get richer USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt breaks down some of the biggest NBA free agent signings, including LeBron James and DeMarcus Cousins.

SACRAMENTO – Imagine being Vivek Ranadive on Monday.

It was tipoff time of the inaugural California Classic, the NBA summer league at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento where the Kings owner would have his latest chance to show off this beautiful new building while watching his team’s young core of De’Aaron Fox, Harry Giles, Marvin Bagley III in action. And right when it was all about to start, with Golden State about to face the Miami Heat before the Kings-Lakers game in the nightcap, news broke that the back-to-back defending champion Warriors had landed DeMarcus Cousins.

Yes, that DeMarcus Cousins, the immensely talented big man who spent nearly seven stressful seasons in Sacramento before an ugly divorce sent him to New Orleans via trade in Feb. 2017.

“Don’t ask me about ‘Boogie,’” Ranadive, who spent three years as a minority owner of the Warriors before helping keep the Kings in Sacramento in 2013, said with a smile to USA TODAY Sports while walking to his courtside seat.

Yet while NBA fans, players and media members alike bemoaned the Warriors’ latest move on social media, with Golden State adding a fifth All-Star to their unmatched mix for the blue light special price of $5.3 million on a one-year deal, the addition of Cousins is not as simple as some have made it seem. There’s a reason he struggled to find more money on the open market, with reasons ranging from dearth of salary cap room this summer to the questions about his prickly personality that have dogged him since his days at Kentucky.

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But more than anything else, it’s the Achilles tendon tear that Cousins suffered in February while with New Orleans that served as the brightest red flag of them all. And if the 27-year-old, four-time All-Star is going to execute this plan – be an impact player on a championship team, then earn a long-term max contract elsewhere next summer – he’ll have to prove that he’s an outlier when it comes to this brutal injury.

If this was the Cousins who averaged 25.2 points and was on pace to set career highs in rebounds (12.9 per) and assists (5.4) for the Pelicans in 48 games before getting hurt last season, that would be one thing. But this is the Cousins who is just five months removed from the surgery that was required to fix the tear, and there’s just no way of knowing if he’ll ever return to peak form.

Cousins told ESPN’s Marc Spears that he’ll be ready for training camp in late September, but that timetable is extremely ambitious. The Warriors have no need to rush Cousins back, and it’s entirely possible, if not probable, that he doesn’t return to game action until after the New Year.

But will Cousins ever be the same again? History tells a conflicting, concerning tale.

Atlanta Hawks great Dominique Wilkins is the gold standard on this front, as he went from being carried off the Omni floor with a torn right Achilles on that fateful Jan. 28, 1992 night to spending his next few seasons carrying his teams even more than he had before. Wilkins, who was 32 then, had the third-best scoring season of his 15-year career (29.9 points a game) in the 1993-94 campaign en route to making two more All-Star teams before retiring at age 39.

Cousins’ old Kings teammate, Rudy Gay, tore his Achilles on Jan. 19, 2017 while with Sacramento, then returned 10 months later after signing with San Antonio. And while Gay’s playing time dipped from his norm with the Spurs because of his Sixth Man role (21.6 minutes per compared to 34.6 for his career), his per-36-minute production increased from his career-long standards.

On the other side of that spectrum, there’s Detroit Pistons great Isiah Thomas (forced into retirement at age 32 after tearing his Achilles) and Lakers legend Kobe Bryant (he returned after less than eight months after tearing his Achilles at 34 years old but was never himself again in those final three, injury-riddled seasons).

When it comes to big man examples, though, Elton Brand qualifies as a cautionary tale. The then-Clippers forward ruptured his Achilles tendon during an August workout in 2007 – a year removed from being named an All-Star for the second time – then returned eight months later to play the final eight games of the regular season that April.

In the eight seasons leading up to the injury, he had averaged 20.3 points, 10.2 rebounds, 2.1 blocks and 75.7 games played. But in those eight seasons from 2008 until he retired in 2016, Brand would see his production and his health nearly cut in half: He averaged 9.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 1.2 blocks, and 55.5 games played per season. As Brand explained in an ESPN podcast interview, the Achilles injury had an undeniable ripple effect on his body.

“The most frustrating part was the injuries,” Brand said. “That Achilles really changed the trajectory of my career. That whole kinetic chain: once you get the calf, it’s the ankle, the knee, the hips, the back. No one’s really recovered from that Achilles injury and come back at the same level.

“I had a few serviceable seasons, but I wasn’t the same guy. I still had the atrophy on my left calf — which was my power leg — from that Achilles. And then, quickly, I had a torn labrum right after that. You know, just the injuries, and that happens.”

The Warriors and Cousins, of course, would love nothing more than for his Achilles story to be much different.

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