USA TODAY International Edition
Death Star? Warriors are too good with Cousins
DeMarcus Cousins returned to action for his first game with Golden State on Friday night, playing 15 minutes in the Warriors-Clippers matchup.
He finished with 14 points, six rebounds and three assists, and the Warriors won 112-94. After a missed bucket early when the Warriors tried to force him the ball in the paint, Cousins settled in, scoring his first basket on a huge dunk. Then he went to work. He showed off his deft touch around the basket. He showed his strength, bullying people with his post moves. Again, in 15 minutes, he put up a 14-6-3.
(For a comparison, Kevon Looney, who’s been starting at center for the Warriors for much of the season, is averaging a 6-6-2 in 21 minutes per game, per Basketball-Reference.)
Sure, there was a little rust. And sure, the Warriors were trying to get the ball to Cousins in a way that maybe they wouldn’t with Looney. Still, Cousins played like someone with the talent to be an All-Star center in the NBA.
He did it because he is an All-Star center in the NBA.
This complements the other four starting Warriors players — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green — because, well, they’ve all been All-Stars as well. The Warriors have now reached Death Star mode, and despite the fact that James Harden is trying to break the NBA scoring model by putting in 50 a night, Kyrie Irving has apparently earned the Celtics’ trust by stepping up into a leadership role or whatever it is he’s doing, and Giannis Antetokounmpo continues to break laws of physics, it all probably won’t be enough to stop Golden State.
The Warriors now have five players who can take over an NBA game and win it on their own. Four of their starters can go for 40 points in a game, without a sweat, and have done so in the past. Even factoring in fatigue, and in-fighting, and mental exhaustion, the Warriors are most likely going to waltz to another NBA title on talent alone.
Yay.
The NBA is great. The NBA is fun. Even with this juggernaut in the Western Conference looming over everything, I will happily watch games for the rest of the season. I will continue to be flabbergasted by Harden, and I’ll flick over to a Raptors game to see what Kawhi Leonard is up to. I will continue to cheer for this overachieving Nuggets team, who were in first place in the conference up until recently.
They aren’t anymore. The Warriors took that over. Now they have Boogie.
And that will continue to be a damper on the season.
I’m not saying some hysterical thing about how the NBA is unwatchable now, or there’s no point, or whatever. The NBA is still great, and sports can be enjoyed even when you know what’s going to happen at the end of the season.
But hanging over it all is that Warriors’ team, a looming presence that casts a shadow over everything else, making you feel deep down in the pit of your stomach: Well, this game is fun, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Barring something wild happening, the Warriors will win another NBA title this year. They’ll play some beautiful basketball along the way, and I will watch it happily. You can enjoy a movie when you know how it ends.
So, yay. Go Warriors. Win handily. Crush teams. Score in wild and inventive ways. Let Klay shoot with his off-hand one night, just to see what happens. Have Boogie start to take 3-pointers, because why not. I will enjoy it, and I will also look forward to the day when this team is no longer together.