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There can’t be an offseason for the NBA until the league finishes a season that doesn’t want to end. With the pandemic having pushed the playoffs back into the fall, DeMarcus Cousins can’t find his next club until his former Los Angeles Lakers teammates and the other contenders wrap up.

That hasn’t stopped Boogie from making a different sort of move in the interim.

DeMarcus Cousins’ career started in promising fashion

DeMarcus Cousins was one of John Calipari’s original one-and-done players at the University of Kentucky. Less than a month after committing to play for Calipari at Memphis in 2009, Cousins followed the coach after Calipari landed the Kentucky job.

Playing alongside John Wall, Cousins averages 15.1 points and 9.8 rebounds in helping Kentucky to the Elite Eight, after which he declared for the 2010 NBA draft. The Sacramento Kings made Cousins the fifth overall pick, and he did not disappoint on the court.

The 6-foot-10 center averaged 14.1 points and 8.6 rebounds as a 20-year-old rookie, then climbed steadily. In the 2015-16 season, his last full year with the Kings, Cousins averaged 26.9 points and 11.5 rebounds while making the second of his six consecutive All-Star Game appearances. He capped the big year by representing the United States at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

The Kings traded Cousins to the New Orleans Pelicans on Feb. 20, 2017, in a deal that landed Sacramento Tyreke Evans, Buddy Hield, and draft picks. Cousins’ combined average of 27.0 points a game that season was the best of his career as he moved over 10,000 points as a pro.

Injuries have defined his career in recent seasons

The 2016-17 season was the last in which DeMarcus Cousins was able to log a full year on the court.

Knowing that he was headed for likely free agency at the end of the year, Cousins was a terror on the court in the early part of the 2017-18 season. In a nine-day span beginning in late October, he posted 41 points and 23 rebounds to beat the Sacramento Kings, registered a triple-double in downing the Cleveland Cavaliers, and went for 20 points and 22 boards against the Dallas Mavericks. He had already produced three games with 30 points and 20 rebounds by the end of December.

In late January of that season, Cousins produced another triple-double but left with a foot injury late in a win over the Houston Rockets. The injury was diagnosed as a torn left Achilles tendon, which required season-ending surgery. He had averaged 25.2 points and 12.9 rebounds up to that point.

The injury scared off some potential suitors when free agency opened, and Cousins gambled. Taking a mid-level exception with the Golden State Warriors cut his salary from $18 million to $5.3 million, but it landed Cousins on a contender.

Cousins was able to make his season debut on Jan. 18, 2019, and he made up for lost time by averaging 16.3 points and 8.2 rebounds while averaging a career-low 25.7 minutes a game. He sustained a torn left quadriceps early in the postseason but returned for the finals, where Golden State fell to the Toronto Raptors.

Cousins then signed a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Lakers last summer, but he tore an ACL in preseason workouts in mid-August. The Lakers waived Cousins on Feb. 23, 2020, three weeks before the pandemic brought the regular season to a halt.

DeMarcus Cousins is on the move, sort of

DeMarcus Cousins’ basketball career is very much on hold for now. The NBA playoffs, pushed far back on the calendar by the pandemic, are winding down. Once the postseason is over, teams will be squeezing free agency and the draft into the fall while also finalizing the start date for next season.

The delayed start of the new season means DeMarcus Cousins will be back to full strength after the ACL injury sustained last summer. But he’s a man without a team until teams can assess their needs and free-agent options.

Wherever he lands, Cousins is preparing to start anew. He has just listed his Las Vegas mansion for sale for $8 million, according to TMZ. And the description of the mansion, a short walk from where Floyd Mayweather Jr. resides, makes those digs sound amazing.

Check it out:

  • Ten bedrooms and 12 bathrooms
  • Fitness center and indoor basketball court
  • A home theater with an automated drop-down screen
  • A billiards room with full bar and giant flat-screen TV
  • A resort-style swimming pool with a slide that drops down to a second pool
  • A four-car garage
  • A guest house with a full kitchen

The two-acre property is just minutes away from Las Vegas’ famed strip.

The Los Angeles Times ported that Cousins bought the mansion three years ago for $6.5 million after selling his property in Sacramento for $4.5 million.

All stats courtesy of Basketball Reference. 

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Staff Writer, Producer - Motorsports

John Moriello

John Moriello started covering sports in 1982, began digital publishing in 1995, and joined Sportscasting in 2020. A graduate of St. John Fisher University, he finds inspiration in the underdogs and the fascinating stories sports can tell (both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat). John expertly covers all aspects of NASCAR.

Beginning with his 2014 coverage at Fox Sports of the aftermath of the dirt-race tragedy in which Kevin Ward Jr. died after being struck by a car driven by NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart, John has excelled as a journalist who specializes in the motorsports world. He previously spent more than three decades covering high school sports and worked as a beat writer covering Big East football and basketball, but NASCAR is now where the true expertise falls.

John is a member of the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame (2013), the President of the New York State Sportswriters Association, and a two-time Best of Gannett winner for print and online collaborations whose work has appeared on FoxSports.com and MaxPreps.com.