Friday, July 6
You're going to have to lay a price if you want to bet the Golden State Warriors to repeat again as NBA champions. Part of this stems from the Warriors signing DeMarcus Cousins. This was part of a lively NBA discussion we had on the Dream Preview Podcast Thursday night between RJ Bell, Fezzik, Brad Powers, Maki and myself. We got so engaged with NBA that we pushed back our deep dive on the NFL until next week.
It says a lot about the NBA that it commands such attention in July with free agent signings. LeBron James, of course, dominated the news. But the topic here is Cousins, or Boogie as he is nicknamed.
He's an All-Star. He puts up great stats. He's also a head case who could potentially erode the Warriors' chemistry. It's telling that the Lakers and Celtics showed little interest in him.
Cousins is good for a monster stat line of 25 points, 12 rebounds and five assists per game. But that was with a bad Kings team. The Kings went through six coaches in eight years with some of that upheaval due to Cousins being a coach-killer. Kings General Manager Vlade Divac decided he had no chance to create a winning culture and build character with Cousins on his team so he traded Boogie to the Pelicans.
Cousins brought his considerable talent - and his immaturity, lack of defense and penchant for technical fouls - to New Orleans forming a Twin Towers with Anthony Davis. The Pelicans, though, were much better after Cousins was lost for the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in February. The Pelicans went 24-8, including sweeping the Trail Blazers in the first-round of the playoffs, during their last 32 games before losing in a five-game series to the Warriors.
Not all players come back from such a serious injury. Even if Cousins is able to regain his prevous skill level, where does his 18-plus shots come from on a team with Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green? Perhaps Cousins gets the majority of his minutes off the bench bolstering Golden State's reserves. That may not sit well with his ego.
The Warriors look like the greatest team ever on paper. They have been the greatest team, though. The enigmatic Cousins wasn't a piece the Warriors needed to tinker with, however. The betting markets see this as a huge plus for the Warriors. The oddsmaker has lowered the Warriors' price of winning the NBA title to the minus $1.50-$2.50 range. I can't argue with that. But I will argue that Cousins makes them far better than what they already were. He could prove more of a distraction than a positive.
On the baseball front, I ran my MLB premium play hot streak to 9-1 winning by three runs with the Mariners on my Triple Star Game of the Week last night. I have found my Triple Star Baseball Total of the Week on today's card. I am 21-11 the past two years on my Canadian Football League plays and have a CFL play going Saturday. You can find all of my picks and packages here: https://pregame.com/pros/stephen-nover.
As always, best of luck and no bad beats!