In a league increasingly dominated by small-ball lineups, the New Orleans Pelicans dared to travel the abandoned path and shift the overwhelming majority of their offensive hub toward a pair of versatile big men when they landed DeMarcus Cousins during last season’s All-Star Weekend.
While New Orleans has stumbled to a pedestrian 20-19 record this season, both Cousins and Anthony Davis are in the midst of career years.
The Pelicans’ offense — when those two share the court — is at its best when Cousins and Davis operate a high-low dynamic, spreading the floor and optimizing each possession.
For adept post scorers, the primary key in thwarting their attack is hindering the ease at which they establish position inside, forcing them to exhibit effort before even catching the ball. Yet AD rarely enables defenders to do so.
He charges to his spots and sets up shop, often catching apathetic defenders off guard. By the time Cousins tosses it to his running mate, the levee has already been broken — it’s just a matter of before Davis wreaks havoc:
While much of the hoops world’s attention is currently directed toward LaVar Ball, Karl-Anthony Towns’ gaze is fixed on a different ball in the clip above — the basketball. Davis recognizes this, plants himself in the key, projects as a target and nails a well-contested jumper.
Like I said, the levee had broken once Davis established position. Anything after that from Towns was an attempt to put a bandage on a broken bone.
Much of that previous clip was impromptu action from Cousins and Davis. But New Orleans has maximized the improved shooting around them (19th in 3-point percentage last season, sixth this season) to bemuse opponents:
Above, Cousins screens for Dante Cunningham while Jrue Holiday screens for Cousins a second later, leaving Nerlens Noel pinned behind Boogie. Cousins flashes to the ball with Dennis Smith Jr. now defending. If that isn’t open, Davis, whose passing skills are now a weapon, can hit Holiday, who slipped into the corner, for 3.
They also run a similar set for Davis:
Cousins didn’t enter the league with the unicorn moniker attached to his name and made just 11 of 69 3-point attempts in his first five seasons. But now, a shiny horn has sprouted from Boogie’s head as he’s shooting 35.3 percent from beyond the arc on 6.2 attempts.
While that percentage doesn’t place him among the NBA’s elite, his willingness to launch 3s and do so at a respectable clip forces defenses to track him on the perimeter.
Here, Boogie’s status as a 3-point threat doesn’t allow Amir Johnson to double Davis on the wing, isolating the undersized Dario Saric against AD. Furthermore, after Davis catches it, note how Cousins shifts ever so slightly as to expand the ground Johnson would have to cover in the event he doubles Davis and has to recover on the perimeter.
Below is a set play that utilizes Cousins’ long-range shot and Davis’ unrivaled ability to gracefully slip inside as the screener:
As soon as Mason Plumlee decides to close out on Cousins beyond the arc, Davis acts like he’s going to screen Plumlee and provide Boogie with an open 3. Trey Lyles doesn’t perceive Davis to be the nucleus of this set anymore and falls asleep for a half-second, affording his man some breathing room. It’s then that AD splits to the hoop for an easy dunk.
Prior to Cousins’ arrival in the Big Easy, things were far from easy for each star. Teams could simply pin their weakest frontcourt link on Sacramento or New Orleans’ less polished big men (CC: Kosta Koufos and Omer Asik) and bring help whenever Boogie or AD spurred a significant mismatch. That’s no longer the case as both sport a career high in True Shooting (Davis: 64 percent, Cousins: 59.3 percent).
In particular, those improvements have manifested themselves in Davis’ efficiency; the four-time All-Star is scoring 1.17 points per possession (92nd percentile) in isolations and 0.99 PPP (77th percentile) in post-ups — leaps and bounds better than his marks from the 2016-17 campaign.
As a 6-foot-11, 270-pound Herculean center, opponents have no choice but to assign their burliest defender to Cousins and ship undersized, overmatched and ill-prepared 4s to Davis Island.
He’s a wing trapped in a center’s build. He shoots 3s, commandeers the offense and jets into passing lanes, chasing steals.
Boogie can take plodding centers off the dribble, showcasing rare foot speed and ball handling for a player of his ilk:
… Which can also lead to open 3s for Davis:
And meanwhile, Davis isn’t exactly the most gracious of hosts on his island:
The 82-game regular season is long and grueling, especially for rookies. Poor Lauri Markkanen just wanted some R&R during his stay at Davis Island.
While Cousins has been slinging it from deep with regularity since 2015-16, Davis only recently added 3-point shooting to his bag of tricks, shooting a career-high 36.9 percent from deep this season — 4.5 percent better than his previous best mark.
Davis harnesses his guard-like quickness in transition while Cousins hits him in stride with passes even Drew Brees would envy (rumor has it Boogie is the heir apparent to Brees’ quarterback throne in New Orleans):
These types of easy looks have aided New Orleans’ rise from 19th in offensive efficiency last season to sixth this year.
Much in the same way that the Thunder bigs cede rebounds to their primary ball handler, Russell Westbrook, in order to initiate the offense as soon as possible, the Pelicans do the same with Cousins.
Once Cousins snags a rebound, he looks to attack in transition. The defense’s attention is primarily directed toward the freight train of a point-center charging down the tracks and Davis often slips behind the defense or exploits a mismatch before Cousins finds him for easy transition scores.
But Boogie’s ability to act as a primary facilitator presents a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde enigma. He can often generate easy baskets for his teammates but has a tendency to force passes into nonexistent openings. Pair that with his lackadaisical transition defense and many of New Orleans’ defensive shortcomings are revealed.
In a half-court setting, the Boogie-Brow pick and roll is nigh impossible to stop. Davis is so effortless and fluid on his runs to the rim while Cousins dishes it to AD with precision and also presents the threat of charging to the hoop himself:
This is one of my favorite plays in all of basketball right now because it’s a representation of today’s NBA. 10 years ago, there’s no way two bigs run this play with such grace and beauty. Now, the Boogie-Brow alley-oop is a weekly occurrence.
New Orleans’ record doesn’t necessarily reflect the success this pairing has enjoyed (which can be attributed, to some degree, to Boogie’s inability to serve as a rim protector sans AD). For two players who suffered through underwhelming rosters and a myriad of double teams much of their career, the offensive side of the ball has never come easier, once again embodying the city’s Big Easy nickname.
All stats and videos courtesy of NBA.com, ESPN.com, Basketball-Reference and 3Ball and are accurate as of Jan. 9.
