Just in case you have not heard somehow, the Sacramento Kings have traded DeMarcus Cousins and Omri Casspi to the New Orleans Pelicans for Buddy Hield, Tyreke Evans, Langston Galloway, a future first round pick and a future second round pick.
To go along with this, the Kings are expected to now waive Galloway or Matt Barnes and have made Darren Collison and Aaron Afflalo available in trade talks.
This vaults the Pelicans up the rankings in the Western Conference as they try and climb into the playoff picture. Adding a player as dominant as DeMarcus Cousins should help their ability to make that climb.
There are plenty of question marks that come along with this move, however.
How will Cousins and Davis co-exist? Can the two big men play together at the same time and both see the ball enough to keep the demonstrative Cousins from blowing up?
Will Cousins come in and wreck the locker room? Most "media" personalities claim that he is a locker room cancer, so how will he do in his new surroundings?
On the positive side of things for the Pelicans, they add one of the most dominant big men in the game today and did not have to give up any key member of their core. Yes, they gave up Buddy Hield, who was the 6th pick in last year's NBA draft, along with Tyreke Evans who, when healthy, was a big weapon off of the bench for the club.
What this also brings New Orleans is a big insurance policy to ensure the team has an offensive presence in the paint if/when Anthony Davis gets dinged up. It is not secret that Davis has had numerous injury concerns over the years but now the Pelicans can simply roll out another MVP type big man in those circumstances and continue to play competitive games while taking any pressure off of Davis to attempt to rush back from such injury.
All of that being said this should also make PG Jrue Holiday happy and likely entice him to sign on to stay in New Orleans for many years to come. Holiday is having a career year and should get plenty of open looks now and also now has two huge scoring threats to distribute the ball to.
In my opinion the biggest winner of this trade is Tim Frazier.
Frazier stepped into the starting lineup earlier this season when Holiday when down with an injury and was playing at an exceptionally high level until Holiday returned thus pushing Tim down the depth chart to the point that he rarely has seen the court in recent weeks. With the departure of both Hield and Evans Frazier will now be asked to fill the sixth man and back up guard spots again and should be able to come off the bench and give New Orleans a huge spark of instant offense.
As for the Kings side of things they are in pure re-build mode. They have made the majority of their veterans available for trade and will build towards this year's draft which just happens to be loaded with talent.
Hield should step right into the starting lineup and have the green light to fire shots at-will. Hield is still adapting to the fast-paced style of the NBA but comes to the Kings with huge college credentials such as the John R. Wooden Award, the Naismith Award and the Sporting News Player of the Year award that he received his senior year at Oklahoma.
If the Kings are able to turn players such as Darren Collison and Ben McLemore into picks in this year's NBA Draft they should end up with a strong young nucleus that could excite their fans and get them to start attending games again.
This all will be worth watching to see if the two former Kentucky Wildcats in Cousins and Davis can work together to lead the Pelicans to the NBA playoffs and if Hield has the ability to lead the Kings back to being relevant or if he is more of a secondary player that needs a star in the lineup to take some of the pressure off of his shoulders.
No matter what happens, kudos to the Pelicans for being willing to take a chance. There had been rumors recently that Anthony Davis was considering leaving for free agency once his contract was up (rumors that he has denied) but this trade could be the moves that keeps him in New Orleans for the length of his NBA Career.
