What will DeMarcus Cousins bring to the Bucks?

Before the season, Bucks general manager Jon Horst knew exactly how he wanted to handle his big-man rotation. Just like they did in their championship season, the Bucks started the season with Brook Lopez, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis taking care of all the minutes in the paint and then adjusted as necessary.

“It’s not a concern,” Horst told The Athletic of having just three true big men on the roster. “We did it last year. We managed it last year. We were healthy, but we know that could be different this year; that’s part of managing it. If something happens or presents itself and we need to adjust, we’ll have ways to do that and acquire players or use two-ways, different things like that.”

With a rash of injuries in the first quarter of the season, Horst opted to adjust the team’s plan on Sunday and add a new big man to the rotation. According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, the Bucks plan to add DeMarcus Cousins to the roster on a non-guaranteed deal. The Bucks have carried an open roster spot throughout the season and can use it on the veteran big man.

Cousins, a two-time All-NBA center and four-time All-Star, played for the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers last season. The 6-foot-10, 270-pound center appeared in 16 regular-season games at the end of last season for the Clippers, as well as seven playoff games, and averaged 7.8 points and 4.5 rebounds in 12.9 minutes per game in the regular season.

With his signing imminent, there are two important questions for Bucks fans to consider:

Can Cousins still play?

A free agent to start the season, Cousins is only 31, but he has been through some serious injuries in the past three seasons that have sapped much of the athleticism that made him special. On Jan. 26, 2018, Cousins tore his left Achilles while with the New Orleans Pelicans, just months before he would have been eligible for a supermax extension and the largest payday of his NBA career. At the time, he was averaging 25.2 points, 12.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game in what ended up being his fourth All-Star appearance.

After working his way back onto the floor with the Golden State Warriors for 30 games during the 2018-19 season, Cousins hit free agency in the summer of 2019. With a couple of teams interested in adding him, Cousins chose to join the retooled Los Angeles Lakers with LeBron James and Anthony Davis near the start of free agency. Unfortunately, Cousins never got the chance to play a game with the Lakers, as he tore his left ACL in August 2019 while preparing for the season.

Cousins did not play for the entirety of the 2019-20 season, then joined the Rockets in free agency before the start of the 2020-21 season. He played 25 games with the Rockets and averaged 9.6 points and 7.6 rebounds in 20.2 minutes per game before the Rockets cut him loose on Feb. 23. A month later, Cousins signed a 10-day contract with the Clippers before signing a second 10-day deal and then a guaranteed deal for the remainder of the season.

He appeared in 16 regular-season games before not playing at all during the Clippers’ first-round series against the Mavericks. As Luka Dončić tore up the Clippers’ big men on the perimeter, coach Tyronn Lue opted against turning to the veteran big man. In the second round, Lue decided to use Cousins in the first two games of the series before choosing to play smaller, a decision that ultimately helped the Clippers win four straight against the Jazz and advance to the Western Conference finals.

With the Suns playing more traditional lineups, Cousins got the chance to play in Game 1 against Phoenix. He saw his time on the floor dwindle before Ivica Zubac suffered an injury, and Cousins played 26 minutes across Games 6 and 7. He made a difference in multiple spots throughout the series and put up double-digit point totals in the three games in which he played more than 10 minutes.

The rundown of Cousins’ time in each spot since leaving the Pelicans is the long way of saying he simply hasn’t been the same since his Achilles tear, but that is to be expected. No reasonable person would think a big man could suffer two serious leg injuries and somehow remain the same athletically in the latter portion of his career.

Though the injuries have sapped the athleticism that made Cousins a special blend of size and quickness, he is still a very large big man with some skill. Throughout his career, Cousins has been a strong rebounder. According to Cleaning the Glass, he has finished in the 90th percentile or above among centers in grabbing available defensive rebounds in every season of his career. And as Lopez has shown over the past three years, Antetokounmpo can more freely attack rebounds if there is another big man on the floor with him to eat up bodies, so he can help the Greek Freak by being another big body on the floor.

Offensively, the older version of Cousins’ game fits in nicely with what the Bucks do offensively. During his second All-NBA season in Sacramento, much to the chagrin of many old-school basketball folks around the league, Cousins added a 3-point shot to his arsenal. Nearly all of those triples came above the break. Since that season, Cousins has willingly fired away from deep, and though he hasn’t been a sharpshooter, he has made 378 of his 1,097 attempts, or 34.5 percent, from behind the line.

The biggest adjustment he will likely have to make with the Bucks will be shooting 3-pointers from a little bit deeper, as Bucks bigs do not often have their toes right on the line, like Cousins did on the above attempt from last season with the Clippers.

What will his role be with the Bucks?

The Bucks have refused to give an update or a timeline on Lopez. He played in the season-opening victory over the Nets before showing up on the injury report with back soreness ahead of the second game of the season in Miami. He has missed every game since first showing up on the injury report, and the Bucks have been unwilling to give any further update on Lopez’s status. Lopez was not with the Bucks’ travel party for their two-game trip over the weekend. The latest update on Lopez came from an interview he did with Charania:

Good news for Bucks center Brook Lopez, who's been out since opening night Oct. 19: He is progressing toward a comeback for the reigning champions and says he has a target return in mind. More: pic.twitter.com/un4sf0XVW2

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) November 19, 2021

With Lopez sidelined, the Bucks cycled through all of their options for a third big man and did not find an acceptable answer.

In his preseason conversation with The Athletic, Horst mentioned Semi Ojeleye as the person he imagined stepping up to be the third big, but that hasn’t worked out as planned. Ojeleye missed the start of the season with a right calf injury, struggled in his return to the floor and now finds himself on the injury report with another right calf injury that will keep him out until at least the middle of December. After missing the game Sunday against the Pacers, Ojeleye has now missed 10 of the Bucks’ 21 games this season.

Horst also discussed liking what Thanasis Antetokounmpo and rookie two-way big man Sandro Mamukelashvili brought to the table as options for Mike Budenholzer further down the bench before the season. Neither played particularly well when Budenholzer gave them chances, and both were taken out of the rotation, leaving only two big men. When approached about adding another big man after Sunday’s win over the Pacers, Giannis Antetokounmpo reiterated just how good he feels about the team and its current seven-game win streak but acknowledged an extra body could help.

“Obviously, Brook is a big part of what we do. Can’t wait for him to get back and healthy,” Antetokounmpo said. “But at the end of the day, right now, without Brook, we don’t have another big. I feel like it’s a lot of load on me and Bobby to be those bigs all the time, so just adding another guy, that would be nice.”

Cousins will not be asked to play a ton with the Bucks or serve as one of the main engines behind the offense or defense. He will just need to step on the floor for 10 to 15 minutes each night and help lessen the load for Antetokounmpo and Portis. Having another big man will allow Antetokounmpo to play more of his natural position at power forward, and Portis can spend more time with bench units that can always benefit from more scoring.

With the Bucks making little known about Lopez’s injury and timetable for return, Cousins should serve as a valuable stopgap for the Bucks’ big-man rotation, and if he plays well, the Bucks might end up keeping him around for the entire season. For now, though, the Bucks just need another big man on the floor to help make things easier for Antetokounmpo and Portis as they try to keep their best players fresh and ready for the postseason run of their title defense.

(Photo: Michael Gonzales / NBAE via Getty Images)