The NBA trade rumors aren’t stopping for the NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers, who are reportedly looking into beefing up their low post game by acquiring DeMarcus Cousins and potentially dumping big man Kevin Love.
Cousins is entering the final year of his contract with the Sacramento Kings, and all signs point to him playing for another team after next season. With his exit appearing imminent, there are rumblings that the Kings will be putting Cousins back on the trade block, where he has reportedly been on and off for the last few months.
The Cleveland Cavaliers could be the team that finally gets the Kings to pull the trigger on a deal. Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders reported that the Cavs inquired about Cousins, although the talks haven’t gone anywhere yet.
SB Nation added some more to the trade rumor.
“The belief around the NBA is that the Cavs will look into trading Kevin Love , who is a bad fit for the Cavs, and try to get a player of similar value in return that fits better. Even with Cleveland just winning the NBA Finals , Love has failed to fit while playing alongside Kyrie Irving and LeBron James . It’s going to prove difficult for Love to be traded for a package the Cleveland see fit, but some deal centered around Boogie for Love could work.”
It’s no secret that things between DeMarcus Cousins and the Sacramento Kings haven’t been great over the past months, and the tension was on display this week when Cousins openly questioned the team’s gameplan for the future. At the 2016 NBA Draft, the Kings traded down from the No. 8 pick to the No 13 pick to take center Georgios Papagiannis, despite having a slate of big men on the roster that includes Cousins, Willie Cauley-Stein, and Kosta Koufos.
As CBS Sports noted, Cousins appeared to vent his frustrations with the pick on Twitter.
“Lord give me strength,” he wrote along with an emoji of hands praying. Cousins later said that he was just referencing a hot yoga class, but the timing seemed more than a bit curious.
DeMarcus Cousins on Sacramento’s Offseason: ‘I Really Don’t Understand it’ https://t.co/qBfvb2EmTL
— SLAM (@SLAMonline) July 19, 2016
DeMarcus Cousins: “I don’t really understand” the Kings’ draft strategy https://t.co/Bw90H2RYgQ pic.twitter.com/0CfuMcAfu2
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) July 19, 2016
Cousins again hinted at his frustration this week, telling the Sacramento Bee ‘s Jason Jones that he’s resigned to whatever the team decides to do.
“I really don’t understand it,” he said in reference to the strange draft move, “but I do my job.”
After spending much of the early 2000s as one of the league’s strongest franchises, the Sacramento Kings have spent the last decade as the symbol of NBA futility, drifting from coach to coach with no semblance of progress. Cousins has been the only exception, with his strong play the thread that remained consistent through all the bad years.
The NBA rumors claim that DeMarcus Cousins is now ready to bolt the Kings and join a contender, and many see the Cleveland Cavaliers as a great fit. While the conventional thinking has been that the Kings would wait until the trade deadline to maximize their return for Cousins, SB Nation suggested that they could, instead, make a move now with a very motivated Cavs team as a partner. The report noted that LeBron James has yet to re-sign with the team after publicly announcing that he would strike a new deal, and a Cousins trade could be part of his return to the team he just carried to its first NBA title.
The NBA trade rumors surrounding the Cleveland Cavaliers don’t say exactly who they would ship to Sacramento in exchange for DeMarcus Cousins, but some reports are suggesting that big man Kevin Love — himself a fixture of the trade block — could finally be on his way out.
[Photo by Rich Pedroncelli/AP Images]