Ever since the NBA season got delayed, offering up more time for injured players to rehab and get ready for the playoffs, many fans of the Los Angeles Lakers have been asking one simple question: Could the team sign DeMarcus Cousins for the playoffs?The short answer, according to cap expert Eric Pincus, is yes. The Lakers or any other team could theoretically sign Cousins, who was on the Lakers’ roster this season until they cut him to make room for Markieff Morris.
(Also, ICYMI, Markieff Morris and Dion Waiters are on the Lakers now. I know a few of you, like me, definitely forgot at one point or another during this quarantine. It’s been a long time since we had basketball).
Pincus cleared up the Cousins misconception in a recent article for Bleacher Report:
A common mistake is to assume that since the Lakers cut Cousins this season, they won’t be able to re-sign him. That’s simply not the case. If rosters expand to 17 players (or if they stay at 15 and the team makes a cut), L.A. could certainly bring Cousins back for the stretch run.
Perhaps the confusion is a similar rule. Had Los Angeles traded Cousins to another team and that franchise then chose to release him, the Lakers would be barred from bringing the center back as a free agent this season.
But even if they could, would the Lakers actually bring Cousins in? According to a few insiders Pincus spoke with, the answer is... it’s possible:Maybe,” one Western Conference executive said.
A former executive said of Cousins and the Lakers, “That’s the only team. He respects [LeBron James], and he’s [Anthony Davis’] boy. [Other teams] don’t want that distraction. There’s a small window of time to play, and you can’t let up.”
So this is a done deal then, right? The Lakers can sign a former All-Star for nothing, and Cousins will regain his prior form, help them further transform into a juggernaut, and win his first ring?
It’s a nice story, but in practice, bringing in Cousins may be less easy than that, even if it is legal and some executives can see it happening. For one, while there was speculation about teams getting to expand their rosters to prepare for the threat of coronavirus hitting their roster, it seems that isn’t really happening, as any additions would have to replace players on currently guaranteed contracts due to illness, injury or not wanting to play in Orlando. However, replaced players could not return. That leaves the Lakers back at the reason they cut Cousins in the first place: They didn’t have room on their roster.
“But Cousins might be healthy now!” I can practically hear some of you shouting. Possibly, but when (and if) the NBA resumes on July 30, it will still have been less than a year since he tore his ACL on Aug. 15, 2019, and generally players aren’t really close to themselves after that type of injury in less than a year, and in many cases it takes longer than that to come close to their prior form. And that’s without considering whether or not Cousins has had access to the same level of rehab players would normally get while the country has been in quarantine, which is definitely not a given in our current world.