Anthony Davis Thinks DeMarcus Cousins Will Be Back ‘Stronger Than Ever’ With The Pelicans


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The New Orleans Pelicans took a huge hit when DeMarcus Cousins was injured last month, taking him out for the season. The undercurrent to that injury is that Cousins is a free agent after this season, and the state of the Pelicans seems to be shifting at any given moment. There was talk that the team might even consider trading away Anthony Davis, the young star that had made a formative duo for the Pelicans.

Cousins was on pace for a historic season before his Achilles injury left the Pelicans reeling, and Davis has largely been left as the lone star on the team that bears the brunt of the playoff expectations New Orleans entered the season with.

Yahoo’s Michael Lee wrote a profile of Davis on Friday and in it, the Pelicans forward seems confident that the duo New Orleans paired shortly after last All-Star Game in NOLA is not splitting up anytime soon.

The Pelicans sit at 31-26 and currently occupy the eighth seed in the Western Conference, so the playoffs are entirely possible despite the Cousins injury. But it’s hard not to think about how big a loss it was for Cousins to go down, something that Davis acknowledged in the interview as well.

“We just started figuring stuff out, went on a nice little win streak and when he went down, it kind of hurt us a lot. Took a lot of the scoring away, the defensive presence,” Davis told Yahoo Sports. “He was able to make me better. I was able to make him better. He did a great job of getting guys involved, passing the ball, setting screens. He was just good for me. He was good for the team. It was a tough one when he went down.”

Davis described Cousins in “good spirits” and told Lee that he’s optimistic that Boogie will be back with the Pelicans in the fall to continue their growth together.

“We talked. He’s in good spirits. We wish he could play,” Davis told Yahoo Sports. “He just want to hoop. He’ll be back, stronger than ever and we’ll go from there. Until then, we’ve just got to try to win games.”

It really sounds like Davis is holding things together in New Orleans, and he’s said before that he doesn’t want to leave, either. No matter what happens to the Pels this season, it will always be addressed with the question of what could have been. Davis hopes that Cousins’ injury doesn’t make that true of the seasons to come, either.

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