The Golden State Warriors defeated the New Orleans Pelicans 125-115 last Friday night, but the big story coming out of that contest was the ejection of both DeMarcus Cousins and Kevin Durant.
Cousins is one of the NBA’s best agitators, and what looked like typical DeMarcus Cousins behavior quickly turned into quite the shouting match between he and Durant. The officials would eventually step in and eject them both, but their issue didn’t end there.
According to a new report from New York Times writer Scott Cacciola, the situation between Cousins and Durant got pretty serious behind the scenes. We knew that their argument had spilled into the locker room area, but now we have a first-hand report of how it all went down.
Security officers, aware that trouble was brewing, quickly diverted Durant to a small corridor as several others slowed Cousins’s progress. “Shut the door! Shut the door!” the officers shouted at one another up and down the hallway.
[Warriors director of team operations, Eric] Housen, meanwhile, ran ahead of Cousins and stood in his path. Cousins, who is 6 feet 11 and 270 pounds but somehow seems even more enormous when angry, was eventually persuaded by security to return to his own locker room, and Housen (5-10, 185) resumed the far more pedestrian chore of packing equipment.
And indeed, there’s photographic evidence of said security work.
NBA players get into on-court arguments all the time with the understanding that most of these guys have a lot of mutual respect towards one another when they step off the court. This is particularly true when you’re dealing with two players like Durant and Cousins that have spent a lot of time together playing for USA Basketball. After seeing that photo, and reading Cacciola’s report, it doesn’t sound like Cousins and Durant were worried about that respect last week, and it’ll be interesting to see how they interact in their next matchup.
