Pelicans Coach Alvin Gentry Believes DeMarcus Cousins Is The Team’s Best Three-Point Shooter

The New Orleans Pelicans have quite a bit of talent. In the frontcourt, it would be difficult to find a more dangerous duo than DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis and, at the point guard spot, Jrue Holiday is exceedingly solid at the point of attack.

However, everything in between is kind of a mess for the Pelicans on paper and head coach Alvin Gentry inadvertently shined a light on that uncertainty on Monday. In short, Gentry indicated to Marc Spears of ESPN that Boogie Cousins might, in fact, be his best shooter from beyond the three-point arc.

At first blush, this seems absurd but, in fact, it isn’t quite as crazy as you may think. Cousins did trail two of his returning teammates, Jordan Crawford and Dante Cunningham, in three-point percentage (37.5 percent) a season ago but his numbers are within the margin of error. The crazy part, though, is that a bulky center like Cousins could possibly be the best team on a Western Conference playoff hopeful, especially in light of the fact that the former Kentucky star was not a three-point threat in the slightest for much of his tenure in Sacramento.

The cold reality is that, well, the Pelicans have very little talent on the wing right now and the team’s free agent acquisitions did not exactly take shooting into account. New Orleans added Rajon Rondo and Tony Allen this summer and, while both can bring valuable traits to the equations, the two vets are not exactly known for floor-spacing. Holiday is a capable shooter, Davis can stretch the floor for his size and players like E’Twaun Moore and Ian Clark can shoot a bit as well. Still, it’s not exactly pretty on the perimeter outside of Holiday’s overall steadiness.

DeMarcus Cousins probably isn’t the best three-point shooter on the Pelicans but the fact that it was close enough for his head coach to mention is both troubling and strangely intriguing.