Los Angeles Lakers: How DeMarcus Cousins’ injury impacts the lineup

DeMarcus Cousins career with the Los Angeles Lakers may never take off as the all-star center reportedly suffered a torn ACL on Thursday.

Well, it looks like the Los Angeles Lakers are not going to get a reinvented DeMarcus Cousins after all, as the injury bug continues to follow the big man.

Cousins was working out in Las Vegas where he suffered a knee injury, which according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, appears to be a torn ACL.

Cousins is undergoing more tests to confirm whether or not it is a torn ACL, but either way, it is hard to be optimistic about a preseason knee injury to a big man.

This is gut-wrenching for Cousins, who was set to enter his first fully healthy season since rupturing his Achilles in January 2018. He was still somewhat shaky in his limited time with the Golden State Warriors and even suffered a quadriceps injury that held him out of action in the playoffs.

With that fully healed and more time to recover from the Achilles injury, there were high hopes that Cousins could once again be an all-star in 2019. Even if he was only 80 percent of what he was two years ago, that would still be an all-star-caliber center.

Now, if it is indeed a torn ACL, Cousins will be out of action for the entirety of the season, leaving the Los Angeles Lakers scrambling at what to do at the center position. At this point in the offseason, there really is no hugely impactful free agents, so the team is likely going to have to shuffle the lineup until a buyout occurs.

Luckily for the Lakers, the team has a pretty deep frontcourt that can respond and still fill out a solid starting five.

Anthony Davis is going to have to take up starting center duties, even though he said himself that he prefers power forward over center. Davis is the best suited for this role with his size, defensive presence and rebounding ability.

You could make the case for starting JaVale McGee but that would leave the Lakers with no backup option. Sure, Davis could serve as the “backup” center, but that would be foolish to do as it would just raise his minutes to an unmanageable level. Davis should start and McGee should be on the court when Davis needs to rest.

This opens the door for Kyle Kuzma to not only join the starting lineup but fill in the shoes of being the third star on the team. That is a narrative that has already been pushed around although it seemed more likely that Cousins would be the third star.

This is good for Kuzma and it is good that the Lakers have him to fall back on to be in the starting lineup. The one area where it does hurt the team is it gets rid of the team’s best bench player and will cause an uptick in minutes for Jared Dudley, who is not a bad player but certainly isn’t a difference-maker.

Having Kuzma get a solid number of minutes off the bench as the sixth man would have been huge for the playoffs. Every title-winning team has that impact bench player and Kuzma fit that role perfectly.

This also just about guarantees that LeBron James will not play the point guard position. While it already seemed likely, this opens up another forward spot for him to play to give way to the three point guards on the team.

Now the starting five appears to be Rajon Rondo, Danny Green, LeBron, Kuzma and Davis, although there is plenty of time for either Alex Caruso or Quinn Cook to win the starting job.

That also leaves the team with a second unit consisting of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Avery Bradley, Jared Dudley, JaVale McGee and one of Rondo, Caruso or Cook. That is not a terrible second unit but it certainly would have been better with Kuzma.

At the end of the day, DeMarcus Cousins was just a low-risk gamble with a potentially high pay-off. It just sucks that we now know for sure that this gamble is not going to pay off for the Los Angeles Lakers.