Looming Cousins-Kings ‘Boogiedom' deal makes perfectly mutated sense

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DeMarcus Cousins, whose last big performance with the Sacramento Kings was punching out a defenseless chair, has apparently won the increased admiration of owner Vivek Ranadive and is about to become the signatory to a new mega-max contract that will pay him $207 million by the end of the 2022-23 season.

It is not yet known if the chair contemplates a civil suit given Cousins’ newfound riches.

But the new deal marks the evident cementing of one the National Basketball Association’s most bizarre fun-couple relationships. The Kings have frustrated the hell out of Cousins for years, and Cousins has frustrated the Kings for years, so why not do a deal that allows them to irritate each other for another six years?

There’s no reason at all. None whatsoever.

It is acknowledged by most people within the NBA diaspora that Cousins is the most gifted post man in the league. It is also acknowledged that he is six feet and 11 inches of exposed nerve endings, thereby making him must-see TV for any number of reasons.

So maybe Ranadive sees Cousins as the fulcrum for the next great reality show – “Life With And Without Boogie” seems like the logical counterprogramming to “The Bachelor,” which at some point must die the hideous death it deserves.

But we digress.

However you view Cousins, he is the quintessential King. Indeed, he is the quintessential Ranadive King – well-meaning, hard-working but almost cartoonishly volatile to the point of nightly meme-hood.

And if you can’t win (which the Kings can’t, at least not in the foreseeable future), you may as well meme.

The Kings have been the NBA’s longest enduring sitcom since taking over for the Donald Sterling Clippers in 2014, and alternating with the Clips before that. They have tested the patience of their fans so many times in so many ways that they are best suited to understand and roll with Cousins’ many walks into the woods.

So yes, this deal will make perfectly mutated sense to them. The money is absurd, the length is nerve-wracking, and it makes him all that much harder to move if either he or they weary of each other, but it screams Boogiedom. In fact, make that sentence read, “And as a result of all those things, it screams Boogiedom.”

Besides, and this is a question for those few poeple who are not diehard Kings fans, would you care about the Kings at all if not for Cousins?

Let me help you with that a bit. No. You wouldn’t.

Thus, he is worth every one of Ranadive’s dimes he can collect, all two-billion of them. May he never be traded, and may he never ask for a trade. And even if they try, and even if he does ask, may it never happen. This is a marriage made in the Bizarro World, and when he retires, the Kings must retire him in their rafters at the Golden 1.

Not his number. Him. In the flesh. Sacramento fans would totally get it.

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