Sacramento Kings Hope For Best With DeMarcus Cousins

The Sacramento Kings were hanging in with the Los Angeles Clippers for much of the first half Saturday night and continued to play their unbeaten foe tough in a 114-109 loss.

That they did it in the second half without All-Star DeMarcus Cousins was testimony to a team that might have improved its mental toughness with a training camp under coach George Karl under its belt.

The test gets harder Tuesday and Wednesday as the Kings play a home-road, back-to-back set with the Memphis Grizzlies (Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph) and the Phoenix Suns (Tyson Chandler, Alex Len, Markieff Morris).

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Cousins didn’t play the second half Saturday night because of soreness in his right Achilles and he will miss at least the games with Memphis and at Phoenix, per Bill Herenda of KFBK-AM in Sacramento:

Let’s rewind about a year, when the Kings were the toast of the league after a 9-6 start that featured Boogie playing like a star, averaging 23.5 points, 12.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.5 blocks and 1.1 steals per game and shooting 51.2 percent from the floor and 80.6 percent at the line.

Best of all, Cousins hadn’t even sniffed a three-pointer. Coach Mike Malone had Cousins playing disciplined basketball on both ends of the floor and the Kings were (gasp!) winning.

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Cousins then missed the next 10 games with viral meningitis.

When he returned, Sacramento was 11-14 and Malone had already been fired, replaced by assistant coach Tyrone Corbin.

The season was officially on the skids. The Kings finished 29-53 and Corbin was later fired and replaced by Karl as owner Vivek Ranadive went full Oprah. (You get a coach’s check! And you get a coach’s check!)

The Kings are 1-2 out of the gate, but are 1-0 against teams not named “Los Angeles Clippers).

With Cousins out Saturday, backup center Kosta Koufos played 17 minutes in the second half, with starting center Willie Cauley-Stein logging 11 minutes and backup forward Omri Casspi logging 11 as well.

To match up with Memphis’ behemoths of Gasol and Randolph, it’s likely to fall to Cauley-Stein and Koufos (who backed up Gasol the last two seasons in Memphis) to do the heavy lifting.

It can’t help the Kings’ cause that the Grizzlies will make the roughly 90-mile drive from Oracle Arena in Oakland to Sleep Train Arena in California’s capitol feeling a bit surly after a 50-point beatdown administered by the Golden State Warriors on Monday night.

The Kings will be rested. The Grizzlies will be pissed. We’ll see how that dynamic plays out.

Cousins was off to another solid start this season, sliding over to play the 4 in a monster front line with Cauley-Stein and Rudy Gay.

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Even without playing the second half on Saturday, he’s averaged 22 points and 11 boards through three games, shooting 42 percent as he’s fallen back in love with the 3-ball (he’s 4-for-10 in three games after taking only eight shots from deep all last season).

It’s not reducing his rebounding effectiveness too much yet (a league-high 36.3 percent defensive rebounding rate, per basketball-reference.com) or his ability to get to the free-throw line (27 attempts in three games after averaging 9.2 trips to the stripe per night in 2014-15).

But Achilles tendons are scary things. A ruptured tendon is an injury that is a season killer for sure and, depending on when they happen, one that can linger into the following year (the freakish Wesley Matthews proving an exception to this rule for the Dallas Mavericks this season).

Where the Kings will be hampered most without Cousins at the offensive end is without his passing ability. Cousins has seven assists in 78 minutes. Cauley-Stein and Koufos have combined for four in 134 minutes.

All the Kings can do now is weather the storm without Cousins and that the injury will respond to rest and treatment.

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After all, if it lingers, there’s never a guarantee in Sacramento that the coach’s office won’t have been redecorated by the time he gets back.