Golden State Warriors: Complete 2018 offseason grades

Stealing DeMarcus Cousins

Adding Boogie for the taxpayer Mid-Level Exception appears to require even less dissection than the Durant deal. In reality, health, fit and opportunity cost make this move much riskier.

The biggest question is not when Cousins will return, nor is it how close to 100 percent he will be at that moment. It’s how he will look come May and June, and who the Warriors are matched up against at that point. Remember, the Houston Rockets turned a healthy Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert into liabilities last postseason. The Boston Celtics did the same to Joel Embiid. Even a healthy Cousins may not be part of Golden State’s best, or even second-best lineup.

In this scenario, the signing will have been a mistake in retrospect. Sure, a fully-healthy Warriors team can play its four stars, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and Jordan Bell enough to make nothing else matter, but that’s a razor-thin margin of error. Losing just one of those seven (Iguodala) forced the team to play Nick Young major minutes last postseason. The MLE represented a chance to remedy that problem, but the Warriors instead gambled on Cousins.

The value is terrific. A team with virtually no financial flexibility replaced Zaza Pachulia and JaVale McGee with the most skilled offensive big man in the game.

As risky as the move is, risk aversion is more often a reigning champion’s downfall than riskiness itself. So too, can be hubris. The Cousins signing no doubt is a combination of both.

Grade: B