Warriors head coach Steve Kerr provided a positive update on marquee offseason signing DeMarcus Cousins on Monday night, saying the center will be more involved in practice and scrimmages as he recovers from a torn ACL sustained last season.
On Tuesday, Kerr joined Tolbert & Lund to provide more information on Cousins, this time regarding how the Warriors are planning on using the center when he’s ready for game action.
“I think you’ll see us use him in that David West role from the last couple years, when David anchored the second unit,” Kerr said. “I think you’ll see us play through DeMarcus once he’s back, and we’ll put him on the low block and have guys cutting around him.”
Over the past two seasons, the Warriors ran their offense though West at the beginning of the second and fourth quarters, taking advantage of his exceptional passing ability. Cousins shares that ability, averaging 5.4 assists per game last year.
“The other thing that we can do that we haven’t really had a big capable of doing since I’ve been here, is putting him in some high screens and popping him out to the 3-point line,” Kerr continued. “He’s a really good 3-point shooter, he’s got amazing soft hands, soft touch, and then he can pass from out there too.”
Cousins shot over 35 percent from deep last year, an improvement on his career average of 33.8 percent.
“So it’s going to be fun to try and experiment with him and to try to find the right niche for him, and I know he’s excited and we’re all excited, but in the meantime it’s fun to watch Damian Jones and he’s come along and had a great start to the season.”
Kerr also made an interesting comparison regarding Jones, who had a breakout performance on Monday.
“I think he’s a little bit like Clint Capela for Houston. What he does for Houston, just plays off of (James) Harden and (Chris) Paul, Damian is just playing off of other people. When you have that threat at that rim it just adds to your spacing, because now the other team has to account for that lob threat, and then you’ve got the shooters out on the 3-point line as well. So he makes it much more difficult for defenses to cover all that ground.”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Kerr on Cousins, start from 12:20