DeMarcus Cousins has a new home in hoops and it’s a strange one. The 2016 Olympic champion and 4 time NBA All Star is going to play 3×3 basketball. Emmet Ryan examines the strange twist in Boogie’s career
It’s been a strange and often interesting road for DeMarcus Cousins since his last NBA stop with the Denver Nuggets. He has taken his basketball east, really far east, since. That has led to an opportunity in the FIBA 3×3 World Tour.
What on earth is going on?
For those who have missed it. DeMarcus Cousins has signed up to play for Wuxi WenLv for the remainder of the FIBA 3×3 World Tour. In theory he could make his debut as soon as Saturday, in the Xiong’an Challenger, but that’s not the main reason he’s been signed.
There are five main World Tour events coming up in China, including one each in Macau, and Hong Kong, in the season run in. The last of these is the Tour Finals and the biggest non-national team event of the year in 3×3 basketball.
Boogie might also appear at the aforementioned challenger in Xiong’an as well as challenger events in Tianjin, China, and Pocheon, South Korea. He’ll probably be needed at all three if Wuxi don’t get wildcards to the main tour events.
That previous segment made no sense to me
Right. DeMarcus Cousins is going to play 3×3 basketball, which was wildly popular at the Olympics. It’s a reduced version of the game played over 10 minutes, on a condensed half court, and is entirely built around tournament play. Whereas the Olympics feature national teams, the FIBA 3×3 World Tour has teams nominally representing cities.
The best way of describing the tour is a cross between Formula 1 and tennis. Like the latter, it’s all about the big stops in a broad spread of cities and everything happening in one weekend. The tour resembles tennis in that it has levels. The World Tour events are the equivalent of the Cincinnati and Rome tournaments on the ATP/WTA tours. Then there are challenger events which teams not on the main tour enter to try and qualify for those main tour spots. That’s just like tennis, even with the name. The level below these, Quest, is for teams to play in to get up to the Challenger level.
Everything culminates in the World Tour Final in Hong Kong in November. This is like the ATP Tour Finals combined with the Grand Slams. It’s the big one. Only 12 teams will compete in that. There will be 11 qualifiers based on tour rankings. The last spot will be decided by a playoff. The team with the most wins across both Challenger and World Tour events, and Hong Kong, the hosts, all get a shot.
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So why did a team sign Boogie?
Wild cards. Having DeMarcus Cousins, a bona fide former NBA star, on the roster immediately raises Wuxi’s profile. In turn, that improves their chances of getting invites to World Tour events as a wild card entrant. To make the finals, they need as many appearances on the main tour as possible.
Right now, they sit 27th in the overall standings with just 34 points. That’s far off the current 11th ranked team, Liman on 160 points. That is the type of gap that can be gobbled up quickly with a good enough roster and a few big tour performances.
It’s also not exactly like Wuxi have star power on their roster. Their highest ranked player in the 3×3 rankings is Haoran Huang, the 149th best player in the world. Cousins won’t be moving a top guy or an emerging star out of his spot in the rotation. Granted, there is going to still be a big adjustment for Cousins as this is a very different style of play. Still, his inside game translates well to 3×3 and his outside shooting since leaving the NBA has been solid.
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What’s in it for him?
DeMarcus Cousins has openly made peace with his NBA career being over. Since leaving the Denver Nuggets in 2022 he’s become a bit of a global traveller. He led Mets de Guaynabo to the semi finals of the basketball league in Puerto Rico, including shooting 44 per cent from deep.
Then he properly hit the road, guiding the gloriously named Taiwan Beer Leopards to the T1 League championship, his first of any kind outside of a USA jersey. This run ended with him winning Finals MVP and being named the league’s most popular player.
East Asia is a fertile market for basketball stars from the US. In particular, big men with big personalities and a name that resonates, can draw significant money there with relative little pressure. While the CBA in China may not be his target, and would represent an enormous step up in class from how he has spent the past two years, a run with Wuxi would get him on that radar.
If Boogie likes his experience on the FIBA 3×3 World Tour, he might consider the Jimmer Fredette approach. A focus on 3×3, in particular under FIBA’s auspices, might get him in contention to play for the USA in the 2028 Olympics in LA.
It’s a huge win for FIBA
There is zero downside for FIBA in DeMarcus Cousins playing for Wuxi. There are two forces in 3×3 basketball. There’s FIBA and then there’s Ice Cube’s Big3. The latter is far better known in the US and FIBA barred the Netherlands, who won gold in Paris, from playing an exhibition at the Big3 finals.
Boogie immediately gives the type of star power to FIBA’s competitions that the Big3 has traded on. If he does well, they can build a narrative out of him trying to become the first player to win Olympic gold in both regular basketball and 3×3. If he fails, FIBA can point to how even a 4 time NBA All Star couldn’t adapt to the quality of its offering.
He already has more people talking about a product that is just waiting for someone to boost it to the next level. There’s also a good chance he’s going to just have a lot of fun with crowds coming out for him above all else.
