During the 2018–19 NBA season, DeMarcus Cousins was a member of the Golden State Warriors’ elite team. Regretfully, this implies that he witnessed all of the horrific injuries sustained by the team during the 2019 NBA Finals from a front row seat. After five years, he thought back on how disastrous everything had been and how he still felt about it all.
Cousins discussed the team’s belief that it was unbeatable—even in the middle of the NBA Finals—on The Knuckleheads podcast. But as he clarified, every athlete on the earth is susceptible to injuries, and it was this that caused the squad to collapse. He said,
“It was a rough run. It was a lot of hype with that team coming in, it was considered one of the greatest… Obviously it was pressure to win, and on top of being pressured to win, we wanted to win. We expected to win, we thought we were going to win it. But that injury bug bro! Nobody is exempt from it.”
DeMarcus Cousins talks about what it could have been
Cousins acknowledged that he wondered what would have happened if the squad had prevailed and continued to play as a unit. He said,
“You know, it sucks how it ended, because obviously that is the year KD [Kevin Durant] ended up leaving. So it was a lot that kind of went into that. But, you know I always think. Like, if would have won it that year, the way we were expected to, what would have happened from that point? What would the league have looked like moving forward?”
As Boogie mentioned, it would have been intriguing to see what the Warriors’ and the NBA’s overall futures would have looked like if Golden State had won the title in 2019.
But in the end, this all-time great side was unable to cope with the injury bug. Kevin Durant was one of the worst victims of the injury bug; he tore his Achilles tendon and therefore gave the championship to the Toronto Raptors.
