What is DeMarcus Cousins' trade value?
— -- According to a report by ESPN's Chris Broussard, Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive has so far resisted head coach George Karl's desire to trade star center DeMarcus Cousins. That's smart, because Cousins' bargain contract extension will make it difficult if not impossible for the Kings to get equal value in return.
Cousins' contract among NBA's best
Let's say a genie came along and offered your favorite team the rights to any player in the NBA for the remainder of their current contract. Three factors would inform that decision: the player's ability, of course, the salary and the number of years left on the deal.
With his performance last season, Cousins established himself as one of the league's 10 best players. He earned All-NBA Second Team honors and ranked 12th in my wins above replacement player (WARP) stat despite missing 23 games due to illness and injury. ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) rated him ninth in the NBA on a per-minute basis.
Since Cousins won't turn 25 until this summer, his 2014-15 performance establishes a baseline of what we can expect from him over the remaining three seasons on his contract with the possibility of improvement. There are a handful of players in the league who figure to be better, but not many, and crucially few of them are signed for as long as Cousins.
With the salary cap set to escalate quickly when the NBA's new television deals kick in next season, having a player signed to a long-term contract that values him at current levels of pay is a boon to teams. In 2017-18, the last season of his rookie extension, Cousins will make $18.1 million. That's 17.2 percent of the $105 million the salary cap is projected to rise to by then, making it equivalent to an $11.5 million salary with today's $67.1 million cap. Essentially, the Kings will be paying Cousins like Danilo Gallinari or Marcin Gortat while likely getting top-10 production.
We can estimate the value of Cousins' contract. Before this season, I looked at the 10 best in the league based on projected value (a combination of WARP and RPM) over the next three seasons, how much a win will be worth each season given the projected salary cap and the player's salary. Back then, Cousins didn't make the top 10. Because of his own improvement, the rise in the cap and other players' contracts moving a year closer to their completion, Cousins is now near the very top.
It turns out there is one contract unequivocally better than Cousins' deal. MVP runner-up James Harden will actually make slightly less money over the next three years than Cousins, and he figures to be more productive, making his contract far and away the league's best, from a team perspective. After that, you could make a case for taking two years of Stephen Curry -- who will make less over that span than Joe Johnson will just for 2015-16 --- or three of veteran Chris Paul. And this ranking doesn't quite capture the full value of Kyrie Irving's five-year contract extension, the league's longest, which will pay him at an old-cap rate well beyond the three years my player projections cover.
At worst, Cousins' contract is one of the five best in the league. And that means the kind of packages that have been bandied about as possible returns for Cousins can't compare.
Potential packages
ESPN's Marc Stein reported Monday that the Los Angeles Lakers have joined the teams pursuing Cousins in case Karl gets his way and Ranadive agrees to trade the big man. It's hard to see such a deal making sense for the Kings.
The Lakers do have a strong centerpiece to a potential deal with this year's No. 2 overall pick. Based on the typical production of second picks, we'd expect this player to be worth about $32 million above and beyond his salary during his rookie contract. (My analysis with colleague Jordan Brenner for a story in ESPN the Magazine found the typical No. 1 pick provides about $40 million in net value during the rookie contract.)
Alas, the Lakers don't have enough other talent on their roster to make up the difference. Last year's first-round pick, Julius Randle, adds another $14 million or so in net value, but second-round pick Jordan Clarkson has less than $4 million in net value because he has only one season remaining on his minimum-salary contract. Clarkson will be a restricted free agent in the summer of 2016 and is likely to be paid closer to his market value.
Even giving the Lakers' package a little bit of extra credit for the potential of drafting a superstar worth more than a maximum salary on his rookie extension, it's hard to match Cousins' value. And that's assuming the Lakers are willing to give up the No. 2 pick, Randle and Clarkson, which would leave them with virtually no young talent on the roster.
The Lakers' package looks far better than Karl getting his Denver Nuggets band back together, something Broussard reported interests the coach. Kenneth Faried's value is slightly understated here because this doesn't project out the final season of his four-year contract extension, but he and Ty Lawson will make about 50 percent more than Cousins over the next two seasons without providing as much on-court value. And Wilson Chandler actually has negative net value by this method.
The Nuggets might be able to put together a fair package for Cousins, but it would certainly have to include rising sophomore center Jusuf Nurkic ($32 million in net value over the remaining three years of his rookie contract) and the No. 7 overall pick ($21.4 million over the life of the rookie contract).
More likely, Sacramento won't be able to get equal value in return. Cousins' contract is simply too valuable at this point, making it prudent for the Kings to keep him and rebuild the rest of their limited roster.