DeMarcus Cousins has now suffered three serious lower body injuries in the last year-and-a-half, and one NBA counterpart believes that there may have been a lack of diligence in recovering from the earlier ones.
After news broke Thursday that the Los Angeles Lakers big had suffered a torn ACL during a workout, Brooklyn Nets forward Wilson Chandler weighed in on Twitter. Chandler, who missed over a month last season with a quad strain, said Cousins may have rushed back from his own quad tear in the playoffs.
“People don’t take that quad injury serious enough. I know firsthand. Dealing with it now,” he wrote. “You have to start from ground zero. No basketball, no conditioning. Let that s— completely heal. Then get it strong as possible.
“And all the muscles surrounding it. All the boring s—,” he added. “If not you’ll keep re-tearing it. And/or injuring other areas from overcompensating.”
Cousins, who suffered a ruptured right Achilles in Feb. 2018, tore his left quad in the first round of the playoffs with the Golden State Warriors on Apr. 15. It was initially believed to be a season-ending injury, but the four-time All-Star returned to action for Game 1 of the NBA Finals about six weeks later.
At the time, Cousins admitted that his conditioning was a problem, and now there may be some retroactive noise about whether he should have even been out there in the Finals.
