DeMarcus Cousins talks KSR, almost transferring from Kentucky, Billy G., and more

Why did DeMarcus Cousins consider transferring from Kentucky? What did he think of Billy Gillespie? Who are his top five players in the Calipari era? On a recent edition of the Outta Pocket podcast, Boogie riffed on all sorts of topics, many of which revolved around his time leading up to and in Lexington. He even gave Kentucky Sports Radio a shoutout.

As great as Cousins’ career has been, it has been riddled with bad luck. He most recently played with the Denver Nuggets last season, but the team inexplicably replaced him with DeAndre Jordan, a player with half his talent.

In his free time, Cousins recently attended broadcasting classes at USC, and put those vocal talents and big personality to work. Here are some highlights of his hour-long conversion that is definitely worth your time.

The Boogie origin and a KSR shoutout

By now, most of us have either heard or remember the story of how Cousins got the nickname Boogie. Rod Strickland coined the name during practice and from there, the way he tells it:

“[The nickname Boogie] kind of started off as a practice thing and there was this blog site that covered Kentucky basketball at the time. This was before Instagram, Twitter, and all that. You had to go type in if you were trying to go read the blog. This was like the number one site and it was huge for the Kentucky fan base. They kinda started this random day poll on what my nickname should be…and there was some weird s—, like a whole bunch of different names. So they ended up choosing the Boogie name and it stuck.”

Not to be a complete history nerd about this, but “Big Cuz” actually won that poll. However, KSR did help make the name Boogie stick and propagated it throughout the basketball world. A world, mind you, that Kentucky lived atop for the entire season.

No one will ever convince me that if Jodie Meeks was on that team that they would not have gone undefeated and won the National Championship.

Cousins calls Calipari, “Slick as a can of grease”

Of course, John Calipari was at Memphis during DeMarcus Cousins’ recruitment, having just de-committed from UAB (a decision that Cousins said that had he not made, his life would have been drastically different.) On a trip to Memphis, Cousins fell in love with the game of Shawne Williams, a 6’10” forward that Cal was playing at the small forward position. A big man with a smooth shot who could dribble up the court? That’s who Boogie wanted to be. In his words:

“The first thing I asked Cal when he came to visit me was, ‘So if I came to your school would you let me play like Shawne Williams?’ What do you think he told me? Hell yeah! And I’m like, ‘Okay! This is perfect.’

Cal’s slick as a can of grease. Cal’s cool as hell. That’s the GOAT. But obviously, he does what any other coach does and tells you what you want to hear.”

This served as a great setup for a story he tells about his time at Kentucky, but first, he had to get in an obligatory shot at Billy Clyde Gillespie.

Cousins instantly recognized Gillespie as “Crazy as hell”

After Boogie’s sophomore year in high school, he attended a summer camp at Kentucky, where the notorious Billy Clyde Gillespie coached at the time. If all the unbelievable Gillespie stories were written on Post-It notes, they would fill Rupp Arena, so Cousins’ experience may not be at the top of the jaw-dropping scale, but DeMarcus immediately spotted Gillespie’s outlandishness a mile away.

“Gillespie calls me up to his office and gives me this pitch. I don’t think he knew who I was until after the camp. He says, ‘You know, I’d love to coach you.’ Typical [BS], whatever. But then he invites me to their practice [and that’s when I was like], ‘Oh, hell no!’

This dude was out of his mind! Screaming. Veins [popping out]. I’m like, ‘Ain’t no way in hell I’m playing for this dude!’ The practice, it was like, insane. And you kinda gotta know the Billy G. backstory. It’ll make sense.

This was summer! I’m like, ‘This dude is crazy!’ I don’t even know what it was; it wasn’t an official practice, but I’m just like, ‘This dude is crazy…I don’t want nothing to do with this s—.'”

This would have been Billy’s first summer on campus so for him to make that bad of an impression on a recruit of DeMarcus’s status (after not even knowing who he was) was typical Billy G. It may have been around the same time or even the same practice when Gillespie allegedly kicked John Wall out of practice for laughing on the sideline.

So, when you’re upset with Cal for not running an inbounds play, remember it used to be unfathomably worse.

Cousins thought about transferring from Kentucky

When Calipari took the Kentucky job, he tried to convince Memphis commit, DeMarcus Cousins, to come with him. Cousins had already seen Kentucky from his Gillespie encounter and basically said, “Screw it. I’ll go with Cal to Kentucky.”

It made sense. He didn’t want to open up his recruitment for the third time and trusted Cal would do right by him. After all, Cal told him he could play the 3 like Shawne Williams.

It turns out, that promise didn’t even last through the first practice.

“That first practice came. I got a rebound and took off. I didn’t make a mistake, nothing. I made it past half court with the ball and Cal blew the whistle, stops practice.

‘What the —- are you doing?!’

I’m like, ‘What?! I’m playing my game.’

He was like, ‘I got the number one pick next year at point guard and I got my ——- center dribbling the ball. As long you put on this Kentucky uniform, I don’t ever want to see you do that again.”

At this point, like most jarring introductions to new experiences, Cousins is wondering what he got himself into. “This dude has lied to me and I signed my life over to him.”

He did show Cal some love, in what sounded like some retrospective appreciation.

“You know, Cal plays so many mind games with you, but with the intention of making you better. It’s always about making you better. [But in the moment, I didn’t know that] so he was playing all these little mind games with me and I was [messed up]. I [thought I] made a mistake.”

Mom to the rescue. Like even non-high-profile athletes’ parents who get that call from their 18-year-old child during their first couple of weeks of college begging to come home, Cousins’ mom encouraged him to stick it out.

But his roommate, John Wall, was going through similar frustrations (remember the “I’m not having any fun” quote?) and the two would vent to each other often. Cousins asked Wall, “You trying to transfer?” but Wall was going to be the #1 pick in the draft regardless so leaving wasn’t an option for him. So, Cousins told himself, “I gotta figure it out too.”

Eventually, figure it out he did. He learned what Cal wanted out of him and grew to love his time at Kentucky. However, he still sounds a little miffed he didn’t get to hoist up a single 3-pointer during his college career.

Who are Boogie’s top 5 players of the Cal era?

It is a debate we have all had multiple times over. Who is your starting five players of the Calipari era? The parameters are that this only applied to their college days. Their pro career was not taken into consideration. Sorry, Book.

Cousins said the top three are easy. Himself, John Wall, and Anthony Davis. He called that trio the pioneers of making Kentucky cool again, a fact undeniably true. After that though, he says it gets tricky.

He named dropped Jamal Murray, Eric Bledsoe, Brandon Knight, Tyler Ulis, and Terrence Jones, but didn’t want to commit to anyone outside of the top three.

He later talked about his top five point guards of all time and made it clear Chris Paul would not make his list. I guess the Phoenix Suns won’t be calling for his services anytime soon.

What’s next for DeMarcus Cousins?

Cousins is still working out every day, staying ready for when that call might come. There were rumors he might join Dwight Howard in the Tawainese professional league, but nothing official has been announced.

Cousins has a good relationship with many top executives in the league but admits his reputation, among the other barriers like lack of available roster spots, cap room, and politics limits his options. Teams are nervous about what he might do purely based on a somewhat unfair negative perception. They think he’ll do the unthinkable and have unfortunately type-casted him unfavorably.

If playing overseas does not pan out and an NBA team doesn’t do the right thing and give him a roster spot, Cousins may look for a chair behind a microphone instead. He recently attended broadcast classes in an effort to polish up the other talents he has. You might not see him get behind an ESPN studio desk, but he is down for podcasts.

“I feel like I’m well-rounded. I feel like I can speak on any topic. I may not be a genius on every topic but I’m gonna at least have some type of knowledge behind it. I think I have a lot of insight I could give; a lot of knowledge, and I’ve been around the block.”

Fair warning: the podcast is rife with language not safe for work, but the whole hour is worth a listen, as he goes more in-depth about playing under Kentucky’s bright lights in an unfiltered DeMarcus Cousins style.

Boogie for president.