It happened. It happened. It finally happened. DeMarcus Cousins has been traded, the Sacramento Kings finally acting after months – years – of speculation. The man they call Boogie is now officially a New Orleans Pelican, linking him up with Anthony Davis, the 2017 All Star Game MVP, in what in theory becomes the strongest frontcourt in the whole damn league.

Two players potentially among the 15 best in the NBA, definitely within the 20 best. It’s enough to turn the Pelicans from a fringe competitor in the race for the eighth seed in the West to… well, at this stage in the season probably only a competitor in the race for the eighth seed in the West. But you don’t start an article about a move involving the Sacramento Kings by talking about anyone else, come on now.

The immediate reaction was that the Kings had shot themselves in the foot yet again. A franchise player and they’d let him go for dimes on the dollar, as they say. Buddy Hield (who was the sixth pick in the last draft), Tyreke Evans (on an expiring contract), Langston Galloway (to fill out the salaries) and the Pelicans’ first and second round picks in the 2017 draft. Omri Casspi went back the other way with Cousins, again to keep things clean on the money side.

It’s not a great haul but, much like the last infamous trade of its kind: James Harden to the Rockets, it’d be rude to start throwing rotten fruit before they cash in those draft picks. The Thunder picked up Steven Adams and he’s now an untradeable asset in their eyes. Not quite the MVP candidate of Harden but that situation was complicated. So is this one.

Problem for the Kings is that they’re pretty terrible at drafting. Oh and they also don’t get good free agents because they’ve been a mess for several years and players don’t wanna get on that rollercoaster. So… how are you gonna improve this team? You’re not. Not in the short term at least, sorry. Buddy Hield is a player that a lot of people like but he’s a rookie shooting under 40%. That will improve and Hield can become a high level talent at his utmost upside… although maybe not as high as Kings owner Vivek Ranadive seems to think.

Tyreke Evans, he’s been there before. He went from the Kings to the Pelicans and now back to the Kings and why would he stay beyond this season when he can leave as a free agent for a much better team? Evans is a quality wing. He can certainly help a playoff team in the future – something that the Kings haven’t been in a decade and don’t look like being again for a long time - and his impact this season likely won't be great given he's been on a minutes restriction after cumulative injury worries. As for Galloway, he’ll be gone after this season too but nobody really cares. Also they’re releasing Matt Barnes to clear the room on their roster. Also not a big deal.

Meaning the pressure is on the Kings to develop Hield and make good of those picks, otherwise they’ll never hear the end of this. But they sort of had their hands forced too. The new CBA included clauses that make it easier for teams to re-sign the blokes that they drafted. Pretty much the NBA and the Players’ Association wanted to stop from Kevin Durant doing what he did again, except it backfired here because of a rare case where a team wasn’t completely sold on their star lad. The Kings were reticent to give Cousins the max deal he’d have demanded – a max that would have (at least temporarily) been the richest deal in NBA history. Not only that but they wouldn’t have been able to trade him for another year. So really it came down to now or never, make a call.

Guts for Cousins though, that monster contract was only available if he stayed in Sacramento so this trade is gonna cost him something around US$30m in contract bucks. Although that doesn’t take into account the emotional relief.

For all the talent of Boogie Cousins, he’s got his dramas. Leading the NBA in ejections and technical fouls this season, the lad is notoriously temperamental. Year after year the Kings try to appease him and control him and enable him and nothing has worked yet. Teammates get frustrated with him and coaches fall out with him – remember George Karl’s reign? On the flipside, it’s never been easy for him playing for this franchise. He’s gone through more starting point guards and head coaches than some players will in a career. Worst of all, they’ve consistently lost. Seven seasons with the Kings and seven losing records. A win percentage of 35.3%.

The question comes down to perspective. Does Boogie lose because of the Kings or do the Kings lose because of Boogie? It doesn’t matter because either way they’re still losing. Sacramento has made several moves over the last couple years trying to get Cousins as much help as possible and some of them (*cough* Rondo *cough*) were downright laughable. Now it seems they’ve finally bitten the bullet and hit the reset button.

Problem is it ain’t easy to demand full value for players mid-season, even for a dude as good as Boogie. Clearly other teams have the same reservations about Cousins as the Kings do because this haul in return just doesn’t compare to what the Pelicans got. When the trade rumours really got serious, funnily enough on the same day as the All Star Game which was held in New Orleans (and which Cousins only played a couple of minutes after claiming he was injured), there was Woj talk that Kings GM Vlade Divac was hoarding offers and would present the best two to Vivek who’d have the final say. That they were out making calls is how this story became public but most of the details have been kept quiet.

We know that the Celtics have been interested for ages but they didn’t want to trade the Brooklyn pick (almost certain to go number one in 2017) and the Kings didn’t consider them among the top few. The Mavericks were interested but don’t have much to trade (and are probably better off tanking at the moment) while the likes of the Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers and Minnesota Timberwolves are already committed to their centres. The Los Angeles Lakers were interested but the Kings wanted Brandon Ingram and he was never on the table from LAL’s perspective. Plus they’re being very careful in trying to keep their 2017 first rounder which is only top three protected. The Knicks and the Suns could have scraped up something, a couple first rounders or whatever, but then neither of them had the prodigy Buddy Hield to offer.

By the way, the Pelicans first rounder that the Kings are getting is top three protected. Shouldn’t matter but you never know – Davis is injury prone and if they do miss the playoffs and get an unlikely lottery ball going their way then you’d be kicking yourself if you didn’t put in that protection – especially when the Kings probably just said ‘yeah sure’ for the hell of it to push the move through.

As for those pesky Pelicans, well they’ve now got a superstar frontcourt and have kept hold of Jrue Holiday as well to give them a leading trio worth a playoff spot. As to whether they’ll get that spot, who knows with the Denver Nuggets also making moves recently and several more to come from elsewhere before the trade deadline hits, but either way they’ll still have this core next year (assuming Holiday now re-signs, and why wouldn't he?). Plus they didn’t give up too much comparably. It’s worth the risk that Cousins walks at the end of his contract.

Anthony Davis is a magical player, who can cover both power forward and centre. As of late he’s been logging more minutes at centre although his game is better suited to PF where it’s that little bit less physical and his jump shot has more room to thrive. The value he offered stretching the floor at C, that’s also covered by Cousins who can hit threes – in fact he’s hit more threes than Buddy Hield has this season. Both of these guys are averaging more than 25 points per game with 10 rebounds – only Russell Westbrook can match that.

How Cousins merges with his new teammates will be in sharp focus given how things ended with Sacramento. One thing that’ll be different is that he won’t be the main man here, Davis has been a hero in New Orleans for four years and just won ASG MVP in front of these fans. That could be difficult for Boogie, but probably not. The last decade of basketball suggests that modern players don’t tend to have too many reservations about this stuff, they enjoy playing with better dudes and Kevin Durant’s season in Golden State shows that in bold letters. Kobe and Shaq? Sure, but while Cousins has his moments, Davis is a quiet bloke without much of an ego. He’s also had himself a tough time in New Orleans as the team has struggled to build a roster around him. The last two seasons, largely because of injuries to be fair, have been disastrous.

This season, there’s a fine line between disastrous and just good enough in the West. The top seven seeds look set in concrete but the Nuggets currently occupy eighth and they’re nursing a 25-31 record – the Pelicans only two wins behind that. Bad news for the Trail Blazers and Mavericks who thought they had a shot at the playoffs.

The price may have been higher too but safe to say that NOP got a better deal here than they would have gotten in the Okafor trade that they were close to last week. It does mean they probably have to trade Terrence Jones (a mutual decision) but Terrence Jones is worth more to someone else right now. Although if this trade (and they Ibaka one before it) prove anything it’s that tough to get value back in the trade market. The upcoming draft is strong and deep and the bigger salaries of 2016-17 and the smarter salary cap cooking makes the juggle of trades pretty tough.

To be honest, the Kings were gonna be average if Cousins was there or not. It doesn’t matter that Divac says he had better offers for Cousins a couple days ago, the damage done to that franchise over the last few years is too much to overcome in one foul swoop. This is the first step towards fixing things, the process will be long and arduous. Yes, the process. Now that DeMarcus is free of that situation they spare themselves the immediate pressure to get good in a hurry. There’s a clear focus now and if that’s gonna mean things get worse before they get better, well, at least there’s a chance they might someday get better.

So forget the shambolic Kings and let them figure their own dramas out in blessed obscurity for a while. Instead say a few words of praise for DeMarcus Cousins, who finally has his freedom, and for Anthony Davis, who finally has his relevance. No, they won’t beat the Golden State Warriors if they make the playoffs, that’s not what this is about. It’s a power move from a team previously without any. It’s a consolidatory move that positions them tastily ahead of free agency. It’s an ambitious move that shows they mean business and can back that up in the boardroom. And it’s a marketing move that pairs two of the best players in the league together and we, mere basketball fans, get to watch that. Chur.