Scott Cacciola wrote a tremendous profile in Friday’s New York Times about Warriors director of team operations Eric Housen. The entire piece is worth a read, but an especially interesting anecdote opens the story, revealing that DeMarcus Cousins was searching the hallways of the Smoothie King Center for Kevin Durant, shortly after the two were ejected for an altercation in the Warriors-Pelicans game Monday. Durant was diverted into a small corridor until Cousins was convinced to return to his own locker room.
In his endless quest to prevent various calamities from befalling the N.B.A.’s most glamorous collection of stars, Housen left the locker room on Monday to find that Cousins was storming down the hallway in search of Durant, who was making his way off the court after his ejection and toward the locker room. Security officers, aware that trouble was brewing, quickly diverted Durant to a small corridor as several others slowed Cousins’s progress.
“Shut the door! Shut the door!” the officers shouted at one another up and down the hallway.
Housen, meanwhile, ran ahead of Cousins and stood in his path. Cousins, who is 6 feet 11 and 270 pounds but somehow seems even more enormous when angry, was eventually persuaded by security to return to his own locker room, and Housen (5-10, 185) resumed the far more pedestrian chore of packing equipment.
Durant downplayed the incident after the game, saying he wasn’t going to fight anybody. It doesn’t sound like DeMarcus was thinking the same thing.