The future for DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis is now and maybe never

Plus, how long can the Celtics keep this up?

To watch these New Orleans Pelicans is to bear witness to the perils of potential. It's a familiar predicament for young upstarts: The boom-or-bust stakes, the pressures of living up to expectations.

For the most part, failure is an option for teams on the rise. It is the safety valve if the forecasts or the highlights outpace the development. The Minnesota Timberwolves, following two straight offseasons in the hype-machine, withered on the vine during the 2016-17 regular season. But patience and optimism persisted. All that, not to mention the arrival of Jimmy Butler, has been prologue to their strong start to this season.

If the Philadelphia 76ers fizzle out and miss the 2018 NBA playoffs, guess what? There's always next year.

In 12 games, the Pelicans are outscoring teams by 7.7 points per 100 possessions when Davis and Cousins share the floor. They're exceptionally intelligent, and unlike other big duos, the inside-out modern dexterity of their games prevents them from getting in each other’s way. Together, they draw a blueprint for giving the Golden State Warriors fits: Shooting, post-ups, pick-and-roll acuity, coupled with the instinct and size to anchor a defense. To watch Cousins, at 6'11, run the break and find Davis for an alley-oop is to catch a glimpse of the glimmering, dunktastic future.

"Both of them can play on the inside or on the outside," says Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry. "We can alternate. When they're together, I don't think they have a weakness. Both are very good rebounders, very smart players, willing passers. I think they make the game easier for everybody."

The only thing Davis and Cousins are lacking is the luxury of time. They could be a generational duo. But at ages 24 and 27, their timelines are not tied to their overall career trajectories, rather the impending free agency of Cousins.

When either leaves the floor, the Pelicans instantly morph into a lottery team, too often surrendering any advantages gained. Even with them on the floor, Davis and Cousins face long odds as New Orleans has virtually no shooting in its starting lineup. When an opposing defense inevitably bends to the middle, there is no one to punish it.

On most teams, these issues wouldn't seem unsolvable. When you've got two generational bigs on the same team, you don't sweat the small stuff. You map out a long-term plan. Things are different in New Orleans, though, where a rickety organization is trying to prove to Cousins, rickety in his own right, and an unrestricted free agent after this season, that they are worth betting on. As Tom Ziller pointed out last week, there are so many reasons to believe they aren't.

With a 6-6 record, they are just on the outside looking into the playoffs, a bar they’ll likely have to reach to retain Cousins. Their chances are a coin-flip.

The stakes are high: These Pelicans could be a test case for the next era of a basketball, bringing size back to the forefront of dominance. Or the departure of Cousins could set off a domino effect that ships Davis out of town.

Everything in the land of the Nightmare King Cake Baby is fraught with anxiety. With the win-now stakes in place and the reinforcements not, it should come as no surprise that Cousins is leading the league in minutes.

For Cousins, every game —- every moment, really —- is a potential affront. That's what makes him so good, yet so volatile. But so far, the only gripe one can realistically have with his tenure in New Orleans is that he complains to referees more per 36 minutes than the Lob City Clippers in their heyday. After their loss against the Raptors on Thursday, he credited one of his seven turnovers to a Jonas Valanciunas flop.

His usage rate, at 33.5, is fifth in the league, and he is turning the ball over five times per game. It's not as staggering as it seems, when you consider the load he is taking on, and the fact that the improvisational offense that Gentry has opted to run will require more repetition to perfect. Not only is he New Orleans’ most reliable post scorer, he initiates the offense. As of now, Cousins is relegated to being the primary creator through increasingly closed gaps, playing no small part in the fact that the Pelicans turn the ball over on 15 percent of their possessions.

The Pelicans, in the long run, need to cut down their turnovers. But that, in Gentry’s eyes, is not as important as letting this phase in their offensive growth progress without interruption. It is, one hopes, part of a process.

“Most of the turnovers just came from us trying to make the right play,” says Cousins. “I wouldn't say we were doing anything reckless.”

One has to wonder, considering how much of the burden of production has been placed on Cousins and Davis, how long the center can hold. And can they count on any consistent assistance?

Jrue Holiday, a defensive dynamo who signed a $126 million extension to play on both sides of the ball, finally found his offense against the Raptors, exploding for 34 points to go with 11 assists. While those gaudy stats may be rarities, they’ll need him to be release valve on the regular. Darius Miller, shooting 37 percent from three, is slowly taking over Dante Cunningham's minutes. Rajon Rondo, who should be back sometime in the next two weeks is... an American professional basketball player for the New Orleans Pelicans of the National Basketball Association.

These are the splintered threads by which the experiment of Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins hangs.

Occasionally, a lob opens up for Davis, and the seas part. You see what this team could be. But it's momentary. There are so many roadblocks the Pelicans face on their pursuit of the rim. And coupled with that are stylistic choices that make you scratch your head. Why, for instance, is a team with Davis and Anthony in the bottom tenth of the league in terms of offensive rebounding rate? Consider what the Pelicans have in their hands: two All-Stars who excel in and out of the paint, in a league that isn't equipped to handle even one of them. They are not marred, as other big men duos have been, with chemistry issues. They can reasonably stretch the floor, and neither seems to have an issue taking the backseat when the other has it going.

In the end, whether it's in regards to their future, or the next offensive play, one is forced to wonder: why doesn’t this all feel easier?

At Center Court

Let’s forget the uncertainty and the inevitable regression that will eventually catch up to the Boston Celtics and take a brief moment to appreciate one of the best recent stories about resilience in the face of every obstacle — in the face, really, of potential forfeited.

By this point, you know that losing Gordon Hayward for the season to one of the most gruesome basketball injuries we’ve witnessed has not slowed down the Celtics. They lost Al Horford to a concussion and still made quick work of the Lakers. The next game against the Hornets, Kyrie Irving went down with what is now being deemed a facial fracture, and Boston pulled a victory out by the skin of its teeth.

The Celtics were held to 35.7 percent shooting. Nobody scored more than 16 points. The next-man-up philosophy, it turns out, pays dividends on a team where defensive tenacity is the shared trait of the varied parts.

The success has been a testament to many things: the coaching of Brad Stevens, the hard-scrabble style of Marcus Smart, Terry Rozier and Jaylen Brown among others, to Kyrie Irving’s defensive heel-turn, but really, to what is becoming the strongest never-say-die attitude witnessed since the Cavs found themselves in a 1-3 hole in the NBA Finals.

At some point, something has to give. Until it does, I’ll continue to watch with bated breath, as they find new answers to the same question: How will they get themselves out of this one?