That Cousins is doing this is remarkable, not just for his widely reported personality quirks – Cousins has openly feuded with every coach save the deposed Mike Malone, and he leads the league in both technical fouls AND personal fouls committed per game – but because of how big a burden he has to carry. He leads the NBA in usage, using 35.8 percent of his team’s possessions, putting him well ahead of second place Russell Westbrook (33.1 percent). That is notable for a big man, especially one who plays primarily center.

Players manning the 5 spot typically have the lowest usage, playmaking usage and time of possession of any player on the court. While Cousins is an exception in usage, he still has the ball far less, possessing the ball just less than 7 percent of his time on the court, as compared with other high-usage players like Westbrook (23.3 percent time of possession), James Harden (16.8 percent), Stephen Curry (15.9 percent) or LeBron James (13.9 percent).

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But Sacramento boasts few other legitimate scoring options, so even on a team that needs to lean on its best player for huge offensive contributions, it’s difficult for a center to take on such a large share of that burden. In the shot-clock era, there have only been 18 player-seasons of centers with usage over 30 percent, nine from Shaquille O’Neall, three each from Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon and one from David Robinson. The other two are Cousins in 2013-14 and 2014-15. He recorded the highest usage for a center at 34.1 percent last season, a mark he is shattering this year.

Cousins has needed to employ a nearly unprecedented variety of skills to reach that level of output. Alongside the traditional big man roles of posting up, he can finish the pick-and-roll (ninth in total attempts), grab offensive rebounds (2.4 per game, 35th overall), and hit shots from the perimeter. Using lineup-based data, the only player who has taken more three pointers than Cousins’s 95 attempts while playing center (approximately 20 percent of Cousins minutes have come at power forward playing alongside Kosta Koufos) is Atlanta’s Al Horford (117 attempts).

While Cousins is hitting only 34.1 percent from deep, that’s good enough that he has to be guarded and set up his driving game. According to SportVU data, Cousins’s 253 dribble drives on the season (only one fewer than Curry) is 36th overall, but first by a wide margin among bigs. Julius Randle is next at 183, while Okafor with 100 total drives, is next highest among those who play mostly center.

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All in all, this combination of size, strength and skill is simply unprecedented in the NBA. While the focus tends to be an Cousins’s temper and the Kings’ ineptitude (the 29 games they won last season is the most since drafting Cousins in 2010), his achievement should not be overlooked, and he will be deserving of the all-star selection which should his way when the reserves for this year’s game are announced on Thursday.