Part 1 of Carmichael Dave’s sit down interview with DeMarcus Cousins aired on The Drive with Dave, Kayte, and Nate this morning, and considering how rare it is to hear anything out of Cousins that isn’t some sort of NBA mandated media session, this seemed worthy of a recap.

The interview was conducted by Carmichael Dave in DeMarcus Cousins’ living room about a week ago, and this is my summary. All quotes are my own live interpretation, and the archive will be posted here as soon as it lands online.

UPDATE: Part 1 of DeMarcus Cousins' interview with Carmichael Dave can be found here.

The conversation started with Dave and DeMarcus discussing Cousins’ shockwave treatment to correct an issue he’s been having with his feet for years. Cousins said the treatment is working, he’s already feeling better, and the pain was so bad this season that he couldn’t walk after some games, and needed pain medicine just to play through it.

Asked to describe last season, Cousins used rough, and disappointing as two words to describe it. He made note of how frustrating the politics were behind the scenes, and a lot of stuff went on that we don’t know. He reiterated that he just wants to win.

When asked about Michael Malone, Cousins said that the Kings would be a playoff team without hesitation.

DeMarcus Cousins said the horrible (my word, not his) Isaiah Thomas trade was an example of frustrating things that set the team back that are out of his control, but he sounded as frustrated with poor personnel moves like that as any of us are.

DeMarcus Cousins and Rajon Rondo met with George Karl to discuss Willie Cauley-Stein’s playing time. They told Karl they needed him on the floor. He and Dave sort of laughed that discussion off as if to suggest that conversation didn’t do any good.

Cousins knows of ‘three people’ where negative comments about him as a teammate are coming from.

Cousins loved having Caron Butler and Rajon Rondo in the locker room this season. They were constantly on him. Cousins said he and Rondo would argue almost every single day. Rondo would tell Cousins that he looked up to Kevin Garnett as a young player, and it made Cousins realize that he had no one to look up to when he was drafted here.

On Sacramento, Cousins gave the standard ‘it’s a business, anything can happen’ athlete answer, but did say that Kings fans are the best in the world for putting up with all their ‘bullshit’ and still supporting the team. Then he mentioned how he wants to be the person to bring the Kings back to their glory days. He said it was a personal vendetta for him.

On technical fouls, Cousins put himself in a similar category with Blake Griffin, LeBron James, and Draymond Green, eluding to the fact that they all get technicals, but the difference is that he is DeMarcus Cousins, and I believe Dave brought up the fact that those guys have also won (to a point).

On Draymond Green, specifically, Cousins said that if he did what Draymond does, they would kick him out of the league. I didn’t take that as a shot at Draymond, just sort of his take on the reputation he has.

It was a fascinating interview, so kudos to Carmichael Dave for nailing it down.

There is a lot to unpack here, and plenty of commentary to add at some point, but I would definitely agree with Dave’s sentiment that if you didn’t like Cousins before, I don’t know that this interview will change your opinion of him, and if you did like Cousins before, this will only reinforce why.

Part 2 will be tomorrow, and we'll include a summary here as well. As always, we'll be sure to link to the archive on KHTK as soon as they post it so you can hear the interview for yourself.