Former NBA center DeMarcus Cousins has joined the T1 League’s Taiwan Beer Leopards and is expected to make his on-court debut on Jan. 20, the Taoyuan-based team said yesterday.
The addition of the four-time NBA All-Star was a major boost, not only for the Leopards’ competitiveness, but for Taiwanese basketball as a whole, the team said in a statement.
“We’re confident that with [Cousins’] all-around skills, he will bring a totally new chemistry to the Leopards,” Leopards chief executive Johnny Chang (張建偉) said.
Photo: Cary Edmondson-USA Today
Cousins is expected to arrive in Taiwan in the middle of next month — about midway through the T1 League’s 2023-2024 season — and would be on the court for the team’s Jan. 20, 21, 27 and 28 home games, the Leopards said.
In a video message on Facebook, 33-year-old Cousins greeted his fans in Taiwan, saying he was “excited to come over and put on a show for you.”
Cousins, a 208cm center, was selected by the Sacramento Kings as the fifth overall pick in the 2010 NBA draft.
In a decade-plus career in the NBA spent mostly with the Kings, the New Orleans Pelicans and the Golden State Warriors, Cousins averaged 19.6 points, 10.2 rebounds and three assists per game over 654 games played.
He was also an NBA All-Star four times and won gold medals for the US at the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
He played his last games in the NBA in the 2021-2022 season.
The Leopards are second in the five-team T1 League with a 5-4 record, behind reigning champions New Taipei CTBC DEA at 7-3.
The International Industrial Talents Education Special (INTENSE) Program to attract foreigners to study and work in Taiwan will provide scholarships and a living allowance of up to NT$440,000 per person for two years beginning in August, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) told a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee yesterday. Pan was giving an update on the program’s implementation, a review of universities’ efforts to recruit international students and promotion of the Taiwan Huayu Bilingual Exchanges of Selected Talent (BEST) program. Each INTENSE Program student would be awarded a scholarship of up to NT$100,000 per year for up to
BASIC OPERATIONS: About half a dozen navy ships from both countries took part in the days-long exercise based on the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea An unpublicized joint military exercise between Taiwan and the US in the Pacific Ocean last month was carried out in accordance with an international code, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. According to a Reuters report citing four unnamed sources, the two nations’ navies last month conducted joint drills in the Western Pacific. The drills were not made public at the time, but “about half-a-dozen navy ships from both sides, including frigates and supply and support vessels, participated in the days-long exercises,” Reuters reported, citing the sources. The drills were designed to practice “basic” operations such as communications, refueling and resupplies,
‘MONEY PIT’: The KMT’s more than NT$2 trillion infrastructure project proposals for eastern Taiwan lack professional input and financial transparency, the DPP said The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday said it would ask the Executive Yuan to raise a motion to oppose the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus’ infrastructure proposals and prepare to file for a constitutional interpretation if the KMT-dominated legislature forces their passage. The DPP caucus described the three infrastructure plans for transportation links to eastern Taiwan proposed by the KMT as “three money pit projects” that would cost more than NT$2 trillion (US$61.72 billion). It would ask the Executive Yuan to oppose public projects that would drain state financial resources, DPP caucus secretary-general Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said. It would also file for
Singapore yesterday swore in Lawrence Wong (黃循財) as the city-state’s new prime minister in a ceremony broadcast live on television after Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) stepped down following two decades in office. Wong, formerly deputy prime minister, was inaugurated at the Istana government office shortly after 8pm to become the second person outside the Lee family to lead the nation. “I ... do solemnly swear that I will at all times faithfully discharge my duties as prime minister according to law, and to the best of my knowledge and ability, without fear or favor, affection or ill-will. So help me God,” the