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.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
RSS