DeMarcus Cousins unfollows Pelicans on Instagram, perhaps signaling the end of his time in New Orleans

DeMarcus Cousins, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent in July, unfollowed the New Orleans Pelicans on Instagram earlier today. He is an active user of the popular app, maintaining an account of 2.6 million followers.

When asked about the decision, Cousins replied, “cause I’m grown.”

What does this mean? Well, it could be for any number of reasons really, but considering the timing, it’s not wrong to assume that his days in a New Orleans Pelicans uniform could fast be coming to an end and he’s not happy about recently getting wind of some disappointing news. Then again, it must be noted that Boogie is still following the Pelicans franchise on Twitter.

However, Zach Lowe of ESPN wrote a detailed article last month about Cousins contract situation in New Orleans. In essence, the organization was reportedly mulling the idea of offering Cousins a deal worth significantly less in value than the maximum contract offer sitting on the table right before his Achilles injury struck.

The Pelicans have broached internally the idea of offering Cousins a two- or three-year deal at less than the max, per sources familiar with the discussions. I would not expect that to go over well with Cousins’ camp. But the Pelicans have the dual leverage of winning without Cousins and a tepid market for him.

With New Orleans winning 20 of their final 28 regular season games and then proceeding to sweep the Portland Trail Blazers in Round 1 of the Western Conference playoffs, the Pelicans might not be interested in gambling too richly on a center who is trying to come back from an injury which few have returned back to 100% health. If so, it’s not hard to imagine that Boogie would be upset by such news, especially in light of losing out on signing a Designated Player Exception with the Sacramento Kings that would have netted him around $209 million over the span of five years.

After voicing strong support for Rajon Rondo — and Jrue Holiday one year ago, General Manager Dell Demps was not as committal in his season-ending presser last week when talking about a potential Cousins return.

“You know, in a perfect world we’d love to have him back,” said Demps. “We want him back. Sometimes things happen that you can’t control in free agency, In a perfect world, we’d like to have him and Rondo back. And then we also still want to add to our team. We feel like we want to build off of this season, but we want to grow. We don’t want to look back, we want to keep going forward and the excitement around the city, the effort from the players and the coaches and everyone, and it just motivates you to say, ‘Hey, how high can we go?’ We’re going to maximize it. We’re going to reach for it.”

Stay tuned!