5 injuries with the greatest impact on the playoffs

#2 DeMarcus Cousins

Cousins was lighting it up before going down to a season-ending Achilles injury

Duration of injury: Will not play this season

Expected Impact: The Pelicans will lose in the first round of the playoffs instead of possibly making the Conference Finals

There are no two ways about this: the New Orleans Pelicans would be the team nobody would want to face in the Western Conference playoffs if Cousins was fully fit and firing. A motivated DeMarcus Cousins was putting up a statline of 25.2 points, 12.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game before going down with a season-ending Achilles injury in late January.

A twin towers combo of him and Anthony Davis were guaranteed to score a minimum of 50 points and gather 25 rebounds while suffocating teams in the paint in the playoffs.

Without Cousins in the lineup, the Pelicans have still sealed a playoff berth, but they are no longer the same kind of threat as they would be if all four of Rondo, Holliday, Cousins and Davis were playing at an elite level.

As NBA fans, we have been deprived of watching a team built for playoff basketball play at full strength this postseason.