In the NBA, recruiting is usually a practiced language. It’s calls through agents, carefully worded texts, a dinner, a pitch deck disguised as “basketball talk.” Sometimes it’s teammates doing the convincing. Sometimes it’s executives selling vision. And sometimes, if DeMarcus Cousins is telling it, it’s a head coach sending selfies that feel more like a late-night DM than a free-agency plan.
On a recent episode of FanDuel TV’s Run It Back, Cousins described being pursued during his prime by Rick Carlisle, then the Dallas Mavericks’ head coach, through messages that struck him as awkward enough to turn him off completely. Cousins said Carlisle would send “weird selfies” and write that he was thinking about him and wanted to coach him, a style of outreach Cousins didn’t know how to respond to, so he left him on read.
“He’d send me weird selfies and say, ‘I’m thinking about you and I really want to coach you.'”
Rick Carlisle tried to recruit Boogie Cousins to Dallas with SELFIES?! 🤯
“He’d send me weird selfies and say, ‘I’m thinking about you and I really want to coach you.'”
Boogie didn’t know how to respond & left the HC on read 😅@MichelleDBeadle | @boogiecousins | @TeamLou23 pic.twitter.com/rkb5TCIoyS
— Run It Back (@RunItBackFDTV) January 9, 2026
The story took off because it flips the usual power dynamic. Coaches are typically portrayed as stern schemers, clipboard commanders, culture architects. Carlisle, in Cousins’ telling, is none of those things in that moment, just a persistent recruiter trying to forge a personal connection, missing the tone, and accidentally creating a comedy clip for the internet.
It also hits because Cousins wasn’t describing a fringe role player’s brief flirtation with a contender. He was talking about himself as a true top-tier big, the version of “Boogie” who made All-Star teams and All-NBA squads and was viewed leaguewide as a franchise-level center. If Carlisle was swinging that hard, it tracks with what Dallas spent much of the 2010s searching for: a high-end frontcourt partner who could change the geometry of the floor and relieve pressure on the rest of the roster.
Carlisle, of course, is not some random coach shooting shots from the sideline. He’s one of the most established voices of his era, an NBA champion head coach whose reputation is rooted in preparation, adaptability and structure, qualities that have kept him employed and relevant across multiple generations of the sport. And just days ago, he reached an elite milestone, becoming the 11th coach in NBA history to hit 1,000 regular-season wins.
That’s part of why Cousins’ anecdote plays so well: it’s incongruous. It’s the serious coach in a silly light. It’s the master tactician apparently trying to recruit with what amounts to awkward sincerity and an unforced overshare.
