Um...well that was bracing. And absolutely did not have to be. After a largely passionless game with us just steadily holding an 8-14pt lead for the last half of it, all of a sudden we tried to outchoke the ultimate chokers (Minny is now 0-11 on the season in close games). Let's be a little more precise as again I have an interesting grade coming up: the 5'9" guy tried desperately to run a one man choke and after what was a good game until that point, proceeded to make every single mistake humanly possible over a 3 minute period to close the game. Others weren't perfect, but our floor general suddenly changed sides and left he rest of the team floundering as he turned it over, quickshot, tried hero ball, and committed unnecessary fouls. Maybe there was a halftime trade and IT is actually already a member of the Wolves?
Anyway, we survived. The anticipated Cuz/Pek matchup was a non matchup before half, and while after half both guys finally got in some licks (Cuz did finally outpoint him in a decision not a knockout), they weren't the big stories as DWill returned to his roots and played well, Rudy carried us most of the night, Love tried to play the huge clutch shot artist late...and IT mysteriously decided he was going to help Love instead of Rudy.
But we win. So all is forgiven. Well, most is forgiven -- that was pretty bad. Onto Memphis/OKC.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
sdballer
Capt. Factorial
MassachusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 37min 33pts (12-19, 3-3, 6-6) 5reb 6ast 2stl 1blk 2TO
Gay ( A+ ) -- And the game ball goes to…Rudy Gay. You’ll see two other 20 point scorers in the box score with IT and Cousins, but Rudy’s season-high 33 points are as impressive as they look. With Cousins banging around with Pek in clash of the titans leaving both big bodies under-performing and with Love looking a bit hobbled out there, Rudy just came out and had as smooth a game as you can imagine. He was the best player on the court and he looked effortless out there. He carried the team in the 1st half with his 22 points on 8-11 shooting which was critical because Cousins only had 2 points in that 1st half. And not only were the T-Wolves unable to stop Rudy from scoring, but he broke them down defensively with his passing as well. In the course of 60 seconds between the 9:30 mark and the 8:30 mark of the 1st quarter Rudy made a nice entry pass to JT on the block which JT converted, he whipped a pass to Thornton who missed the open 3pt shot, and he found JT in the middle of the lane which JT converted on the hook shot. He was the best shooter and the best facilitator in this one as he had 6 assists to 2 TOs (one not his fault as he threw a PnR pass to Cousins, but Cousins didn’t roll). Cousins had his worst game with 0 assists and 5 TOs and IT had a lackluster game with 7 assist and 7 TOs. So when the offense ran through Rudy the offense ran fairly smoothly. In the 2nd half Cousins and IT started to pick up the scoring load, so Rudy just moved the ball around, got good position, and played decent defense though he was only having to check Brewer and Shved. The final few minutes of the game, however were probably very frustrating for Rudy. With the Kings up double digits they should have been coasting by making smart plays and giving some effort on defense. Instead a host of TOs took place giving the T-Wolves the ability to get back in the game. All the while Gay barely touched it on offense. Finally with the T-Wolves having clawed their way back to make it a 3 point game with a minute left, Malone called a time-out. Out of the time-out Rudy got the ball on offense and made the correct decision in getting the ball to Cousins who had worked to establish good post position against Pek. Cousins was able to get the bucket to put the Kings up 5. After Love knocked down the 3pt shot to bring it to 2 points, Rudy once again claimed the ball. This time he bided his time and coolly knocked down the 3pt dagger with 20 seconds left in the game. Rudy carried the team in the 1st half and when the game was on the line at the end he made the critical plays to put it away. After the sub-par outing against Indiana he had his bounce-back game and looked smooth doing it.--Uncia
Stats: 37min 6pts (3-7, 0-0, 0-0) 10reb 0ast 1stl 1blk 1TO
Thompson ( B ) -- JT was given a tough assignment tonight, being asked to guard Kevin Love for basically the entire game. Love ended up going for 17 points against JT on 6-11 shooting, including hitting three threes when JT was on him. To be honest, though, JT did a good job on him. I think JT gave him two easy shots all night - the first being Love's very first shot of the game, when JT decided to help in the lane on Pekovic, who didn't even have the ball at the time. After Love's open three, JT never did that again. (To be complete, he did have to close off the lane on one play where Cuz went for a steal on Pekovic and missed, but it was absolutely the right rotation because otherwise Pek had a dunk.) The other easy shot came when JT went for a steal in the passing lane gave Love an open 18-footer. Outside of that it was a fight in the paint until the last minute of the game when Love hit one three with JT's hand in his face, then another with JT peeled off by a Pekovic moving screen. He gave very little help (only when necessary) but when you're on Love that's what you have to do. Up to the final minute he allowed Love to score 11 points on him. That's really getting the job done. On the boards, JT also did a very good job, grabbing ten. He made a very nice play to tightrope the line and stay in bounds on a one play in the third quarter when Thornton saved the ball to him. On offense he wasn't much to write home about. He started strong, scoring all of his six points in the first quarter (and four in the first few minutes). After the first quarter he attempted one shot for the rest of game (that being a blown layup) as he deferred to the hot hands on the team. Altogether a nice game from Thompson, and I don't think we pull that game out if he gives only an average effort on Love. --Capt.
Stats: 34min 20pts (9-19, 0-0, 2-2) 11reb 0ast 0stl 1blk 5TO
Cousins ( B ) -- This one was … interesting. Cousins didn’t have much of an impact on this game in the first half. In fact, he didn’t score his first point till there were only 3 minutes left in the 2nd quarter and he still managed to finish with 20 points. On one hand I applaud Cousins ability to take a back seat in a half where Thomas, Gay, and even Thompson had their offensive games going. And normally I’d want Cousins to be more assertive, but the Kings were already scoring at a good rate. He wasn’t forcing anything, either. Pekovic obviously deserves some credit for Cousins first half struggles. He’s like an ox down there. Cousins couldn’t move him, but with that being said, he never really tried until the 2nd half anyway. He just wasn’t a factor for a long period of this game, and his foul trouble certainly didn’t help. Fortunately for the Kings Cousins started to pick up his play in the second half, and really bailed the team out multiple times in the fourth quarter. Even though Cousins offense wasn’t working for him in the first half, his defense on Pekovic was really good. He defended most of Pek’s post up attempts with his arms straight up, and the ground bound Pekovic couldn’t get his shot over him clean. That continued in the second half, and I believe this was one of the biggest reasons why the Kings were able to keep their lead for most of the game. Cousins finally got some of his offense going while Pekovic never really became a factor. And Cousins was never dominant in this one, but he starting hitting his jumper, he started getting a few offensive rebounds, he started attacking the basket, etc. But the most impressive part of Cousins night was when he stepped in to take a charge on Corey Brewer, and then defended a Pekovic post attempt with about 4 minutes left all while he had 5 fouls. He was making plays for this team on the defensive end late in the game. Malone also called on him during our meltdown coming out of a timeout with a post isolation against Pekovic, which he calmly scored on to stop the bleeding. This won’t go down as one of the better games of Cousins’ career, but it was a very good defensive effort throughout, accompanied by timely offensive production in a nice road win. This was also a pretty good example of what a guy like Rudy Gay brings to this team. Cousins didn’t need to force the issue because Gay was shouldering the offensive load in the first half. We didn’t have that a luxury month ago. --Mass
Stats: 28min 2pts (0-5, 0-3, 2-2) 3reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Thornton ( C+ ) --Stat line is in the D/F range but his performance was a lot better than his numbers. His shot has absolutely disappeared this season and it may be time to bring in some psychiatric help. That being said, he only took 5 shots so he mostly stayed out of the way on offense. It's a strange situation because he's the kind of volume scorer that needs to shoot himself back into a zone but their simply aren't enough shots for him to do that. Since he can't score like he wants, his on court value drops tremendously. Usually, that means his a huge net negative on the night but tonight was different. He hustled, played with a lot of energy and most importantly, played decent defense on KMart. No one is going to confuse him for a 3 and D guy but he actually has decent physical skills and if he could focus more on sticking with his man and less on cheating for steals, he can at least minimize the damage he does (since we have so few other options). --Baller
Stats: 42min 26pts (10-16, 2-5, 4-4) 3reb 7ast 2stl 0blk 7TO
Thomas ( C+ ) -- sigh. There was no right grade for this, but I just could not go any lower for a game this rawly productive. I few games back I posted a poll noting that IT seemed to be slumping, and giving a list of possible reasons to chose from. My own is this: Malone agrees with me. He doesn't think the IT we have had here for 3 years is a starting PG in the NBA, and so he has been asking him to blatantly play against his instincts and actually look to help his teammates rather than himself. And IT has been trying to change. End result has been IT looking more tentative and unsure than we have ever seen him, to his shots coming out of rhythm, to little odd bursts of selfish play randomly pockmarked in stretches of quiet play setting people up. I say all that in this grade because that was what this felt like again. For 3 1/2 quarters at least. IT was efficient, and he outplayed both Rubio and Barea, but it was erratic. In the early going three times he pulled up for his shots, which is to say little pull up jumpers off his own dribble. That's his comfort zone. And he hit all of them. He also was one of several Kings setting up our flyers for a series of alley oops throughout the night. But he missed an open three, just completely randomly threw up another, and kept on making just bad ballhandling/passing errors for turnovers, blatantly going for far far too much for no reason. It just didn't feel settled or consistent. Moments of brilliance interspersed with headslappers. The defense was actually equally erratic. He made several really good defensive plays in this one, getting back to slap a ball away and stop a break, taking a charge, he had definite moments. And then the very next play he'd die on a screen or just get a three bombed over him. Things picked up in the latter parts of the third once Gay left and IT was again free to freelance. The shot attempts started to climb, he started to get into his rhythm as a scorer. There were still just random duh moments, another borderline selfish looking break where he ignored Marcus, who was working hard and needed a gimme, to get his own layup, but generally it was IT back in his natural element as #1 option with Gay off the floor and Cousins still sputtering back to life. It was the best he looked on the night, and the worst he looked as the sort of PG Malone has been talking about. The thing was that turnovers aside, IT was being efficient with his shot. And you could feel the restraint until the latter parts of the third. He hit 5 of his first 7, and several of his early mistakes were clearly of the him starting to gun and thinking better of it variety. The numbers looked good, Rubio looked awful after an early scoring burst, IT and Barea were actually taking turns scoring back and forth but IT was getting the better of it, and until the stretch run I was perched on an A-/B+ sort of night. It felt B+ to me, but I just wasn't sure I could justify that given the highly efficient shooting night. Then he hit a 3 at the 3 minute mark that looked like it might seal it, and I was leaning toward that A-. And then the final 3 minutes happened and...wow. There really isn't any other way to put it than IT choked in a huge way. I mean it was a pretty spectacular meltdown. And as the PG just completely lost the thread the rest of the team started to crumble too. IT turned it over, he forced dumb shots and started plays far too early in the shotclock with us up by 10 and just needing to run things out, he committed a stupid offensive foul for no reason, with 1:10 to go he suddenly tried to hero it, refused to pass the ball, got himself trapped in heavy traffic, and threw up a miserable shot that might as well have been a turnover as it triggered a Wolves break. It was just a disaster and the Wolves were all of a sudden within one possession. In fact it was bad enough that coming out of the inevitable timeout at the 1:00 mark Malone blatantly took the ball out of IT's hands and put it in the hands of the team's two best players as first Gay was used to set Cuz up for the finish inside, then I think it was Cuz who hit Gay for the backbreaking three. Just for a ridiculous cherry IT managed to make one more headslapping mistake in the final seconds, doing the absolute one thing you could not do, getting beat by Barea and then fouling him for the +1 play to let the Wolves cut it to 1. I mean, seriously? Help. Just typing it out I dropped the grade another half tic. What a disaster. But still a disaster atop a 26pt night on 10-16 shooting. You can't totally ignore that. But if you had to endure the stress of our one man late game collapse you would certainly be tempted. --Brick
Last edited:
