That sucked.
The two elite teams on this trip have handled us easily, and I do mean EASILY. Just have to hope we aren't getting punch drunk and can finish strong. Meanwhile Cuz is showing troubling signs of wearing down. Does not help that the coaching staff appears to have hired Coach Smart as a consultant, and is currently in the process of aiding a full fledged regression to last year's Cuz as they give him the ball higher and higher and higher and have him functioning as a 7'0' guard trying to slash and drive and dish.
So the good: Isaiah Thomas. Appeared to be the only major King the Thunder did not have a gameplan for, and I suspect that was about right. only they might have been planning on him getting 20-25, not having 20 halfway through the 2nd quarter. they did switch things up after half and had Thabo checking him, which slowed the numbers, but he still reached his career high late in the game.
Probably better that everybody was watching football. Although that didn't go the way most on here wanted either. Still in honor of it, we'll flavor our Girls for the night, and make it NFL cheerleaders night. Always looking for silver linings.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Spudfan
Rainmaker
MassachusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 27min 6pts (3-7, 0-1, 0-0) 2reb 4ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
Gay ( D- ) -- I strongly considered an F here after the fool got himself thrown out of the game as a topper, and indeed, maybe it should have been. I certainly wouldn't argue too vociferously with somebody leaning that way. In any case, Scott Brooks beat Rudy Gay tonight before the ball was even tipped. It was gameplan all the way as the Thunder were NOT going to let Rudy Gay beat them, and so practically everytime he touched the ball they came with a quick double before he could even make his move. And if that was the end of it, even with paltry numbers I would not have totally slaughtered his grade. Maybe a C of some sort or something -- if they double you all night not exactly your fault for not scoring 30. But unfortunately that wasn't the end of it. Showed a very poor feel for those doubles, recognized them late, seemed reluctant to give the ball up when he should, and then forced terrible passes through walls of Thunder arms for multiple turnovers. To make matters worse, showed little ability to stay with Durant on the other end of the floor, and thus a theoretical matchup of the two best SFs in the West turned into a flat beatdown. Two of his three scores came once when he really turned on the jets on the break, and once when he made a very fast move before the double could arrive for a nifty little finish on the far side of the rim. Don't actually remember the third hit, but I would almost guarantee you it didn't come off of him holding the ball and trying to do the star shoot over you thing. Anyway, bad bad night, and then as a capper in the early 4th I think just finally got tired of getting his butt kicked and wanted to go home. So got one T. Then wouldn't stop, got the other, and went and hit the showers. The Minny explosion is really the only good game he's had on this trip now. --Brick
NFL cheerleaders (in this case Danielle Gamba) can do FHM shoots as well.
Stats: 30min 11pts (5-10, 0-0, 1-2) 10reb 0ast 0stl 2blk 0TO
Thompson ( B ) -- It feels like Thompson has been playing better basketball lately, and this game would be another solid example of that. He scored 10 points tonight and I think all of them were off of good role-player type moves. He was moving really well without the ball inside, and before things got out of hand he was getting the ball in some really nice spots for easy layups and dunks. He didn’t hit all of them, but that is Jason Thompson. He was also his normal nuisance self on the offensive glass, as 6 of his 10 rebounds were all of the offensive variety. He was really battling on the boards. Where JT’s game tonight kind of fell apart was on defense. He just wasn’t as good as he has been this season. Serge Ibaka was getting a lot of open jumpers, and Jason was late closing out on most of them. It’s hard to say exactly why Ibaka was left open so many times tonight without knowing what the Kings defensive schemes are. He was getting caught helping when he didn’t necessarily have to, and no one was ‘helping the helper’ which really led to Ibaka’s big night. Jason’s production tailed off in the second half as the Thunder started to pull away, but I thought that this was a pretty good game from Thompson overall. He would pretty far down on my list of reasons why the Kings got blown out tonight. --Mass
Marlana Araf, who has quite the internet following as it turns out. Wonder why.
Stats:33min 16pts (6-17, 0-0, 4-6) 14reb 1ast 2stl 3blk 7TO
Cousins ( D+ ) -- Well, the wheels came off in this one. I believe Cousins just set the Sacramento Kings record for most consecutive double-doubles with 13, and it’s an accomplishment that I believe Cousins will not enjoy in the slightest. After not being terribly effective and losing a winnable game in Memphis, Cousins looked as if the road trip and the heart-breaking loss was just wearing him down. At no point in this game did he look like the dominant big man that we’ve been used to seeing over the last month or two. Things started off roughly as he picked up a foul trying to block Perkins shot at the rim, then another one a couple minutes later on a terrible call by the refs. I think picking up that early 2nd foul really just de-railed Cousins and his game, as Malone was forced to send him to the bench. He shot poorly from the field, as he had no lift on his shot and didn’t seem to be able to use his strength to clear out enough space to get shots through Perkins and over Ibaka. He only had his shot blocked once in this game, which was good to see, and it didn’t really look as if he was quickly putting up shots to avoid getting blocked, but he just didn’t have any sort of feel for the basket in this one. In addition, to the very poor shooting, he was a turn-over machine. He had a couple turn-overs where he got into the post, but couldn’t get a good shot and was called for the 3 second violation. In addition he got the ball out on the perimeter a ton and it looked as if he had zero confidence in his outside jumper, and he actually airballed 2 perimeter jumpers, which points to some fatigue. Because his jumper wasn’t on he insisted on taking Perkins off the dribble (not a bad idea, really) but then when OKC collapsed he ended up either turning it over or making a bad pass. From a defensive stand-point he was guarding Perkins, and for some reason OKC went to Perkins quite a bit, but Perkins is just really ineffective on the offensive end, so Cousins never was in much trouble having to guard him. You might think that his 14 rebounds would constitute a good rebounding performance, but unfortunately it didn’t even look as if he was going to get his 10th rebound. Malone put him back in the game with 10 minutes even though it felt as if the game was out of reach. Cousins picked up almost half of his rebounds in that stretch where the game was mostly out of reach. I will mention that when Cousins got back in during the 2nd quarter he had a span of 2 minutes where he attempted to be the facilitator. He made nice passes to both JT and Williams who both missed their open jumpers and attempted an alley-oop pass to Gay which was just a bit beyond Rudy’s reach. So just a struggle of a game for Cousins and even though he put up some points and rebounds his shooting was poor, his turn-overs were glaringly bad, and he just didn’t impose his will in any facet of this game. --Uncia
Stats: 20min 0pts (0-3, 0-2, 0-0) 2reb 3ast 2stl 0blk 3TO
Thornton ( D- ) -- There's really not a whole lot to grade here with Marcus, which is turning into a nightly theme. He is really having next to no impact and the one aspect of the game he's supposed to excel at, scoring, has been just as bad, if not worse this season than it has been at any point in his NBA career. Hit a grand total of 0 shots. Only took three. None were forces but solid, open looks which he wasn't even close on. Had a nice look to Rudy for one of his 3 assists but that pretty much was it for his offensive contribution. Defensively did get his hands on some loose balls and picked up a couple steals but mostly had the night off by guarding Sefolosha, or so you'd think but Thabo ended up outplaying Marcus on the offensive end, shooting 4-5 including 2-2 from 3, which in an ideal world would be closer to what Marcus would be giving us. Not good when the opposing defensive role player outplays you on the offensive end, Marcus. There isn't much else to say. Thornton was practically invisible out there in his 20 mins.--Rain
Stats: 39min 38pts (11-18, 4-8, 12-13) 1reb 6ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thomas ( A ) -- ok, my grader appears to have gone poof on this one, and this was the player of the game. So apologies, but let me fill in from memory for those who did not catch the game. Basically the deal was that the Thunder took Gay out of the picture with constant doubles, and the Perkins/Ibaka pairing has caused Cuz problems in the past as Perkins stands him up/slows him down, and then Ibaka comes flying over to block the shots. All of this depends of course on our SGs and PFs being totally contemptible offensive options. Anyway, IT was the only one of our weapons left in a 1 on 1 matchup from the beginning, and he started off the game hot, hit a few shots, got hotter, and with Cousins in foul trouble, Gay doubled out of existence, and both on the bench, we just left IT in there all the way through the middle of the 2nd quarter and he bombed away. There were a few dumb heat checks, but basically he just kept extending his range, and his eyes lit up saucers when Derek Fisher had to play long minutes because of foul trouble. Maybe the best matchup for IT in the league. Short, thick, old, and not a defender in his prime, and It went around him at will. In any case, IT was over 20pts by the time he finally sat down, think he had 26 by half, and was singlehandedly keeping it even respectable. After half the Thunder made one more change. They still doubled Gay, they still Perkins/Ibaka'd Cousins, but rather than let their PGs continue to prove they couldn't stop IT 1 on 1 they switched Thabo Sefalosha on him. Which you would think just wouldn't be enough quickness, but it actually did slow IT down, especially from range where the defensive height made a difference, and with that last weapon slowed, the others never getting much going, the Thunder just pulled away and put us away. IT wasn't getting as many looks/shots, so it never turned into a bad half of chucking, jut slow dissipation of impact. I did think there was a bit of stat padding, not by IT but by the coaching staff, as we played IT deep into the garbagetime of a lost 4th quarter to get him his career high, but we never went down by 30 or anything, so I suppose we were just hoping to get a little 8-0 run or something and make a game of it. Never happened though. --Brick filling in for Spud
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(Mila Thompson, Redskins) 
