Well that sucked. Sucked so bad I have half a mind to make it a Girls night.
Here's the deal. We had no Rudy, no MT, but we shouldn't have looked this bad. Cuz showed up to the tune of 31pts 16reb. Ho hum. But even he did not seem to have normal energy, and in a critical development his counterpart perfectly matched those numbers: Sullinger had 31 and 16 too. Meanwhile Isaiah chucked per usual and got another 23 shots up. I'm beginning to hope he develops some carpal tunnel so he'll start to pass. And yet the chucking was almost understandable, because nobody else on the entire team showed up. DWill gave us some much needed help on the glass. That's about it. Our three non-Cuz starters shot 6-27, and didn't do any better on the other end. Our bench shot a combined 5-18, and they weren't nearly as good as those numbers indicate. in fact they were borderline unplayable. As soon as they came in, the Celtics blew off big runs both times and put us in a hole, and the starters weren't playing nearly good enough to overcome that sort of lack of support. Yay and all that. But we here at the Consortium are gluttons for punishment, so we'll put the grades up as we always do. I'm excited, aren't you?
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Bajaden
MassachusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 42min 11pts (2-11, 0-3, 7-7) 12reb 3ast 1stl 1blk 0TO
Williams ( C ) -- This was certainly not the best Derrick Williams we’ve seen, but he had a few good moments. His rebounding was easily his best, most consistent contribution on the night. He really had that part of his game going right from the beginning. Before I looked at the box score and realized he had 12 rebounds it felt like he was hitting the glass hard. Was he trying to make up for that botched dunk a few nights ago with extra hustle? I don’t know, but it looked like he was making a conscientious effort to rebound the basketball tonight. I also thought he moved pretty well without the ball, and that was really where the majority of his offense came from. He wasn’t shooting the ball well at all, but because of his movement offensively he was getting to the line and hitting his free throws. Back to the shooting for a moment… man, was it bad. He was throwing up the definition of ‘bricks’. Most of his jumpers weren’t even close, and he kept taking them. He’s going to need to do some serious work on his jumper this offseason. I also thought his defense was pretty poor for most of the night. Malone frequently switched between Outlaw and Williams on either Green or Wallace, as all of those pieces are really interchangeable. I thought the defense on Green was really bad for most of the night, and Williams was a part of that. It didn’t matter if it was Outlaw or Williams; Green was getting open shots all night. And Green didn’t even shoot the ball well. If he had, this game might have been over earlier. So I liked the effort from Williams on the glass, I liked the movement offensively, but without Rudy Gay the King just needed more out of him. --Mass
Radha Mitchell
Stats: 36min 6pts (2-9, 0-0, 2-2) 6reb 1ast 0stl 1blk 1TO
Thompson ( D+ ) -- disappointing game for JT. Of course he is basketball's version of a box of chocolates at times, but he still came out here and had an apparent advantage. By all rights he and Cuz should have just played volleyball off the glass over the undersized Celts frontline, but it never materialized. Just could not hit anything on offese, missed a nice looking early inside move, blew a dunk inside on a nice setup by IT, saw Bass blow by him for a dunk the other way. Grabbed a couple of rebounds, but his impact was negligible if not actually negative. He made a few plays here and there. He made a nice hi lo pass to Cuz for a dunk...but then went down the other way and had Olynyk drop a three on him. Had a strong sequence blocking a shot on one end then running out and cleaning up the mess when Cuz's layup got blocked. JT grabbed the o-reb and finished in one of the last plays where we were still close. But overall, most of his boards were offensive boards following Cousins missed where all the Celts attention was elsewhere. He didn't use his size on the defensive glass, didn't shoot well, and while he probably won the matchup with Bass, Olynyk was better off the bench, particularly before half. But we just couldn't afford to take JT off the floor because the bench was so awful. So even though he wasn't giving us much of a game, he played and played and played and there's really no explantion for why he didn't put up better numbers other than he just didn't bring it tonight.--Brick
Yu Da Xiao Jie
Stats: 40min 31pts (11-19, 0-0, 9-11) 16reb 3ast 0stl 1blk 4TO
Cousins ( B ) -- Well, it was a horribly ugly game and the only King who could even think about holding his head up after the game would be Cousins. And even then, despite the 31 points and 16 rebounds, even he would probably tell you that it wasn’t that good of a game. It’s sort of comical that he puts up those numbers on great shooting and he misses an A grade, but as good as those numbers look, there was a good bit of ugly to go along with it. The first thing which popped out was that he seemed to lack energy and hustle for portions of the game. A perfect example was around the 4 minute mark of the 1st quarter. A ball bounced long and was pretty close to him and if he’d hustled he might have gotten on offensive rebound, then on the next play on the defense end, there was a defensive rebound that he didn’t go after which resulted in a Boston offensive rebound. If he’d put some energy in it, he could have secured 2 rebounds. This lack of energy also showed itself on his movement up and down the court as well as in his defensive rotations and close-outs. It wasn’t always there, but by and large he just looked sluggish as if he were going through the motions and the since he’s such a passionate guy it stood out for those who watch him play a lot. I mention the rebounding, because even though he ended up with 16 rebounds, he only had 1 rebound after playing the entire 1st quarter. He only had 4 at the end of the half, but really picked it up in the 2nd half to end up with a good rebounding total. It’s just the glass dominance that we normally see wasn’t really there, as a lot of his rebounds were at the end of the game and they were the easy defensive rebounds that he collected with-out much effort. The other issue which dampens the grade is that at the start of the game the match-up was Sullinger, and that should be a match-up that you pencil in as victory for Cousins in typically land-slide fashion. After the first half Cousins was decisively winning the battle as he had 18 points on 7-12 shooting while Sullinger was sitting at an OK 9 points on 4-10 shooting. However, the Celtics changed up their gameplan and Cousins got doubled pretty much every time he touched the ball in the 2nd half, and Sullinger ended up putting together the better 2nd half. They ended up with the same points and rebounds and their shooting percentage were almost the same as well. So a match-up which Cousins should have dominated ended up mostly in a draw. I do want to mention that Boston really couldn’t stop Cousins and ended up swarming him when he got the ball and he ended up making a lot of passes to open shooters and none of those shots which he set up even fell. So Boston adjusted, and Cousins mostly didn’t force things, but instead found the open shooter, who then proceeded to brick the shot. Also, despite the huge numbers that Sullinger put up, really the only bad man defense that Cousins played was on his close-outs on Sullinger’s jump-shots. Again with the theme of lack of energy, Cousins didn’t really do a good job challenging Sullinger’s jumpers, and there were a couple that were just wide open that Cousins didn’t even attempt to go after. However, Cousins did play a pretty good post-man defensive game. He challenged Sullinger’s positioning and played tall with his hands up, and to Sullinger’s credit, Sullinger made a lot of shots that weren’t necessarily easy. So dominant numbers, but the lack of energy, the poor initial rebounding, and letting his counterpart pretty much play him to a draw keep this grade from getting too high. He was by far the best player on the team, but it wasn’t enough to get the win, and I’m sure that he’s most frustrated by that. --Uncia
Arianny Celeste
Stats: 33min 5pts (2-7, 1-3, 0-0) 4reb 0ast 0stl 1blk 1TO
Outlaw ( D ) -- Travis Outlaw got the start for Marcus Thornton tonight, and I actually thought it had the potential to work out because the matchups sort of made sense. I mean, if Thornton was the starting shooting guard tonight he would have had to defend the much bigger Jeff Green, and that wouldn’t have gone well. Unfortunately for the Kings it didn’t really work out anyway. Travis played 33 minutes tonight without really giving the Kings any kind of positive production. He knocked down one 3 and then another mid range jumper, that’s about it. And his defense was pretty poor throughout the night. As I mentioned in the Derrick Williams grade, Outlaw spent time on Wallace and Green and really couldn’t stay in front of either guy. He was late closing out on Jeff Green and other shooters all night. It really is remarkable just how poor Outlaw is at getting back to his man once the ball swings over to his side of the court. Again, on a night where the Kings are missing two of their better scorers in Gay and Thornton, Outlaw needed to give the Kings a spark and he didn’t. I also hope Outlaw the shooting guard isn’t something we see a whole lot of. Jeff Green is sort of a special case as a shooting guard, so I get what Malone was doing tonight, but while Thornton is out I’d like to see McLemore get those minutes. --Mass
Marisol Gonzalvez
Stats: 39min 24pts (9-23, 3-7, 3-3) 2reb 6ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Thomas ( C- ) -- This was an ugly game. It appeared to me that the whole team seemed to be moving in slow motion at times. Even Cuz, who stat wise had a good game, didn't seem as if he was mentally in to it at times. But, this is about Thomas. He started well enough with a nice pass to JT right under the basket, but unfortunately he missed. He followed by driving the lane, scoring, and getting fouled. After a stop and pop three, he decided to test the water again, this time with no one down on offense, and missed. After a short blow on the bench at the beginning of the 2nd quarter, he returned in time to throw the ball behind a cutting Cousins for a turnover. He then hit a 16 footer off a pick and roll with Cousins. Then, in what was to become a habit, he left Pressey unguarded who luckily misssed a wide open three. After hitting an 8 footer in the lane, he made a nice pass to a cutting Cousins who missed the layup, but was fouled. IT ended up with only 6 assists on the night, but to be fair, he could have easily had at least 5 more, with almost all of those coming in the first half. After hitting a 16 footer, it was one miss after another. He missed 4 shots in a row to close out the first half, including the last shot of the half. The second half only got worse. He continued to shoot, and decided to stop playing defense as well. On two occasions he stood 10 or more feet away from Bayless just watching the action while Bayless hit two three's. On one possession, he came down the floor, ignored Cousins who was asking for the ball, and missed a 16 footer. He ended the 3rd quarter with 7 seconds left on the clock, by dribbling the length of the court, dribbled around, and failed to get a shot off. On another possession in the 4th quarter, he dribbled from one side of the court to the other, got trapped, escaped the trap, and with 3 seconds left on the shot clock, passed the ball to Williams, who had just enough time to throw up a prayer which missed. The icing on the cake came when he fouled Bayless in the act of shooting. In replaying it in slow motion, he not only made body contact, he struck Bayless in the face with his hand. With Bayless ending up on the floor, IT ended up straddling him. In a strange sequence, Bayless shoved IT away so he could get up off the floor. IT then lost his cool, and appeared ready to go after Bayless. Cousins, who looked like he had first intended to help Bayless up off the floor, instead grabbed IT and pulled him away from the action. IT was rewarded with a technical. This was not a good night for Thomas. He continued to take shot after shot, even though his shot wasn't falling. I can excuse a SG, but not a PG. Yes, he scored 24 points, but it took him 23 shots, going 9 for 23. As a side note, if I never have to listen to Tommy Heinsohn again, I'll be a happy man.--Baja
Abbie Cornish
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