Ok, so... 0-8 now on the season without Cousins. Shocker. This started out fugly and disorganized, we made a little IT run to get back in it, but just no steam or focus to close it out. Put it this way, our second best player was Travis Outlaw. IT started scrabbly...and again I think he started out trying to play against his instincts, and when he finally turned it on, it was him going back to Isaiah ball. He was the only one of the various rumored trade targets (who, and no this is not a coincidence, happen to represent basically every single remaining holdover King from before the gerbil and other rodents took over) who thrived in that environment. ben responded by his newfound opportunity the same way he has all year, which is to say he didn't. Jt looked horribly out of it and distracted -- he might know something, or maybe it was just one of those JT days. And Jimmer barely touched the floor, then headed back to the bench and never returned.
Anyway, come Saturday hopefully we have Cuz and a pack of new faces to watch, because this is getting stale.
Oh, and I said I was going to start Theming up all these losses. So tonight we'll go with Bigass Monuments.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Henkel
Capt. Factorial
Bajaden
Boxscore
Stats: 37min 16pts (6-21, 0-3, 4-6) 8reb 4ast 1stl 3blk 4TO
Gay ( D ) -- just a mess of a game for Rudy. Briefly I thought he was struggling to life just before half, but it all fell apart again. Some good hustle had me slowly forgiving him, then he made critical errors down the stretch to help finish us. Just a flat bad game. Started off the game bang bang with a couple of turnovers, and at no point did he look the smooth sophisticated professional we have seen. In fact at various points he looked more like the Toronto guy, which is kind of scary. Started getting a little more assertive on offense as the first quarter wore on, made a couple of plays setting IT up for a three, going at Iggy and scoring over him. But nothing ever sustained. he missed shots, missed FTs, kept forcing things into the teeth of the defense. And even the controlled shots looked straight out of Toronto as he dribbled in place and took long 1 on 1 jumpers ala a rich man's Travis Outlaw. He began to show good hustle on the boards after returning in the 2nd, and with our big man out of the game started playing a bit of that role, notching several nice blocks and being a factor inside. His final sequence of the half expressed it perfectly, as he turned it over trying to create on our final possessin of the half, but on the other end came up with a blocked shot on the Warriors last attempt to make up for it. Came back to start the third missing once again, and unlike the first half where he eventually got something going, in the second half he really never did. Just a handful of plays. A couple of assists, he slapped a ball away for a steal under the Warriors hoop, got to the line, and hit both. but again, it signified nothing. And down the stretch he made a bad pass along the baseline with 2:15 to go for a TO that helped kill us, and capped things getting beat to the hoop for the Iggy +1 with 34 seconds left as the clincher for the Warriors All kinds of guys looked unsettled tonight. None perhaps moreso than Rudy.--Brick
North Korean Party Foundation Monument -- roughly translated that Korean writing probably says something roughly like "we live in a country where millions of people literally starve to death and you're wasting money building giant unused hotels, nuclear weapons, crappy missles, and bigass monuments?!?" Or at least that was probably the first draft, before they executed the mason, his family, his neighbors, his dentist, and his dentist's pet goat Laticia.
Stats: 27min 4pts (2-7, 0-0, 2-4) 6reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Thompson ( D- ) -- If this was JT’s last game as a King he certainly decided to go out on a whimper. Maybe the trade rumors were getting to him, but he did not come out very focused and all of the issues that he sometimes struggles with surged to life out on the court. He missed almost all of his shots with-in 5 feet of the basket, he lost a lot of playing time by picking fouls, and he showed hesitation on his jump shot. He started the game playing against O’Neal which I guess meant that he was at the center position and not surprisingly O’Neal didn’t do much against JT, but JT wasn’t doing anything out there either. He picked up his 2nd foul after 5 minutes of play and had to sit down, but then Malone put him back in with 3 minutes left. He had some good defense against Lee, who usually owns him, but finished off the quarter with only 1 point and 1 rebound in 8 minutes of work. He then picked up his 3rd foul less than a minute into the 2nd quarter and had to sit the rest of the half. He was invisible to start the 3rd quarter, but then at the 9 minute mark he had his only good stretch of basketball. Unfortunately that stretch only lasted 2.5 minutes, but he did manage to knock down an 18ft jumper and grab three defensive rebounds, get his shot blocked at the rim, but get the offensive rebound and the put-back. So in those 2.5 minutes he gave the team 4 rebounds and 4 points. And that is why his game was so bad tonight because for all of you math wizards out there, you know it means that during the other 25 minutes of action he managed to corral a whopping 2 rebounds and give us 2 whole points, by going 2-4 from the FT line. Yay…. So yeah, just a bad night from JT. He did have two really good post defensive stands against Lee towards the end of the 3rd quarter, but at a time when Cousins is out, we needed a lot more from JT than what we got tonight. You all might recall that JT’s first game with us he managed a double double. At the moment JT is our longest tenured King and I think it would be a shame if he ended his King’s career on such a poor performance. --Uncia
Canakkale Martyr's Memorial -- this bigass monument in northern Turkey is a monument to the quarter million Turkish troops who participated in the "Battle" of Gallipoli in 1916. I say "Battle", because what we are actually talking about is an 8 month long continual campaign as the Allies tried to conquer northern Turkey and Constantinople/Istanbul. It was one of the few battles in the war the Turks won as the Ottoman Empire crumbled, and is widely thought of in Turkey as inspiring a great surge of patriotism that would culminate in the founding of the modern Turkish state.
Stats: 21min 9pts (4-7, 0-0, 1-1) 5reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Landry ( C+ ) -- I thought about a B- but I couldn't talk myself into it. Carl didn't do anything bad, and he didn't do anything great. I guess somewhat solid might be the best description. He shot the ball well going 4 for 7 from the floor and only took what was there. He had 5 boards in 21 minutes on the floor, which, once again, isn't great, but isn't bad either. He had some good moments defending both Lee and O'Neal. Mostly in isolation post defense. He got burned a couple of times by Lee off the pick and roll, but on both occasions, he switched, and no one picked up his man. Gay was the culprit one time and Williams the other. He seems to have found his jumpshot though. All three of the shots he missed were in the paint, and three of the four that he made were jumpers between 14 and 18 feet. He went to the bench for a blow with 4:01 left in the 3rd quarter, and for some reason, never saw the floor again the rest of the night. I was surprised that he didn't get another run in the 4th quarter when it seemed no one could score a basket. All in all, it may have been his best game this year. Depending on what happens between tonight and noon tomorrow, we could be seeing a lot more of Landry. --Baja
Ghenghis Khan Staue -- this has been one of my favorites since I first saw a picture of it a couple of years back. So out in the Middle of Nowhere, Mongolia, in 2006 a local company suddenly throws up a bigass stainless steel statue of Ghengis Khan...sitting atop a visitor's center and guest shop, and proceeds to make it the centerpiece of their planned Ghenghis Khan Theme Park, where apparently the guests will stay in some 200 guest yurts they are building in a huge forest they are currently planting in the middle of the empty plain, and no doubt participate in such exciting activities as drinking horse blood and learning the proper angle for a good decapitation.
Stats: 19min 4pts (1-4, 1-2, 1-2) 4reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
McLemore ( D ) -- Started things off with a open look from deep which he was unable to convert as his poor shooting continues. Off of a turnover was forced to take Thompson one on one in transition. Did a decent job contesting but ended up picking up the foul. Picked up a cheap foul, one of many throughout the game, as Thompson was driving across the lane. Got back in midway through the second for a nice 10 second run as he picked up another quick foul on Thompson. With around five minutes played in the first half wasn't able to contribute much. Managed a offensive board and a three early in the second half and then disappeared until late in the fourth when he got himself to the line with the game already well in hand. To be fair he was once again hampered with foul trouble in the third quarter, which didn't help him turn this one around. Defensively had some decent attempts as well as some embarrassing ones. Baby steps on defense over the last month or so, but still limited on offense and what was suppose to be his one true skill at this level still hasn't shown up. --Henkel
Cristo Redentor -- the famous Cristo Redentor which looks down over Rio de Janiero.
Stats: 42min 26pts (9-17, 2-6, 6-7) 4reb 7ast 1stl 0blk 7TO
Thomas ( B ) -- On a night when we didn't have our top offensive player, IT resisted the temptation to take bad shot after bad shot, instead bequeathing that honor to Rudy while largely taking solid shots himself - in fact, outside of the very first shot of the game where he was fading left on the baseline I don't think any of his shots were notably bad shots and most came within the flow of the offense. In the first half, Thomas had his typical trouble with his defense - in fact he allowed 12 points on the 7 shots attempted against him, the only miss being a Curry jumper that was blocked from the side by Gay. We went into the break down 9 and not particularly looking like a team that had any chance of winning the game - until Isaiah took the game over in the third quarter. Not only did he have three assists in the quarter, he went off offensively on his own, shooting 4-6 and getting fouled on a three as the clock ran down to score 12 points in the period and bring the Kings all the way back into the lead. But IT didn't finish as strong, going for five points on 2-4 shooting and notching only one assist in the fourth. Still, in the second half, Isaiah's defense was night-and-day from what it was in the first half - he allowed only 4 points on 10 shots, and those two makes were both on fast breaks where he was unable to stop Iggy and Barnes one-on-one. Yeah, that's probably bound to happen, but those other 8 missed shots were a nice sight, even if two of them came when he was beat on a drive. Isaiah's game-long issue was turnovers. He ended up with 7, though one of them was undeserved as the ball clearly went off David Lee's foot on the replay. The other six he definitely earned, all of them on bad passes. One of those was a ridiculous attempt at a lob to Gay from behind the half-court line, and two came early in the fourth, right after we had established momentum. So, some good, some bad, and I can't give him full props, but he was definitely the only reason we got back into the game in the second half so I feel he should get a decent grade.--Capt.
Monument at Vimy Ridge -- and if you don't know this one, you just ain't Canadian. Not that this monument is actually in Canada. Confused yet? Good. So, Vimy Ridge is in France. Except for the land on which the monument stands actually belongs to Canada. Still confused? Good. Now the explanation: Vimy ridge was the site of a pivotal WWI battle, a battle that Canadians often point to as one of the most important in their nation's history even though it occurred thousands of miles away. Their troops spearheaded a British Commonwealth coalition force that smashed through German lines to the sorts of atrocious casualty figures that everything in that war provided. their bravery in the battle was said to fundamentally alter the British perception of them, and to pave the way for their eventual true independence from Britain. In gratitude for their sacrifice the French gave a plot of land to them on the site, and on that land the Canadians built this bigass monument. if you're ever in France and pining away for North America, you can just stop on by.
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Translated as "The Motherland Calls", this bigass monument stands outside Volgograd (modern day Stalingrad) to commemorate the decisive and ridiculously brutal Battle of Stalingrad, where 1.7 million people died (combined) to stop Hitler's advance and turn the tide of World War II. 
