Been a long long time since this fanbase could pull out them flabby out of practice arms and flex, but I think we may have something here.
DEFENSE.
A superstar to lead us.
We badly need a third weapon. We still need a shooter. But this is the brutal part of the schedule here, this is the Western Conference playoffs for us in November, and we are competing and belong. Its really the first time we've been able to do that in more than half a decade because we are throwing up a defensive wall and just hanging in there tough possession after possession allowing us to finally survive those offensive lulls. Its the huge key that has been missing forever in these parts. What allows good teams to be good. And thus far, we've got it. There's big time winds of change here.
Boxscore
Stats: 39min 25pts (7-14, 1-2, 10-11) 7reb 6ast 1stl 1blk 4TO
Gay ( A- ) -- real nice followup effort to the 40pt explosions as Rudy is just suddenly back in gear. This time he played Boogie's very effective wingman, and in the second half Malone even learned from his mistake and tried to keep at least one of them out there at all times (think there was only 45 seconds or so without either) to provide an anchor for the struggling benchers. Took him a little while to get going offensively, but while the first half of the first quarter belonged to Cuz, the second half belonged to Rudy as he took over where Cuz left off and put 10 points of his own, and for the second night wasn't forcing. It wasn't just another scoring effort though, as Rudy not only led the team in assists while setting up teammates on numerous occasions, but also had several defensive knockaways and blocks. When he and Cousins were out there together we were just clearly the better team. I wavered between an A or an A- for an excellent and efficient 2nd weapon game, but ultimately chose to go with the minus here for a late stumble as we went to him coming out of the timeout at the 2:56 mark of the game, and he made back to back mistakes on our next two possessions resulting in a blocked shot against him and a turnover. It was very a much a credit to this new defense thing the Kings seem to have discovered that we held tough and did not allow those empty offensive possessions to sink us, but the second mistake in particular could have been disaster as out of it JJ Redick ended up open for a wide open three that could have given the Clippers the lead. Fortunately he choked it, Cuz came down the other way and made a great little pass to JT under the hoop for a layin, and Rudy's bad minute becomes less than a footnote. Real strong set of back to back games against elite competition.
Stats: 37min 4pts (2-5, 0-0, 0-0) 7reb 1ast 2stl 2blk 3TO
Thompson ( B+ ) -- you know somewhere along the line in the great JT debates about is he or isn't he good enough to start, to be a rotation guy, to walk and chew gum at the same time, is the contract too big, is he happy here and just on and on, something has gone unnoticed: he's become a good, and sometimes really good, man defender. He is not a shotblocker, never will be, but last year we saw him really get into Kevin Love, Anthony Davis and others. This year he was coming off a strong defensive effort against LaMarcus Aldridge, and tonight he backed it up with really an outstanding defensive effort against Blake Griffin that really seemed to flummox the flopper. Griffin was trying so hard to make something happen, and with so little success that he was 3-13 form the field...in the first quarter alone! And after our bench collapsed and let the Clippers back into it, you could immediately feel the uptick in defensive intensity when JT returned and started hounding Griffin again. He's still not being productive in any other way particularly. His offensive clumsiness caused us some minor issues as Boogie and Rudy were out there all alone on offense for much of the night. He did grab 7 boards on the night, and a few of them were tough ones helping to clean up behind the scrum DeMarcus was attracting, but 4pts 7rebs on 2-5 shooting in 37min isn't often going to get a grade this high. It does this night though. He never let Blake get going the whole game, a huge factor for us. Held him to 6-20 on the night, and with the game hanging in the balance was on the receiving end of a nice little slip pass inside from Boogie, which JT converted for a layup to put us up 4 with 1:48 to go in the game. A strong contribution without much evidence of it in the boxscore. And good enough to win with as long as you have two stars combing for 60pts on the night.
Stats: 34min 34pts (15-23, 0-0, 4-5) 17reb 5ast 0stl 3blk 4TO
Cousins ( A+ ) -- if you gush too much, you sound foolish, so I will just resort to an evil laugh instead: MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Boogie had himself a wow game, and all it took to snap him out of the doldrums of those first two scruffy games was the sight of his long lost buddies in Clipperland. Boogie on the night: 34pts 17reb 5ast on 15-23 shooting in 34min. Entire Clippers starting C/PF/SF frontcourt on the night?: 28pts 18reb 5ast on 11-36 shooting in 95min. He started the game off once again displaying his versatility by draining long jumper after long jumper over Jordan, who just doesn't like to venture out of that lane. Added an excellent hustle play when he was headed back upcourt, then turned and raced in from above the three point line to snag an offensive rebound and follow it. He completely carried us in the early going as it took a while for anybody else to show up, Boogie scored our first 8 points and had 10pts and 6reb by the mid quarter before Rudy began to turn it up as a 2nd scorer. And in a sign of the defensive intensity we would see all night, he came over and helped JT finish off Griffin on several occasions as well. He added a beautiful long bounce pass to JT to cap a 15-0 run that had us running the Clips out of their own building. The second quarter was interesting because of Spencer Hawes, who was a thorn in our side all night and obviously was being used to draw Cuz all the way out to the three point line on defense. Cuz tried to batter him inside, succeeded a few times, but Hawes had help and it wasn't efficient. Meanwhile Spencer was causing problems the other way attacking our smaller frontcourt players and launching long jumpers against Cuz and in the end it was the only quarter the Clippers would win. Cousins came out of the halftime break a man on a mission, and immediately started things off with a great physical drive and layin. He would add another punishing drive, and forego the jumper for the inside attack all half long. And if Portland's near pivotal moment occurred when Boogie committed a poor foul and had to leave the game in the 3rd, sending us into a swoon, the pivotal moment in this one may have been when Boogie again committed a 4th foul in the 3rd quarter (not a bad one though), but instead of leaving the game, waved off Coach Malone and asked to stay in the game. Not only did Malone acquiesce, but Boogie rewarded the confidence, avoided picking up a 5th foul, and continued his strong play long enough to start pulling us back into the game before he left. Malone even felt enough confidence in his emerging maturity to send him back out to start the 4th quarter in order to support the ragged bench troops, and Cuz responded by battering Hawes inside trip after trip until the Clippers were forced to cry uncle and call a timeout. By the time Cuz left for a quick breather in the mid quarter, we had tied the game back up and were ready for a stretch run battle. Cuz's fourth quarter play featured not only tough finishes inside, but a series of really nifty passes for a big man zipping them to Casspi and JT when the Clippers flinched and overcommitted on him. His only real mistake came at the three minute mark when he directly challenged Jordan inside, got smushed, and the Clippers used the opportunity to race back the other way on the break. In the end it did not matter. This wasn't just an obvious All Star game. this was about as flat superstar a game as you are going to see, and once again against one of the best teams and best frontlines in the league. Just chewed them up.
Stats: 20min 3pts (1-4, 1-3, 0-0) 1reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
McLemore ( D- ) -- aka "The Thug". Hey, if Ben can't help us solve our gaping SG whole or shooter problem, perhaps he's looking to make up for it by carving out a different niche that we also could use help with: The Enforcer. All of this based off of one minor little early incident when Ben pulled down Blake Griffin to stop him on the break, Blake took exception, and Ben ended up getting called for a flagrant 1. You would just shrug it off except for the effect it seemed to have on the game as Ben's incredibly vicious and inhumane thuggery seemed to light a fire under our butts, and may just have intimidated the oh so tough Clippers right out of the building. We were down 13-8 when it happened, and would proceed to run off the next 13 points in the game. We need to get him a cool nickname like "The Bodysnatcher" or "The Assasin". In any case it certainly beat talking about the rest of Ben's game because...er...he didn't have one. Deffenively he seemed to be repeatedly losing Redick, amongst others, around the perimeter, and the Clippers helped our defense tonight by missing some good looks from 3. And offensively...it was offensive again. Kind of ridiculous really. The only thing that fell for him was a blind luck three in the third when he missed it so far left it ricocheted off the backboard and fell in...just the way he called it of course. Everything else was missed again Our starting shooting guard is now averaging 3.3pts a game on .214 shooting. Ahem. Things at the position got so dire that Malone hit upon an inventive little solution and used Casspi as our SG for the 4th quarter as we tried to win it. For Ben, I'm not sure where you go from here, but it would almost have to be up. Only leaving him a half grade's room to go down, and that only because he thugged Blake Griffin for us and sent us on a run.
Hey...how about "Master of Disaster"? "Mean" Ben Mac?Stats: 39min 14pts (4-12, 0-1, 6-6) 5reb 4ast 0stl 1blk 3TO
Collison ( C+ ) -- numbers were not the equal of last time out, but then again he really had his hands full with his old starter on both ends. But that's the thing -- CP3 clearly slowed Collison and harassed him at times, but Collison competed hard and CP3 was only briefly able to impact this one back the other way. You'll take that tradeoff. Along the way the few hoops he did get were often timely. He was finally the first king other than Boogie to
score when he smartly waited for his offensive rebounders to get under the hoop and then pulled up for one of his little side pops. He stepped up when Cuz left in the final two minutes of the half and scored our next 4pts to keep us close. He seemed to be losing control of Paul defensively in the early 3rd as Paul ran off 11 points in the first half of the quarter to push the Clippers out to a lead. But DC stabilized thereafter, and Paul would never score another point after the 4:27 mark of the 3rd quarter. And then late in the game DC stepped up and hit the dagger shot on another of his little pullups from the right elbow with 53 seconds to go and drained the jumper to put us up 4. He would finish it off with 2 clutch FTs as well. This was not a great game by Collison, but it was a tough competitive one where he gave the game's best PG something to contend with all game long, and in the end got the last laugh. I could be talked into a B- on this one.
Last edited:
