These hurt more because suddenly they matter again.
There's no need for me to recap what happened here. The refs blew it. Jason blew it. Ben blew it. I'll make a poll about it, but recapping it is painful and would involve multiple uses of obviously applicable words that unfortunately this board has decided to filter out. Suffice it to say that if anybody was doing their jobs, nothing extraordinary, just their jobs, we survive this.
However, I will mention this: our inability to play without DeMarcus Cousins is just devastating. I saw the Dallas mess coming a mile off all the way back in the first half when he got his third. Every foul on him makes me tense. Every B.S. foul on him doubly so. If I weren't so strongly anti-conspiracy Donaghy's mumblings about stupid games and vendettas by childish refs against certain players would make me nervous...and have me out kneecapping corrupt refs for the sake of the franchise. As it is I can only note that this is the 5th game in a row that Cousins has been called for 5 fouls or more, and in this one they even added a T, that oh, just decided the game in the end, no problem. A T mind you called on him for not saying a word.
Meanwhile oncourt we were +19 in his 30minutes. 19 points better than the Grizz while the refs allowed us to play our star. We lost the remaining 18 minutes of the game by 20 points. His primary reserve this time was Carl Landry, who checked in with a -23 of hopeless smallness against the big Grizz frontline.
We simply HAVE to either find some way to have DeMarcus Cousins on the floor, or we need to acquire a serious backup who can smooth over those periods when he is gone. Because its been disaster for us almost every night.
NOTE: the Grading Consortiuum is actively recruiting a new squad of graders for this season. And grading wins is more fun than grading losses. Give us a nudge If interested.
Boxscore
Stats: 40min 25pts (8-17, 1-2, 8-8) 7reb 2ast 1stl 1blk 0TO
Gay ( C- ) -- Normally when a guy scores 25 points on 17 shots you hand him a A in the grades and walk away. Not tonight. Why not? Because for as instrumental as Rudy was in building our big lead, he was almost certainly more instrumental in helping us waste it away. Things started out very good for Gay. He was working within the offense, especially in transition, scoring 6 of his 13 first-quarter points on the break (two big dunks, one out in front on a nice feed from Collison, one trailing the play on another DC assist, and one foul) and going 5-of-6 in that span. But from that point, things went very, very quiet for Rudy. He only managed two points in a six-minute stint in the second quarter, both from the line, and when he went out at the two-minute mark of the first half, it was his last rest of the game. In the second half, Rudy reverted to Toronto-style, relying on his own skills to create basically all of his shots. In the second half, Rudy only managed to shoot 3-of-9, with two of those coming in the very early minutes of the third quarter. When Cousins went out in the late third with foul trouble, Rudy proved completely unable to carry the team for the remainder of the game (hard as he tried, with at least four forced shots as our lead dwindled away, missing his final five shots and six of his last seven). Defensively, Rudy was able to take the first half off, as he was primarily assigned to Tayshaun Prince (a nominal starter who gives the Grizzlies a few token minutes at the start of each half and then goes to the back of the bench where he belongs) and Tony Allen. Vince Carter gave Rudy considerably more trouble, and while I was inclined to excuse one of Carter's baskets in the first half to team discombobulation, I can't be nearly so generous about Rudy's fourth quarter defense. We had a 17-point lead in the fourth when Rudy started to play sagging defense on Carter, who was exclusively in the game to shoot three point shots. Carter went 3-3 from deep in the fourth quarter, twice hitting when Rudy gave him a ton of space and once hitting when Rudy completely and totally left him. Compound that with a Carter drive that went right around Rudy for a dump-off assist (yes, the 37-year-old Vince Carter) and even if you excuse the play where Randolph popped him in the face before an easy layup Rudy was directly responsible for at least 11 of the Grizzlies' first 33 points in the fourth. Rudy's defense in the fourth, combined with his terrible offensive decisions, nearly single-handedly allowed Memphis back in the game. But the whole thing wouldn't complete without the night-cap. With the Kings up one point and with only three-tenths of a second on the clock, Rudy's charge was to stick on Courtney Lee. He couldn't do it. He couldn't play defense for 5.3 seconds to prevent Lee from getting completely wide open UNDER THE BASKET for the winning shot. Whatever you think about the failure of replay in this game to correctly identify the obvious inbounds tip by Ryan that should have run the clock, that does not change the fact that Gay could not stick on Lee long enough to prevent a wide open shot under the basket. Competent defense - only 5.3 seconds of competent defense - would have been enough to render replay moot and give us the win. Rudy couldn't do it. The way I feel right now, a D is mighty generous. Edit: I dunno, everybody seems to think that the final play was JT's fault and not Rudy's. Edit this if you want. I still think Rudy has to play remotely acceptable defense in the fourth even if the last shot wasn't his fault.--Capt.
Putting this right between these two, because SOMEBODY killed us on this play. Either JT was supposed to switch in which case he did, or Gay was supposed to stay with his man, in which case he did. Note at about the 21sec mark of the video, they zoom in on Gay's face and lip reading I think he says "switch that!" to somebody, likely JT, maybe himself. Maybe he's just making an excuse. Don't know.
Stats: 27min 6pts (3-5, 0-0, 0-0) 7reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( C- ) -- It was a mixed bag for JT tonight. He had some good moments, and some bad moments. He started off in the first defensive sequence defending Randolph, and did a good job, causing a miss on a post up. It's my belief that if he had the assignment of guarding Randolph all night, he would have fared well. However, from that point on, he was on Gasol, and that was an entirely different matter. At the 1:09 mark of the 1st quarter he picked up his second foul and headed to the bench. However, he made a very nice tip in of a Collison miss, and also hit a 17 footer. In the second half, Gasol started asserting himself, and JT started struggling big time. First it was a reverse spin in the post for a score, and then it was a little 12 footer over JT's outstretched hand. After JT missed everything on a 18 footer, he did manage to score one more basket on a post up near the right baseline. After picking up his 4th foul, he headed to the bench. He did manage 7 revounds, and I personally had him down for a blocked shot, but apparently the score keeper didn't. He did manage to get back in the game as he and Cousins rotated in and out trying to avoid getting their 6th foul. All in all, a so so night for JT.--Baja
Stats: 31min 22pts (8-17, 0-0, 6-7) 12reb 1ast 2stl 3blk 6TO
Cousins ( B ) -- I’m going to do my best to talk about Cousin’s game tonight without immediately returning to that final play. It is seriously clouding my ability to think about anything else, but here we go. On the first play of the game Cousins got great deep post position against Gasol, but he missed the lay in. It was great position, but in the post is probably not where you want to attack Marc. Good thing Cousins isn’t a one trick pony. He is an incredibly versatile offensive player, so he knocked down a jumper on the next trip down and then proceeded to beat Gasol off the dribble twice in a row. He had 12 first quarter points, and the Kings were rolling. His second quarter run wasn’t as successful. He stopped attacking off the dribble, and went back into the post where both Marc Gasol and Kosta Koufos were doing a nice job staying down with their arms straight up. It looked like Cousins was focusing a little too much on trying to draw some contact, and the refs really weren’t giving him the calls tonight. Great first, subpar second, but only two fouls at halftime. I’ll take that. Most of the second half was a struggle for Cousins and the Kings. When he was in the game, they kept feeding him the ball in the post and while that works on most nights, its not the best place for Cousins to be when Gasol and Randolph are also in there clogging everything up, and the foul calls aren’t going his way. These forces to the paint really caused the turnovers to pile up. I thought he was very good defensively for most of the night. Cousins and JT swapped between Gasol and Randolph a lot, and I give them both a lot of credit for keeping those guys under control (Gasol did a lot of damage from the free throw line, and that had little to do with Cousins). As you can probably guess based on the fact that DMC only played 31 minutes tonight, he was in foul trouble again throughout the second half. His fifth foul was of the garbage variety, and it came shortly after Monty McCutchen (official) said something a long the lines of “stop complaining”, and Cousins sort of walked away angrily? (Eye-roll) After the foul call and Monty T’d him up. Cousins first tech of the season. It was weak. Some of the fouls were legit, some of them were not, but the point remains the same – the Kings need him on the court for more than the 30 minutes per game he currently averaging. I think that is a fair criticism to lob at DeMarcus. When he’s not on the floor, the Kings aren’t very good, and that contributed to the loss tonight. And even considering most of his game after the first quarter was below our expectations, he came back in with around five minutes left in the fourth quarter and came up with some massively clutch plays. In the final minute, (playing with five fouls) he blocked Randolph, scored off the bounce against Gasol, was awarded free throws (which he hit) taking Gasol off the dribble from the three-point line (name me another center who can do that) and then defended another Randolph jumper in the paint successfully. It’s a tough game to grade. Great first. Not so great through the middle of the game, couldn’t stay on the court, huge plays in crunch time, and yet he was clearly the most important King, as usual, considering they couldn’t hold a 20-point lead without him… B --Mass
Stats: 37min 17pts (6-12, 3-6, 2-4) 4reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( C+ ) -- a bell curve game for Ben, who started this one out simply not ready to play. Fortunately for Ben, and our early blowout, Tony Allen completely outworked Ben for the first 3-4 minutes, beat him on the glass, and amazingly got right to the rim on cuts for not 1, not 2, but 3 good layup attempts...and he somehow missed all three. It was a huge early momentum swing for us all wasted by the end of course. Ben's own game did not start until the 8 minute mark where he hit a confident corner three out of a timeout to make the lead at that time a remarkable 14-2. From that point on for the next three quarters or so we had a professional SG. he didn't hit everything, missed several shots we needed at big moments, but scored in a variety of ways and looked confident in doing so. Tony Allen never threatened again and never did score in the game, but Courtney Lee was effective, and of course by the end of the game a ****ing butthead, and Ben occasionally ended up guarding, and getting roasted by Mike Conley, who was too quick for any of our guards and sliced into our defense at will even against Collison. Nonetheless despite some little misadventures along the way, up through about the end of the third when he airballed a three against the clock, and missed another three in the final minute we needed as we got shaky, Ben was a 3rd scorer along with Cuz and Gay, and if he wasn't scorching hot, everytime he pulled up you thought it had a chance, and they were good shots. The first problem was that he scored his very final point at the 7:18 mark of the third, and from that point on out was a punching bad as the Grizzlies chipped and chipped and chipped. The second and of course oh crap point was that we were still going to win it, by that late point pretty much entirely by Cuz 1 man willing us to victory in the final minute, and after Cuz got the stop on Randolph in the final few seconds Ben leapt in eagerly on the defensive boards used his athleticism to snatch the ball and get fouled with less than a second to go. We were up 1, our SG was going to the line at the other end of the court, good play Ben! We win! Except we didn't win. Except our SG goes to the line with us up 1 and blatantly chokes, and misses BOTH FTs, and I'm almost sure the 2nd one wasn't intentional, it was too close. If it was intentional even that was done poorly. Still wouldn't have mattered if we played defense properly, but it also wouldn't have mattered if Ben doesn't choke. If he doesn't then we are up three with 0.3 seconds to go. and there is no layup possibility. Even the miracle of all miracle threes only gets you to OT. You throw in the fact that at the :45 second mark Collison had passed up what looked to be a layup to give ben an open corner three, which he had also missed, and good play Ben! turns into you lost the ****ing game Ben! This grade was in the B's before that but would have tumbled even further due the minor little issue of being a proximate cause of losing the game, but this is Ben, and we're still getting used to the idea of him being a solid contributor at all. He didn't come out ready to play, settled in and was a good solid NBA SG for a long stretch, and then choked hard when it came time to win it. And so we did not. --Brick
Stats: 37min 20pts (6-11, 2-3, 6-7) 2reb 5ast 1stl 1blk 3TO
Collison ( B ) -- Collison played a solid, game with a few highlights. He played the role of conductor during the first quarter outburst, scoring on open opportunities and mainly feeding the hot hands of Gay and McLemore. He was able to get Conley in early foul trouble and broke down Beno on several drives to give open looks inside and out to his teammates. The biggest thing that Collison brings is the ability to put a lot of transition pressure on opposing defenses and he had two such drives early on resulting in free throws. He also had a few sloppy plays with risky pocket passes to Cousins and a really bad pass to Gay on the high post. His offensive highlight was a contorted buzzer beating three at the end of the third to put the Kings up by 15 going into the fourth. The defensive end was a mixed bag. Conley isn't a major scoring threat, but he still got inside far too often off pick and roll plays and a few times in isolation. Until Beno got clobbered by his own teammate, Collison also let him get to the rim and gave him open jumpers on a few occasions. Overall, his defense was adequate to the task, and he comes away with a solid if unspectacular grade for the night. --Hadlowe
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