Artest ( A- ) -- seemed a bit bothered by Tim Thomas's length early, but as the first half wore on, became by far our best offensive weapon, scoring 15 in the first half, and carrying us right through the second half to finish with 28. Being Ron, he did feel obligated to throw up 2 or 3 bad forces, but for the most part he played it smart, took open threes, and then pounded it down in the paint. Also got back in there on the glass again with 8 (all defensive) to help us finally get control after being absolutely pounded by the Clippers for most of the night. In any case absolutely no doubt that Ron was why we won this one. Well...some doubt I guess. Because did we win it? Or did the Clips just hand it to us in obligatory fashion to maintain our streak? That wasn't so clear. Oh well, in any case Ron did his part to say the least. The players Ron guarded didn't do so hot either -- Tim Thomas was 3-12, Corey Maggette 0-8. But oddly, you really didn't notice Ron much on that end, and those guys may have struggled as much on their own as because of Ron. In any case our best by a lot, and the guy who separated the otherwise struggling teams.
Thomas ( B- ) -- got off to a fast start on the boards but was forcing the offense a bit, and then Brand asserted himself on the glass and took over in there. At least took over on the glass, because the Clippers were just awful from the field, Brand included. By all rights they should have won this by 20. But the way they were shooting I doubt they would have scored 100pts locked in the gym by themselves for 48 min. In any case Brand kept on working in there, but it was a lot of hustle and banging for relatively little payoff. And Kenny...well Kenny was ok. Came back in the second half and helped a little again. Nothing great, and tough when the other team is all over the glass tough to say too much about Kenny's 9rebs, But he showed up here and there in his limited minutes. Is a measure of how modest were his acheivements though that he was flat out replaced at PF by Corliss for entire stretch run.
Reef ( C+ ) -- aggressive early as all the attention Kevin and Ron were drawing created seams inside for him to work through. But he gave us no boardwork at all with Brand all over the glass, and after the initial work inside he did precious little the rest of the game. With Brad playing pretty well, lost a lot of his minutes as apparently now he is a pure center as far as we are concerned? In any case lack of boardwork and the noraml interior defense issues was probably what cost him time in this one, while some offensive presence was the balancer.
Martin ( F ) -- Just no choice on this one. And wow, Kevin's first real down game, and man was it was way down. Closely guarded from the very start, and the few shots he got up looked forced or out of rhythm. Got replaced in the mid third quarter by John Salmons with get this, 0pts on 0-6 shooting. Ouch. Was decent on defense after being switched over onto Shawn Livingston, but not an impact there either. Finally scored on the final play of the third quarter as we ran an old Kings style baseline pick play for an alley oop that barely crawled over the rim. But it led to nothing, and the 4th saw him promptly return to the struggle, and soon enough to the bench. Feel kind of bad giving him this grade as it was really his first such experience, but he just did nothing to justify me giving him a way out (and I should note this kind of performance is really going to play havoc with the 2/3 of my fantasy teams that he is on
) Not only 2pts on 1-8 shooting, but 0rebs 0ast 3TO...total washout, and it was clear Kevin just had no idea how to get out of it this time. Guess on the positive side we won anyway, and now I have a good baseline for the ole grading scale.
Bibby ( B- ) -- got lit up by Shawn Livingston in the early going, who was to be fair hitting shots he normally does not (i.e. jumpers). Began to pick it up in the second quarter, and finished with a solid statistical half (11pts 5ast) although maybe not that impressive on court. Started slow again in the second half but began to heat up a bit in the third working the two man game with Brad after Kevin struggled again in the third and was replaced. But it did not last long, and he not only cooled back off (to a freezer boxesque 5-17) offesnively, but on the other end exchanged Livingston for Mobley, who also then proceeded to light him up. Some solid assistwork on one of our few respectable assist/turnover nights this season, and then a little barely noticed help on the glass helps balance the defensive and shooting woes here. I thought about "B" here, but then I took into consideration that Mike seemed to be the only force known to man that could cause the Clippers to hit over 25% tonight, and tacked on the minus.
Miller ( B+ ) -- early on got boarded over by Brand, but otherwise a solid if unspectacular first half and actually led us in rebounding in only 10 minutes. And played pretty wekk after half, slowly but surely reasserting himself as our top (some would say only) center. In the third actually played some pretty good defense on Brand, and then came back in the 4th and keyed our run to take contol of the game with a 2 and a 3 more or less back to back to opent he lead up. Also set some good picks for Bibby -- an oft overlooked part of his game, and somethign that Mike really uses out of his bigs. Overall a very solid 12pt 8reb comeback game.
Salmons ( B ) -- Got a lot of minutes ona night when Kevin simply could not get going, and while his statisitical contributions were minimal, still managed to help around the edges. Did a good job defensively on Maggette in the second quarter, but did nothing for us on the other end. And came back and gave us a little boost with his second half performance with his passing and by hitting a three. Also briefly cooled Mobley in the third, and well...can't actually give him too much credit for Maggette after halftime -- he and Kevin apparenly shared the same spikedwater bottle this game. Got the bulk of the minutes down the stretch on Mobley again and...well again, Cat missed, so its all good. Now he missed open shots and point blank layups, but hey, who's counting. In any case, John did the little things, and often gave his opponents something to think about defensively. What he did not do were many of the big things as we got next to nothgin out of that OG hole tonight. So going for the roleplayer's B here.
Cisco ( C- ) -- ok first half with little remarkable to be said about it. In the second half contributed to Cat Mobley's explosion by not recognizing how dangerous and streaky he can be on the perimeter and sagging off. Overall I reamin a bit concerned about where the dynamicism has gone with him. Untrustworthy dynanicsm sure, but still...maybe in a distant sort of way reminscient of the attempts to tame JWill? Stay in control, be smart(er), limit mistakes...but can he find a way to still make an impact like that?
Corliss ( B- ) -- good activity in the first half, got on the glass, but could not finish inside and kept on missing groundbound layups. But he waws still back for the second half, and somewhat mysteriously came on to actually get all of the stretch minutes as our PF next to Brad. Did ok -- scored a few hoops and caused some problems there with his post ability, also bodied Brand -- but I'm also pretty sure he grabbed no rebounds, and the Clippers spent the quarter missing point blank latup after point blank layup and it wasn't because Corliss was in there swatting them out. In any case, gave us an effort and some spotty effectiveness, and I guess given our less than inspiring options tongiht, why not?
Muss ( B- ) -- Well...it was the Clippers. So we won. I could almost end this attempt at analysis rihgt there. But...well, I feel obligated. first of all, it wasn;t all fo the Clippers -- both Cassel and Kaman were missing, and that led to some ugly scrubs getting minutes for the Clips. Livingston had a big game stepping in, so maybe Sam wasn't missed that much, but if they had had Kaman...well, let's just say that every streak needs a little help here and there. Anyway, the story of this game was proabbly unfortuantely Kevin Martin -- 25ppg Kevin Martin -- damn near coming up wiht a bagel. Actually a whole sack of bagels -- finally got the one hoop, but also no baords, no assist, no nothing? Drew a whole crapload of attention from the Clips, and this is where it will be interesting to see how Kevin begins to respond to that. Kobe would attack. Go right at his guy, split the double, say grr! Kevin..well, Kevin's defining trait has been only taking good shots. But now when a team smothers him so that there are no good shots, I think next time he's jsut going to have to bite the bullet, attack, and see if he can't get to the foul line. In any case, not terribly impressed with the coaching staffs apparent inability to figure out a way to get him open even just once, but you can only blame the coaches so far when you just suck on a given night. So he did. And we won anyway. Its the Clippers you see? Would love to say that we squished the Clippers defensively in the 4th, but no such luck really. Clippers had open look after open look, layup after layup, and just flat out missed anything and everything. Missed something like 17 of 18 at one point there, and we maybe caused 3 or 4 of those. They were just terrible. Also would ahve a few questions for Muss -- such as why oh why why were we doubling Mobley in the post against Kevin? Kevin is 3-4 inches taller than Cat, and I will never understand why teams worry about Cat Mobley int eh post. he's small. He hits like 25% in there. And we double? Also was curious about the late move to have Corliss finsih the game as our PF. Brad I understood -- he was our best center. But Corliss...well, I guess while the other team is completely collapsing why not keepot eh lineup, but it did seem strange. Maybe Muss is terrified of actually having a full sized frontcourt out there all at once because Jerry has told him that teams don't do that anymore? Finally there was the handling of Kevin...Kevin really sucked. Granted. Bad game for the kid. But...dunno. Is he your leading scorer or not? Would Muss have played a Ray Allen or somw such 22min on a bad night? And how does the kid learn to fight through this if he is on the bench? Anyway, those are questions I had, but questions are irrelevant when we play the Clippers. We could probably trot out 5 of the Royal Court Dancers (and yes John Thomas if you are reading this I fundamentally reject your stupid renaming of that squad) and whip them somwhow, someway. So now we take our nice shiny, none too impressive 8-5 and roll on down into Texas. Should be fun. No really. Looking forward to it. Really, I am. A lot.
Thomas ( B- ) -- got off to a fast start on the boards but was forcing the offense a bit, and then Brand asserted himself on the glass and took over in there. At least took over on the glass, because the Clippers were just awful from the field, Brand included. By all rights they should have won this by 20. But the way they were shooting I doubt they would have scored 100pts locked in the gym by themselves for 48 min. In any case Brand kept on working in there, but it was a lot of hustle and banging for relatively little payoff. And Kenny...well Kenny was ok. Came back in the second half and helped a little again. Nothing great, and tough when the other team is all over the glass tough to say too much about Kenny's 9rebs, But he showed up here and there in his limited minutes. Is a measure of how modest were his acheivements though that he was flat out replaced at PF by Corliss for entire stretch run.
Reef ( C+ ) -- aggressive early as all the attention Kevin and Ron were drawing created seams inside for him to work through. But he gave us no boardwork at all with Brand all over the glass, and after the initial work inside he did precious little the rest of the game. With Brad playing pretty well, lost a lot of his minutes as apparently now he is a pure center as far as we are concerned? In any case lack of boardwork and the noraml interior defense issues was probably what cost him time in this one, while some offensive presence was the balancer.
Martin ( F ) -- Just no choice on this one. And wow, Kevin's first real down game, and man was it was way down. Closely guarded from the very start, and the few shots he got up looked forced or out of rhythm. Got replaced in the mid third quarter by John Salmons with get this, 0pts on 0-6 shooting. Ouch. Was decent on defense after being switched over onto Shawn Livingston, but not an impact there either. Finally scored on the final play of the third quarter as we ran an old Kings style baseline pick play for an alley oop that barely crawled over the rim. But it led to nothing, and the 4th saw him promptly return to the struggle, and soon enough to the bench. Feel kind of bad giving him this grade as it was really his first such experience, but he just did nothing to justify me giving him a way out (and I should note this kind of performance is really going to play havoc with the 2/3 of my fantasy teams that he is on
) Not only 2pts on 1-8 shooting, but 0rebs 0ast 3TO...total washout, and it was clear Kevin just had no idea how to get out of it this time. Guess on the positive side we won anyway, and now I have a good baseline for the ole grading scale. Bibby ( B- ) -- got lit up by Shawn Livingston in the early going, who was to be fair hitting shots he normally does not (i.e. jumpers). Began to pick it up in the second quarter, and finished with a solid statistical half (11pts 5ast) although maybe not that impressive on court. Started slow again in the second half but began to heat up a bit in the third working the two man game with Brad after Kevin struggled again in the third and was replaced. But it did not last long, and he not only cooled back off (to a freezer boxesque 5-17) offesnively, but on the other end exchanged Livingston for Mobley, who also then proceeded to light him up. Some solid assistwork on one of our few respectable assist/turnover nights this season, and then a little barely noticed help on the glass helps balance the defensive and shooting woes here. I thought about "B" here, but then I took into consideration that Mike seemed to be the only force known to man that could cause the Clippers to hit over 25% tonight, and tacked on the minus.
Miller ( B+ ) -- early on got boarded over by Brand, but otherwise a solid if unspectacular first half and actually led us in rebounding in only 10 minutes. And played pretty wekk after half, slowly but surely reasserting himself as our top (some would say only) center. In the third actually played some pretty good defense on Brand, and then came back in the 4th and keyed our run to take contol of the game with a 2 and a 3 more or less back to back to opent he lead up. Also set some good picks for Bibby -- an oft overlooked part of his game, and somethign that Mike really uses out of his bigs. Overall a very solid 12pt 8reb comeback game.
Salmons ( B ) -- Got a lot of minutes ona night when Kevin simply could not get going, and while his statisitical contributions were minimal, still managed to help around the edges. Did a good job defensively on Maggette in the second quarter, but did nothing for us on the other end. And came back and gave us a little boost with his second half performance with his passing and by hitting a three. Also briefly cooled Mobley in the third, and well...can't actually give him too much credit for Maggette after halftime -- he and Kevin apparenly shared the same spikedwater bottle this game. Got the bulk of the minutes down the stretch on Mobley again and...well again, Cat missed, so its all good. Now he missed open shots and point blank layups, but hey, who's counting.
In any case, John did the little things, and often gave his opponents something to think about defensively. What he did not do were many of the big things as we got next to nothgin out of that OG hole tonight. So going for the roleplayer's B here. Cisco ( C- ) -- ok first half with little remarkable to be said about it. In the second half contributed to Cat Mobley's explosion by not recognizing how dangerous and streaky he can be on the perimeter and sagging off. Overall I reamin a bit concerned about where the dynamicism has gone with him. Untrustworthy dynanicsm sure, but still...maybe in a distant sort of way reminscient of the attempts to tame JWill? Stay in control, be smart(er), limit mistakes...but can he find a way to still make an impact like that?
Corliss ( B- ) -- good activity in the first half, got on the glass, but could not finish inside and kept on missing groundbound layups. But he waws still back for the second half, and somewhat mysteriously came on to actually get all of the stretch minutes as our PF next to Brad. Did ok -- scored a few hoops and caused some problems there with his post ability, also bodied Brand -- but I'm also pretty sure he grabbed no rebounds, and the Clippers spent the quarter missing point blank latup after point blank layup and it wasn't because Corliss was in there swatting them out. In any case, gave us an effort and some spotty effectiveness, and I guess given our less than inspiring options tongiht, why not?
Muss ( B- ) -- Well...it was the Clippers. So we won. I could almost end this attempt at analysis rihgt there. But...well, I feel obligated. first of all, it wasn;t all fo the Clippers -- both Cassel and Kaman were missing, and that led to some ugly scrubs getting minutes for the Clips. Livingston had a big game stepping in, so maybe Sam wasn't missed that much, but if they had had Kaman...well, let's just say that every streak needs a little help here and there. Anyway, the story of this game was proabbly unfortuantely Kevin Martin -- 25ppg Kevin Martin -- damn near coming up wiht a bagel. Actually a whole sack of bagels -- finally got the one hoop, but also no baords, no assist, no nothing? Drew a whole crapload of attention from the Clips, and this is where it will be interesting to see how Kevin begins to respond to that. Kobe would attack. Go right at his guy, split the double, say grr! Kevin..well, Kevin's defining trait has been only taking good shots. But now when a team smothers him so that there are no good shots, I think next time he's jsut going to have to bite the bullet, attack, and see if he can't get to the foul line. In any case, not terribly impressed with the coaching staffs apparent inability to figure out a way to get him open even just once, but you can only blame the coaches so far when you just suck on a given night. So he did. And we won anyway. Its the Clippers you see? Would love to say that we squished the Clippers defensively in the 4th, but no such luck really. Clippers had open look after open look, layup after layup, and just flat out missed anything and everything. Missed something like 17 of 18 at one point there, and we maybe caused 3 or 4 of those. They were just terrible. Also would ahve a few questions for Muss -- such as why oh why why were we doubling Mobley in the post against Kevin? Kevin is 3-4 inches taller than Cat, and I will never understand why teams worry about Cat Mobley int eh post. he's small. He hits like 25% in there. And we double? Also was curious about the late move to have Corliss finsih the game as our PF. Brad I understood -- he was our best center. But Corliss...well, I guess while the other team is completely collapsing why not keepot eh lineup, but it did seem strange. Maybe Muss is terrified of actually having a full sized frontcourt out there all at once because Jerry has told him that teams don't do that anymore? Finally there was the handling of Kevin...Kevin really sucked. Granted. Bad game for the kid. But...dunno. Is he your leading scorer or not? Would Muss have played a Ray Allen or somw such 22min on a bad night? And how does the kid learn to fight through this if he is on the bench? Anyway, those are questions I had, but questions are irrelevant when we play the Clippers. We could probably trot out 5 of the Royal Court Dancers (and yes John Thomas if you are reading this I fundamentally reject your stupid renaming of that squad) and whip them somwhow, someway. So now we take our nice shiny, none too impressive 8-5 and roll on down into Texas. Should be fun. No really. Looking forward to it. Really, I am. A lot.
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