Happy Hallowen all!
We had our chances, but so many self inflicted wounds tonight. All in all though, hard not to be encouraged. Had big defensive hustle. Reke looked great. Cousins won't play this way more than a handful of nights etc., and it was right there and winnable.
I'm not going to do a theme tonight, because, well, its the first game of the season, and its a season still with some hope left. So we'll just do basketball until things start to spiral again.
Boxscore
Here is a highlight package from the game the Kings inhouse Kingsflix crew posted on youtube:
Stats: 21min 2pts (1-8, 0-1, 0-0) 3reb 1ast 3stl 0blk 4TO
Johnson ( D+ ) -- I hate to give out low grades for good defensive effort, because, well, we've seen so little of it around here in th epast decade. But...well, there are going to be nights like this with Johnson. His entire history suggests it. And perhaps particularly when going against his old team and his old coach that gave up on him. What that meant was that all night long he was forcing things offensively, trying to do too much. His one offensive moment came early, when, after starting the game with an ugly jumpshot off the dribble to start, next time down he came up with a nice spin drive for the dunk. But otherwise, it was just a mess of an effort. The Bulls wanted him to take that shaky jumper, and when he obliged it wasn't there He mixed in drives into heavy traffic that came up empty, and was sloppy with turnovers the whole night. It wasn't just an offensively impotent night, it was one in which he was far too involved and making far too many mistakes in his minutes, and it hurt us. Now on the other hand he avoids the lowest grades because of hsi play on the other end of the court.. As expected he brought a ton of hustle and effort on defense, had some nice defensive pokeaways, and was a significant part of the early defensive tone we set. It wasn't perfect on that either, as again maybe that same overeagerness caused him to be a little reckless, sometimes giving up position or letting guys get behind him and then trying to recover with length. But it was still an encouraging defensive hustle effort that will help us this season if he brings it every night. Has to calm down on the other side of the ball though.
Stats: 28min 8pts (3-6, 0-0, 2-2) 8reb 2ast 0stl 1blk 0TO
Thompson ( B- ) -- and along came Jason, who as always was, well, Jason. By the later stages of the game that made him our best and steadiest big, but that was a bad sign, not a good one. Spent the first half of this one having his traditional problems catching and finishing, but began to have some impact in the second, and in the third made some good passing and hustle plays, and finally got his first shot to fall on a smooth post move over Boozer out of a timeout. Took a big tumble out on the break as he was pulled down and spunaround as he went up for the finish but appeared to be ok. We probably needed to see more of him late in the game as we went small, and then went Hayes for defense on Boozer (Jason never showed much ability to stop either Boozer or Noah). But we missed some big boards late as length became an issue.
Stats: 25min 14pts (7-14, 0-0, 0-0) 7reb 1ast 3stl 2blk 7TO
Cousins ( D+ ) -- well, its hard to spin this as anything but a major disappointment for his 2012-13 debut. He had some offensive moments early, of the pure talent variety. Smoothly splashed a long jumper over Noah, made a steal up top and a brilliant pass ahead to Reke on the break, then drove by Noah for a dunk. But the plays were isolated, and he JJ and IT were in some sort of bizarre try to do too much TO competition. The Bulls, whatever our own struggles, are just an extremely impressive defensive team, and they had Boogie in a box for much of the night, not just defensively, but with 2 and sometimes three big bodies pinning him away from the boards as well. For the first quarter it looked like Boogie was going to play it cool, make an impact when he could, wait for his openings, get his hands on a lot of balls on defense (hsi new specialty seems to be aggressively showing up top on picks and stealing balls from startled bigs on the perimeter and rumbling with them the other way) But our youth, and his lingering immaturity bit us in the butt in the second quarter, when after returning in the mid-quarter he racked up 3 fouls in the space of about 4 minutes, 2 of them on questionable block/charge calls where he wasn't getting the benefit of the doubt. Just like that a game that looked destined for no foul trouble was back into his normal pattern, and his frustration was building. And the wheels fell off in the third as we tried to go inside to him and he got smooshed as things began to get scrappy inside. He got even sloppier, lost his cool, and when he picked up his 4th foul, added his first T of the year behind it. Doh. Gotta get past that. Not the start he was dreaming of I imagine. Late in the game returned and made a few brute strength plays muscling through walls of Bulls, but turned it over again at the 2:00 mark as we blew many chances late, and missed a jumper we needed next possession. Here's the amusing thing -- despite the sturggles, the turnovers, fouls, technical, all the slop that hurt us...he makes so many pure talent plays that his per 36 numbers were still 20-10 with 4steals and 3blks. Now on to Pekovic, who frustrated him last year.
Stats: 39min 21pts (8-13, 1-2, 4-4) 8reb 3ast 0stl 1blk 2TO
Evans ( A- ) -- there were two big reasons for encouragement form this game. One was the teamwide defensive hustle that was just night and day from last season. The other was the play of Tyreke, who was simply dominant in the early going, playing one of the best overall quarters we have seen from him. Was just doing it all, getting out on the break, slashing to the hoop HARD (once adding Hinrich to his personal highlight as he euro stepped right around him as he tried to take a charge), and not always for himself either as he dropped some nice passes off along the way, and was critically splashing in his jumpers. Maybe more importantly this was a two way effort as he was getting his hands on a lot of balls on defense early, getting back on the defensive glass (and as the game went along actually got stronger defensively, completely smothering Luol Deng for much of the second half). His reward for the early excellence was being iced by his own coach as he was the first starter to the bench, and the last one back in, watching us lose our lead and stagnate completely on offense while he was out of the game. After finally returning, was almost too unselfish -- his first forced shot did not come until late in the 3rd quarter -- before capping the half with a brilliant spinning drive to beat the halftime buzzer. Amongst the other encouraging signs was Reke unselfishlessly giving the ball up to teammates as he and occasionally Hayes were about the only people creating anything for other players -- but after a while you almost wished he would stop and just take it himself as teamwide shooting percentages plummeted. Went the whole way the second half as by far our steadiest player, and was expending huge energy wearing Deng out all over the court in maybe the most impressive extended stint of defense we have seen from him. Unfortunately did not finish the game off the way you would have hoped, as following a tough force and hit at the 50 second mark to cut the lead to 3, he made back to back mental errors that kind of closed the door that he had just reopened, first mysteriously fouling Deng from behind the next possession when that seemed the last thing you wanted to do, and then with 36 seconds to go getting called for a 5 second violation when our sidelines inbound play broke down and he did not use our last timeout. As I said at the top of the page, so many self inflicted wounds for us tonight.
Stats: 25min 10pts (3-8, 2-3, 2-2) 0reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
Thomas ( D ) -- really struggled in his season debut as Kurt Hinrich, an excellent defender but a guy seemingly givng up a lot of quickness, was surprisingly able to really smother him and severely disrupt our offense. The single assist he notched tonight was not part of the scheme like our final preseason game where Reke did most of our handling while IT worked off the ball as a scorer. This time IT was handling and trying to initiate, but Hinrich was seemingly in his head from the beginning of the game, constantly challenging him and redirecting him and causing IT to force shots or make bad decisions for turnovers. Finally got a pair of threes spotting up off the ball for his positive contributions of the night, but not able to control the game and his struggles to initiate the offense led to Brooks (far from excellent himself) running the team down the stretch.
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