Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
See? See? For those still watching this season a good game can still break out even this late. Its April, and April numbers get wacky for kids and scrubs, but maybe the best combined night for our rookie guards thus far (Ben first half, Ray 2nd), combining for 39pts on 13-28FG.
Cousins v. Portland this year:
Gm1: 35pts 9reb
Gm2: 33pts 12reb
Gm3: 35pts 13reb
Gm4: 30pts 12reb
I pray for 3 things next year: 1) that we make the playoffs, 2) that Portland does as well with the same roster; and 3) that we meet in a playoff series. Boogie might break some Wilt records.
Good losses as losses go. We being a bad team found a way to make the late mistakes to lose it, letting a team down 2 have an open corner three is...duh. And then our rookie decided that he was going to hero it at the buzzer. Well, should guarantee us our draft spot I guess, so we should be able to go ahead and win a couple of these final games without any further misgivings. Cousins REALLY wants to win these BTW. I don't even think its conceivable to tell him that we are going to tank/rebuild another year. Somehow, someway, we gotta break through this glass ceiling this summer.
Okay, some days off here, so I will theme this one. Theme = Cool Art
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
MassacheusettsKingsFan
Capt. Factorial
Henkel
Boxscore
Stats: 29min 5pts (2-8, 0-2, 1-2) 4reb 3ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Outlaw ( D ) -- You know how a negative times a negative is a positive? Well, somewhere along the line somebody must have switched things up such that a positive times a positive is now a negative. I mean, it's April, Outlaw's playing in Portland...Travis ought to have had a monster game. Spoiler: he didn't. Outlaw came out with little purpose in the first half, playing bad defense and missing shots. He was lethargic enough that he came in for a whole two minutes in the second quarter, got blown around by Will Barton, and was given a one-way ticket to the bench for the rest of the half with no points, no rebounds, and one assist. At halftime Outlaw must have gotten the memo about the small forward spot being responsible for rebounding tonight, because he came out working in the third and grabbed four boards. He did finally manage to knock down two shots, both baseline pops as he was going hard right and one instrumental in our attempt to steal this one from the Blazers. But in the end, he didn't really give enough effort, he didn't hit enough shots, and he didn't play effective enough D to really make a difference in this game.--Capt.
Redhead Girl -- notice anything special about this photograph of a redheaded girl? How about that its not a photograph. How about that its not even a painting. How about it was done by Bic pen, by a Portuguese lawyer who lives in London who goes by "VianaArts" and just does them as a hobby. (S)he owns 8 colored Bic pens, and a black one. This entire rendering apparently took only 6 colors and the black.
Stats: 27min 8pts (4-6, 0-0, 0-2) 5reb 0ast 0stl 2blk 1TO
Thompson ( C+ ) -- difficult thing to grade although generally I am moderately happy with it. Got the start, whether due to some alleged Evans injury which showed no effects on the court, or because he's 6'11", so is Aldridge, and he presented the better defensive matchup. Did hit a long jumper in the early going but great players will hit shots even if guarded, and JT wasn't effective in his main role as LMA stopper until later in the game, and quickly got into foul trouble. Nothing after returning until he picked up a ball swiped from Cousins and got fouled. But of course he then missed both FTs as he's entirely lost the thread at the line. Made up for that with a follow dunk a minute later as he was one of several Kings to really benefit from the attention focused on Cousins and be able to clean up around the open rim. Stayed out of the way in the third, but made a few little help plays to assist the big guy. A nice block to trigger a break, and then ran the court for Cuz to hit him with the pass for the dunk. Helped us buy time with Cuz out in the early 4th and made a good post move for a score. But a minute later got a three second call trying to post up again, and down the stretch the decision was made to go with Reggie, who was making more plays, both good and bad. Still, not a bad roleplaying effort. Stayed efficient, made little contributions. He and Evans kept LMA below his season averages, etc. Almost went B-, if we win, maybe I do. --Brick
great Wall -- once did a whole theme on the "Invisible Man" series by Bejing photographer Liu Bolin.
Stats: 37min 30pts (14-29, 0-0, 2-3) 12reb 2ast 3stl 0blk 3TO
Cousins ( A- ) -- Interesting night for Boogie. He had a somewhat subdued first half largely because the Trailblazers were double and triple teaming him anytime he had the ball within 20 feet of the basket. I can’t verify if this is true or not, but the Blazers broadcasters said that the Blazers almost never do this (I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch the Blazers when I don’t have too) and that in previous meetings this season they didn’t double him. This is, of course, why guys like Rudy Gay and Isaiah Thomas are important. Why not double and triple Cousins in this game? I’d leave McCallum, McLemore, Outlaw, and Thompson open too if it meant getting the ball out of DMC’s hands. It also shows the level of respect Cousins is gaining around the league. Anyhow, back to his performance. Like I said, his first half wasn’t very effective, for good reason, but still. It was pretty much mid range jumper or nothing for a lot of the first half, and his defense on Lopez wasn’t where you’d like it to be. There were just a lot of miscommunications and breakdowns anytime Lopez was involved. Cousins would slide over and help, and then no one would help him, etc. His offense, a long with the defense on Lopez got much better in the second half. He scored 8 points in the first three minutes of the third quarter, and kind of took off from there. It was an encouraging performance because he was able to score 30 points almost entirely through his jump shot. He rarely took it inside (and only attempted 3 FT’s as a result) because of the double teams and it was totally fine. We’ve seen this sort of game from Cousins before, and it’s a testament to how far his jumper has come. He had a few buckets close to the basket, including a couple dunks and offensive rebounds, but he was taking what the defense was giving him, and producing. His work on the glass was solid as usual, and his passing was pretty good out of the double teams even though the assists weren’t there. Strategically, I would have liked to see Cousins get the last shot (instead the Kings got a McCallum jumper) but this was a good, different sort of game by DeMarcus. --Mass
Stats: 32min 16pts (6-13, 1-3, 3-4) 1reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( B- ) -- So one of the better games that we’ve seen from Ben in the last couple of weeks. The shame of it, is that it could have been so much more. He played most of the 1st quarter, and 2 minutes into the 2nd quarter (and 12.5 minutes of play) he was sitting on 12 points on 5-7 shooting. Which means that the last 20 minutes of play netted him 4 points on 1-6 shooting. *sigh* It is interesting as the game did not start out auspiciously for him, as the Blazers started the game with a 3 second violation, and Ben got the nod to put up the first shot of the game and he missed that FT. Fortunately that didn’t seem to trouble him, and on what would be a nice reoccurring theme, a minute later he would take the ball and drive it hard to the rim and finish. He was very aggressive in this one, taking the ball to the rim, catching and taking 1-2 dribbles and pulling up, and for the first 12 minutes he had very good success. Unfortunately towards the mid-to-late 2nd quarter he was struggling on hitting the open shot, where he missed 3 jump shots in about 45 seconds. He still wasn’t able to find his shot in the 3rd quarter, and since Malone was having success with a Ray/Outlaw front-court Ben basically didn’t play the entire 4th quarter. I dropped Ben’s grade a bit also due to the defense. Wes Matthews basically had a field day against Ben. He had success posting Ben up, had success running Ben through screens to get open looks, and had success on making quick movements to get open when Ben lost focus or turned his head. Matthews had 19 points on great shooting (7-12) and I think one of the reasons Malone didn’t go much with Ben in the 4th is that he wanted someone bigger, in this case Outlaw, to keep Matthews from posting in the interior. Ben also didn't rebound the ball ,and since he was looking for his shot most of the time, he only cashed in one assist. Fortunately he also only had one turn-over, when he pushed his luck a little too far trying to creatively dribble into the lane through multiple defenders. So good aggression through-out the game, great early shooting, poor late shooting, and not the greatest of defense. It’s better than what we’ve been seeing lately, so that is at least a bit encouraging. --Uncia
Dollar Bill Koi -- did you know there is such a thing as a "currency artist"? Well...now that there are 7 billion of us, and half of us are all talking on this internet thing, its hard to distinguish yourself you know? So you adopt little dog toons and start twirling a bat..or you sit around and start folding up currency into funny shapes. This Dollar Bill Koi was the idea of noted currency artist Won Park.
Stats: 43min 23pts (7-15, 4-4, 5-5) 4reb 8ast 3stl 0blk 0TO
McCallum ( B+ ) -- Didn't play poorly for the first three quarters, but he struggled with his pull up jumper and wasn't getting to the basket with much success. Even with his shot not falling found ways to be valuable, while coming up some big momentum shifting plays in the process. In the early going his best work was mostly on the defensive end as he was making Lillard work while forcing a couple of turnovers, although it should be noted that Lillard was uncharacteristically sloppy with the ball at times. While his struggles shooting off the dribble continued he had no trouble knock down the set three pointer in the early going and somehow got a highly contested deep three to fall to close out the half. Continued to struggle with his mid range jumper in the second half, but got into the paint and made a nice floater after creating contact with Watson to give him self space to finish off the third quarter. Early in the fourth managed to attack the basket with more success, making a fading one handed shot early in the period. Followed that up with a nice transition layup and all of a sudden Ray had picked up some momentum. With his confidence going wasn't shy about putting up shots, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. We needed someone to help carry the load, but at the same time he forced several plays. Most egregiously a easy fast break opportunity where he forced the action and challenged Batum only to get the ball stripped. Luckily Cousins recovered, but he was flirting with disaster rather than making the simple play. Despite the overly ambitious attempts was a major contributor to the near upset as he knocked down a couple of deep balls with his feet set. Also had a nice two man game going, as he was consistently feeding Cousins every time they ran that little pick and pop play. This one came down to the final shot and I wasn't thrilled that McCallum elected to take it. Not that Cousins had a good look, but the opportunity to get him the ball was there. Instead it was another mid range jumper that didn't fall. Not that it was a terrible shot and without his play in the fourth I doubt we would have been in position to steal this one, so overall I'm grading this as a good game for McCallum with a couple rookie moments thrown in the mix.--Henkel
Mega Ice Sculpture -- wonder how long that took? I'm going to have to do a theme just on ice sculptures one of these days. So many amazing examples.
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I'd like to know what the chips are. Not Gay. Maybe Isaiah, and then you're left with..? It's doubtful you get a comparable talent, given the restricted FA situation. Then you've got D-Will, McLemore, McCallum, Outlaw and R. Williams and whatever. Maybe the #1 if they get around the conditions, but that pick is looking less and less valuable, barring a lightning strike. Gay is the financial weight around the orgs neck right now. If somebody sees how there can be a major upgrade in personnel, please feel free to share.
