Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Well that...was...exciting...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......
I had had tonight's theme tagged as a possible theme for some time now, but was inspired to break it out tonight pursuant to a conversation I was having with a friend. So tonight's theme: Bad Art
Artest ( B- ) -- this was an interesting game again for Ron. Interesting because Ron did not have a great game, and was simply godawful with his shot for most of it, and yet if you watched the game tonight it was like a PBS documentary on the difference between the "just a scorer" types, and of all the things you expect a superstar type player to do in a game. And Ron is not a superstar, but tonight it was just classic. Got off to another slow offensive start, and I do mean SLOW. Took some tough shots, but more than anything was just missing gimme after gimme. But here was where that "playing like a superstar" bit came into play -- at 11pts 7rebs 5ast he clearly did not play like a superstar. But like a superstar, he did everything else while he was not scoring -- played defense and got an easy block on Yi after the Bucks mysteriously went through a stretch in the second quarter where they decided their goto matchup was to go to Yi every time down the floor in the post against Ron. Was passing well even after missing gimme after gimme inside. Was doing other things. Finally got a baseline jumper to go near the end of the third and therafter hit a couple of big shots late for a bit of mini-revival offensively (think at one point he was 1-10, but finished 5-16). And while playing a lot of PF against the Bucks' tweeners (they don't have a true PF at this point with both Yi and Villanueva being soft and perimeter oriented) blocked shots like a big man, including a big one on Redd late in the game. But more importantly on a night when Salmons only scored 12, Beno 6, and Cisco 2, Ron picked up the slack. But wait...the boxscore says John scored 22! And Beno 14! And Cisco 7! So what the hell are you babbling about you may ask? Well that was the thing, watch the game and you could see Ron scoring half those points for each of those guys. It was his presence, the double teams and cheating players he draws, and his ability to swing the ball out of those positions that created much of the offense we had tonight. Guys should be offering up parts of their paychecks after the game. And that's the sort of effect that a superstar has that a mere scorer does not. And no, I'm certainly not calling Ron a superstar, but it again made his game, and this grade interesting. He put up modest numbers, he shot like crap again, and yet his fingerprints were all over the game simply because the Bucks join the long list of teams unsure of what/how to find a good matchup for Ron on defense.
Geometric Abstraction (Piet Mondrian) -- ain't that great? And no, I did not just do that myself in 2 minutes on photoshop. No, a famous artist "painted" that, and you would likely have to pay millions of dollars to have the honor of hanging half a dozen lines and two colored squares on your wall. And art is subjective and all that and I've had this discussion several times before with artsy friends with a broad conception of the term, and I know this is supposed to mark me as a scurilous unsophisticated neo-barbarian, but...sorry. No.
Moore ( C+ ) -- burnt by Yi early, but came back to give us a solid roleplaying first half of the 4pt 4reb type variety. Minutes were limited after half, with Mikki not doing much to earn them combining with a preference for smallball against a team that doesn't really have any power players. Joined a number of Kings who strugled from the FT line tonight. Overall a bit of a shrug game for Mikki.
Geometric Abstraction (Bricklayer) -- anybody who wants to pay me millions of dollars for this one can contact me via PM (and yes it was completed in about 2 minutes on photoshop).
Miller ( B ) -- spent too much time flopping on the floor on offense looking for calls, and hence not getting back in transition defense (including one time when he cleared out his man so that Douby get get to the rim and got smacked in the face by Quincy for his trouble), but had a pretty solid first half against the woeful Andrew Bogut. In the second half after hesitating on a jumper, bumbling forward for a lurching drive, and getting a walking call as a result, settled in and began to just knock down the face up 17 footers with his feet set. Bogut began to be sporadically effective as the game went along, and by the end the statistical gap had considerably narrowed, but on the court Brad still pretty clearly outplayed him (for whatever outplayng Andrew Bogut is worth).
Jackson Pollack -- and this was the "painter" that started me off on a long and fruitful career of making fun of abstract pretentiousness. Pollack is the paint dripping guy. In 9th grade my pretentious pseudo-communist history teacher had us all do one of those everybody gets assigned an artist and has to do a report on them things. I got Jackson Pollack, and learned for the first time that the drop cloths from when I was helping my dad paint the bathroom were high art. Well, I was only 14 and less sure of myself at the time, but that class preesentation still did not take quite the turn that my prof had hoped it might. Neither did my grade btw -- people get so touchy when you mock their heroes.
Salmons ( A- ) -- and this was really floating between the flat A and the A- and only got tipped to the "-" side for a missed FT in the final seconds that opened the door for the Bucks to tie us at the buzzer and force an OT -- something they damn near did after Redd shook John in the corner and got a clean look at one of his bread and butter shots. Combined with a solid but not spectacular first half leading us in scoring while not looking like he was having to work terribly hard to do it, I decided that there just wasn't enoguh full game sparkle to justify the flat A. Was able to get to the rim easily in the first half, but could not control Redd without lots of help. But down the stretch was clearly our best player and played very strongly on both sides of the ball down. Not only our own leading scorer knocking down open jumpers courtesy of the attention Ron atracted and slashing to the rim at will in the face of the complete lack of shotblockers the Bucks have (the lack of defense/rebounding BTW being why the "talented" Bucks always oh so mysteriously underacheive -- soft don't win), but also really locking up Michael Redd (who is strictly speaking not a great one on one player anyway) and outplaying him down the stretch.
Covenant -- and this one gets the nod over many similar type things I could have posted simply because I walked under it for years at school. Known affectionately by generations of Penn students as the "bloody tampons", this particular piece of "art" squats in the middle of the quad between the residential towers on the west side of campus and alas is the first thing to abuse your eyes when coming down over the bridge from the famously beautiful Locust Walk down the heart or campus.
I had had tonight's theme tagged as a possible theme for some time now, but was inspired to break it out tonight pursuant to a conversation I was having with a friend. So tonight's theme: Bad Art
Artest ( B- ) -- this was an interesting game again for Ron. Interesting because Ron did not have a great game, and was simply godawful with his shot for most of it, and yet if you watched the game tonight it was like a PBS documentary on the difference between the "just a scorer" types, and of all the things you expect a superstar type player to do in a game. And Ron is not a superstar, but tonight it was just classic. Got off to another slow offensive start, and I do mean SLOW. Took some tough shots, but more than anything was just missing gimme after gimme. But here was where that "playing like a superstar" bit came into play -- at 11pts 7rebs 5ast he clearly did not play like a superstar. But like a superstar, he did everything else while he was not scoring -- played defense and got an easy block on Yi after the Bucks mysteriously went through a stretch in the second quarter where they decided their goto matchup was to go to Yi every time down the floor in the post against Ron. Was passing well even after missing gimme after gimme inside. Was doing other things. Finally got a baseline jumper to go near the end of the third and therafter hit a couple of big shots late for a bit of mini-revival offensively (think at one point he was 1-10, but finished 5-16). And while playing a lot of PF against the Bucks' tweeners (they don't have a true PF at this point with both Yi and Villanueva being soft and perimeter oriented) blocked shots like a big man, including a big one on Redd late in the game. But more importantly on a night when Salmons only scored 12, Beno 6, and Cisco 2, Ron picked up the slack. But wait...the boxscore says John scored 22! And Beno 14! And Cisco 7! So what the hell are you babbling about you may ask? Well that was the thing, watch the game and you could see Ron scoring half those points for each of those guys. It was his presence, the double teams and cheating players he draws, and his ability to swing the ball out of those positions that created much of the offense we had tonight. Guys should be offering up parts of their paychecks after the game. And that's the sort of effect that a superstar has that a mere scorer does not. And no, I'm certainly not calling Ron a superstar, but it again made his game, and this grade interesting. He put up modest numbers, he shot like crap again, and yet his fingerprints were all over the game simply because the Bucks join the long list of teams unsure of what/how to find a good matchup for Ron on defense.
Geometric Abstraction (Piet Mondrian) -- ain't that great? And no, I did not just do that myself in 2 minutes on photoshop. No, a famous artist "painted" that, and you would likely have to pay millions of dollars to have the honor of hanging half a dozen lines and two colored squares on your wall. And art is subjective and all that and I've had this discussion several times before with artsy friends with a broad conception of the term, and I know this is supposed to mark me as a scurilous unsophisticated neo-barbarian, but...sorry. No.
Moore ( C+ ) -- burnt by Yi early, but came back to give us a solid roleplaying first half of the 4pt 4reb type variety. Minutes were limited after half, with Mikki not doing much to earn them combining with a preference for smallball against a team that doesn't really have any power players. Joined a number of Kings who strugled from the FT line tonight. Overall a bit of a shrug game for Mikki.
Geometric Abstraction (Bricklayer) -- anybody who wants to pay me millions of dollars for this one can contact me via PM (and yes it was completed in about 2 minutes on photoshop).
Miller ( B ) -- spent too much time flopping on the floor on offense looking for calls, and hence not getting back in transition defense (including one time when he cleared out his man so that Douby get get to the rim and got smacked in the face by Quincy for his trouble), but had a pretty solid first half against the woeful Andrew Bogut. In the second half after hesitating on a jumper, bumbling forward for a lurching drive, and getting a walking call as a result, settled in and began to just knock down the face up 17 footers with his feet set. Bogut began to be sporadically effective as the game went along, and by the end the statistical gap had considerably narrowed, but on the court Brad still pretty clearly outplayed him (for whatever outplayng Andrew Bogut is worth).
Jackson Pollack -- and this was the "painter" that started me off on a long and fruitful career of making fun of abstract pretentiousness. Pollack is the paint dripping guy. In 9th grade my pretentious pseudo-communist history teacher had us all do one of those everybody gets assigned an artist and has to do a report on them things. I got Jackson Pollack, and learned for the first time that the drop cloths from when I was helping my dad paint the bathroom were high art. Well, I was only 14 and less sure of myself at the time, but that class preesentation still did not take quite the turn that my prof had hoped it might. Neither did my grade btw -- people get so touchy when you mock their heroes.
Salmons ( A- ) -- and this was really floating between the flat A and the A- and only got tipped to the "-" side for a missed FT in the final seconds that opened the door for the Bucks to tie us at the buzzer and force an OT -- something they damn near did after Redd shook John in the corner and got a clean look at one of his bread and butter shots. Combined with a solid but not spectacular first half leading us in scoring while not looking like he was having to work terribly hard to do it, I decided that there just wasn't enoguh full game sparkle to justify the flat A. Was able to get to the rim easily in the first half, but could not control Redd without lots of help. But down the stretch was clearly our best player and played very strongly on both sides of the ball down. Not only our own leading scorer knocking down open jumpers courtesy of the attention Ron atracted and slashing to the rim at will in the face of the complete lack of shotblockers the Bucks have (the lack of defense/rebounding BTW being why the "talented" Bucks always oh so mysteriously underacheive -- soft don't win), but also really locking up Michael Redd (who is strictly speaking not a great one on one player anyway) and outplaying him down the stretch.
Covenant -- and this one gets the nod over many similar type things I could have posted simply because I walked under it for years at school. Known affectionately by generations of Penn students as the "bloody tampons", this particular piece of "art" squats in the middle of the quad between the residential towers on the west side of campus and alas is the first thing to abuse your eyes when coming down over the bridge from the famously beautiful Locust Walk down the heart or campus.
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