Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Basically we were flat, and we could not shoot. It did not help that we were not moving the ball, so nobody got easy shots. Sure am glad they got rid of that Malone guy so we wouldn't have to watch anymore bad offense.
Alright, first an announcement: early in the season I thought the nonsense was over, and I could finally quit having to try to entertain where the team would not. The fools in the front office took care of that, so from this point onward, no more laziness, losses will once again = a Theme for the grades. And no, while on this season its deserved every night, it won't all be Girls. Save them for the most embarrassing of the embarrassing losses. Tonight was a close call with Omri being the only reason we closed the gap late. But the Cavs were barely more inspired than us, and they just beat us fairly easily, rather than blowing us off the court. So we'll do something else.
Secondly. 0-8 now. Tying the second longest streak since 2000 for us. Tomorrow against Indiana we have a chance to tie the worst streak this millennium, so keep your fingers and toes crossed!
Theme will be: Nifty 3D Chalk Drawings
Boxscore
Stats: 33min 20pts (6-16, 0-4, 8-8) 9reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Gay ( B ) -- Rudy had a decent game almost in spite of himself. He started the game rarely being involved on offense as the Kings seemed determined to play Keith Smart run and chuck, no-pass basketball. Gay's first basket, and first touch, came two minutes into the game on a nice inside feed from Cousins for a dunk. Two possessions later, he pulled up for an open three that was off to the side. Another three possessions later, he hit a contested leaner over Lebron and another Cavalier. That described his offense for the night. Dunks, misses on wide-open shots, and hitting awful contested jumpers. Rudy did have one spectacular 360 backscratcher dunk. I try to remain dispassionate about flashy plays, but that dunk was amazing in how effortless Rudy made it look. Defensively, he did okay, though it is tough to say how much of that is Lebron being banged up. He held James to 3-11 until the end of the third quarter when Lebron got into a rhythm. The one egregious defensive lapse was a sequence where Rudy tried to jump the screen and Lebron cut backdoor for a wide open dunk. Active on the boards, decent defensively, only one turnover. A decent night for Rudy in a loss that the team was never really in the game. --Hadlowe
Stats: 21min 2pts (1-4, 0-0, 0-2) 8reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( D ) -- probably wasn't a great sign when on our very first possession JT got the ball up top and in neighborly fashion decided to help LeBron shake off the rust threw it right to him for a breakaway dunk the other way. Probably a worse sign when 6 minutes later we had to pull him from the game for a stubborn refusal to guard Love on the perimeter as Love was raining threes on our head from all angles, and try putting in the always inspiring DWill instead. One of those threes was set up by JT getting picked up top, which is a weird thing for a big man to half to deal with. The others though were Jason not being focused and wandering down inside as Love, who looks ever the more Troy Murphy, just ducked out to spot up. Back in for Cuz in the early 2ndand had a couple of defensive possessions where he showed high, then recovered behind the play to neither challenge the shot, nor be in the rebounding scrum, and so just bounced around watching our 3.0 forwards trying to do all the work on the opposite side of the rim. Think he had all of something like 0pts 2reb in the first half. Things were mildy better after half, or at least more productive. He finally got on the glass a little. He got his only hoop of the night after he blew an easy one from Cuz, got the rebound and finally barely bounced one in. Spoiled that too by getting a technical for arguing he was fouled. Just fugly. A positive might be that Love largely disappeared after the first quarter fireworks, but on the Cavs you never know if that means anything as they have two other guys who started to take over and didn't really need or look for him much after the start. --Brick
Stats: 36min 21pts (5-17, 0-0, 11-12) 13reb 4stl 5stl 1blk 3TO
Cousins ( C ) -- Could not shoot. And to illustrate how much that simple problem determined everything here, consider this: Cuz's jumper was not on, and he missed a number of contested chippees around the rim. So let's just say that he hits 4 more of the very makeable shots he was missing. Just 4. Two jumpers, two layups. With that simple change tonight becomes a 29pts (9-17FG 11-12FT) 13reb 4ast 5stl 1blk 3TO night. And we are talking about an A type game. That's all it takes -- knocking down makeable shots for him. But instead he did not, and indeed neither did anybody on the team, and so the whole discussion changes. Was a bit alarming when he got an early loose foul trying to get in front of Bron, but this is new Cuz, and fouls just rarely are a huge factor now (unless some cowardly butthead flops of course), and so it went nowhere. Really was not on offensively from the beginning, and Mozgov was bothering him far more than he did in the early season. Was kept outside for contested jumpers, tried a drive and missedit, missed an easy chippee, and started the game 2 for 8 at best. Finally got a good one driving and powering through Tristan to the hoop from up top, and almost all the shots he hit were tough spectacular inside hoops. It was all the humdrum bread and butter shots that were not falling. The special moments were still there. For the most part you could see him being more careful and patient with his passes looking for assists not turnovers, but he still did have a loose drive and dish turnover thrown right at Casspi's ankles. That was the thing though -- he was being more careful with his passes, but yet somehow like his shot they were just off today. No other explanation than just "off". he overthrew Collison on an easy pass on the breakout, threw several balls just to the left or right of Ben rather than hitting him in the hands. He was just off all night. In the early going he wasn't even really dominating the boards, although that really picked up as the game went along. Did most of his offensive damage from the FT line, as whenever Mozgov left the game the Cavs started that now all too familiar double and triple team swarming. Did rack up a ton of steals up top poking at balls, picking off soft passes. he was still a menace. But by Cuz's standards, not great. And with teamwide ball movement a thing of the distant pass, we pretty much needed him to be great to win this. --Brick
Stats: 27min 6pts (2-8, 2-6, 0-0) 4reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
McLemore ( D- ) -- Ben's going to be glad to see this month from hell in his rearview mirror. For a short time int he early going it looked like maybe, just maybe, he was going to snap out of his monthlong funk. But we've seen that a few times this month, and like today, when he hit two early threes then promptly turned into a pumpkin, it just doesn't last. there was almost nothing to note after that, except details on hos he missed his last shot, or fumbled his last dribble. Here are the sorts of notes that pile up: almost turned it over twice on one possession trying to feed Cousin inside; airballed a corner three late in the 2nd (Smith may have blocked a piece of it); stripped on a drive in the final minute and a half; just ran off and left Mozgov underneath for an easy LeBron pass for a dunk (guess he went to guard the corner, but Mozgov was right on the hoop. Missed a three. Missed another three. Depression is watching him flounder out there again. For most of January we've had rookie Ben again, and its absolutely a factor in why we can't win anymore. We only have the 4 guys who are were real positives, and we only have 1 NBA level SG/shooter. He can't just die like this or Boogie spends his nights constantly triple teamed. You watch Ben right now, and he's off in every way Off balance,. floating left, right, quick shooting, not shooting, trying to create one play, not making the easy pass the next. Its a mess. --Brick
Stats: 26min 11pts (5-12, 1-3, 0-0) 2reb 4ast 0stl 1blk 3TO
Collison ( C+ ) -- Collison opened the game strong, hitting Ben for a three and then dropping a really nice crossover on Kyrie to drive straight to the hoop from the three point line for an easy layup. Of course, it turned out that that was his only make of the first quarter, and while he was still moving the ball well, he just couldn't get anything to fall. You can excuse the end-of-clock three, but he missed two layups, a floater that should have been pretty easy, and an ill-advised jumper. He also had one bad play on the offensive end where he just didn't run after a rebound he could have beaten Kyrie to, allowing the Cavs to break out for a layup. Things actually looked up a bit in the second quarter. Not only did he come up with a nice strip of Kevin Love under the basket, but his shot also started falling - Darren hit his final two of the half (including banking in a three from about 35 to beat the halftime buzzer) which led to him hitting 4 of his last five shots in the game. He had a bit of an abbreviated stint in the third, lasting just under 9 minutes before being spelled by Ramon, and by the time he would have come back in the game was into garbage time and Ray got the call instead. All in all he actually did a good job of distributing the ball, with four assists and eight other setups that led to either misses or fouls. Defensively, he wasn't great, but he was putting out more effort out there than Ramon and he allowed the same eleven points (all to Kyrie) that he scored. At the very least he didn't kill us out there defensively - though against a team with LeBron and Love, you'd expect him to be a bit out of the play anyway. --Capt.
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Aaron Bruski @aaronbruski 
