Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
I tell you, if you have checked out on this season due to circumstances, you've been missing some pretty consistently entertaining games. Tonight a rough and tumble hard fought playoff game broke out in the old barn, and you can pick your jaws up off the ground when I tell you your Sacrametno Kings actually won it.
The key play really has to go to Tyreke Evans -- we were being outsaavied, fouled, bloodied, flopped, and every other "smart, veteran" dirty trick you can imagine in an amazingly frustrating third quarter by the Clippers in full playoff/cheap play mode (it was like one of those pickup games where the team full of old guys at the park come on and school the kids with their dirty plays), and then Tyreke showed them how its done, grabbing a rebound after Barnes blew a layup and pulling off a flop so egregious Chris Paul would have been ashamed. It was fighting back in a game full of the stuff, he hit both FTs the other way, and then started slamming inside to get to the foul line again and again and turn the FT game and momentum against the Clippers. It was a great response as Reke scored 8pts in a 13-0 run that the Clippers never really recovred from. Then Toney Douglas came on and picked up where Tyreke had left off, Marcus got involved, Cousins fought and stayed in the game at the same time, unlikely as that seems, and boom, we win our very own little playoff war. Like the Miami game weeks ago where we came as close as any team to unseating the Heat's run at history, we showed we can play a game at this level/style. It was ugly, playoff basketball. And it was fun. maybe one day we'll get to see the real thing again.
Said by an actual live Sacramento King:
Woot!Grading Consortium is down a bandido for tonight:
Bricklayer
Capt. Factorial
Boxscore
Stats: 36min 11pts (2-4, 2-4, 5-6) 4reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Salmons ( C ) -- I was not particularly happy with Salmons' first quarter. It wasn't his offense (he hit his only shot - a three - and was passing well enough), and it wasn't his defensive results (3 points allowed on 6 shots), it was his continues insistence on slumping down into the paint and leaving his man wide open for threes. He allowed five open jumpshots as a result, and we were darn lucky that only one of them hit. From that point, however, things got better. His defensive efficiency got worse (he ended up allowing 11 points on 13 shots) but somebody must have gotten in his ear at the quarter break, because he quit slumping off his man on the perimeter. For all but a minute and a half in the fourth quarter we went with a four-guard lineup, and Salmons was spending most of his time defending in the paint, and it worked out remarkably well. Outside of one post up by Griffin the Clippers didn't even attack Salmons down low. That one post up attempt happened when the Clippers finally tried to take advantage by putting DeAndre in with Blake, and Smart (to his credit!!) yanked Salmons and put in Patterson to intentionally foul Jordan until Del Negro was forced to pull him, at which point we went back to the four-guard lineup that (somehow) actually worked. Salmons wasn't terribly involved in the offense, but we didn't need him to be. --Capt.
Stats: 15min 2pts (1-3, 0-0, 0-0) 2reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Thompson ( D ) -- on a night cut short by injury did not get much accomplished out there, and may in fact have sat out the entire stretch run as much for lack of production as for the gash over his eye. Was ineffective from the start, taking a few tough long shots we did not need and seemed to be trying to get into it with Griffin, with the predictabel result being that all he got out of it was 2 early fouls and a seat on the bench. Just did not look settled and in control of the situation. Started the third poorly again, turning it over on the break, and on another semi-break led Cousins right into an offensive foul with a bounce pass to him on the move right into Jordan's chest. The game was getting chippy and cheap by that point too, and Jason seemed to be getting held on several rebounds, which did little for his composure. Finally turned it over on an offensive move when he turned into a double team instead of passing it, and slammed heads with Jordan and ended up back in the lcokerroom with stitcges. That was it as Patterson played well, Cousins stayed in control, and Smart went to smallball with Reke and Salmons our "power forwards" for the bulk of the quarter as we played only 1 big at a time. Even if we had been playign a standard lineup I doubt anything JT had done on the ngiht would have made him 1 of the 2. --Brick
Stats: 28min 17pts (6-10, 0-1, 5-9) 11reb 1ast 2stl 0blk 3TO
Cousins ( B+ ) -- back and looked pretty good in the early going, and largely aware of who he was playing against as he dramtically pulled his arms bakc on sevral occassions to avoid the expected flops and foul trouble in the early going. The long jumpers were not on, or really needed, but grabbed some strong defensive boards in traffic and was working inside for dunks around the rim to stayefficient. We started the third smartly with a called post move for a +1. But then things began to get chippy, and I thought we were going to lose our big center to the mess again. Picked up back to back offensive fouls to damage his calm, survived an utterly ridiculous flop attempt by CP3 that is widely circulating the net and needs to be fined today, but then picked up his 4th on a bizarre and dumb foul racing up fron behind Griffin on the brake and almost tackling him -- what did he think could happen there? When he returned in the 4th was very strong and physical on the glass, and made a great long outlet pass to Evans. More importantly he managed to hang in there during the late war despite Griffin's best efforts to fall down every other play, poor uncoordinated little dear that he is. Was our only big on the floor by that point, and certainly the only rebounder, losing him could have spelled the end, but he largely kept his hands out of the cookie jar and gave us the interior presence we needed to pull it out. Not an enormous game, but a good one and commendable for what he didn't do as much as for what he did. --Brick
Stats: 36min 16pts (4-13, 0-2, 9-10) 4reb 5ast 2stl 0blk 1TO
Evans ( C ) -- Evans was the hardest player for me to grade tonight. It's hard to look down on 17 points, but the facto the matter is that Tyreke started the game 2-10 from the field and only got himself up to 4-13 by hitting on two consecutive drives in the fourth - the second one out-of-control and a bit lucky in my eyes. The out-of-control drive was a bit of a problem for Tyreke tonight, as I noted at least four of them (three misses) and I think there were a few he got fouled on that I didn't note. Defensively, Tyreke made some nice plays (notably stripping Griffin on a baseline drive in the fourth to prevent a dunk the painless way), had two steals, hustled to get back and recover the rebound when Barnes completely blew a breakaway layup (following that with a ridiculous flop in a turnabout-is-fair-play move) and only allowed 11 points on 13 shots, but at the same time just wouldn't stop leaving his man (often Jordan Crawford) open for three. Tyreke surrendered 8 three point attempts tonight and given how open they were it was lucky that only three of them hit. Some good, some bad on offense, some good some bad on defense, I guess it's a C. --Capt.
Stats: 22min 7pts (3-5, 1-3, 0-0) 0reb 3ast 2stl 0blk 2TO
Thomas ( B ) -- My IT notes need to be washed out with soap. I count sixteen curse words either spelled out or abbreviated, and it all revolves around the male bovine excrement calls that were made over a very short stretch in the third quarter. Early in the third, IT got switched onto Matt Barnes in the post. "SacTown's Whinefest" proceeded to throw IT to the ground in order to get open for a layup, no call. No matter, IT continued playing pretty good D on Chris Paul (and yes, he was playing pretty good D in the first two quarters as well), starting with a steal on Chris Paul. Then things went crazy. IT stayed in front of Paul on a drive and subsequently in the post, completely frustrating him until CP3 tried to draw a desperation foul and the refs granted it. Male Bovine Excrement. Then, Blake Griffin set a screen and subsequently went into 5.25" disk mode, maybe flopping even worse than earlier when he hit the floor on the break from Cousins getting a couple of fingers on his ribcage. Of course, "Blake Griffin", like "Chris Paul", is a more important name than "Isaiah Thomas" so guess who got the Male Bovine Excrement call? One possession later Chris Paul suckered the officials into giving him another Male Bovine Excrement call on a sweep-through and that was it for IT - four fouls, and given how well our unit did in the fourth, he didn't get back in. (No real complaints there.) I'm just upset that IT's best defensive night in recent memory was cut short - I'd have liked to see more of that. Incidentally, IT did pull a Tyus Edney (or at least 84% of one) at the end of the first quarter, driving the length of the floor in 5.7 seconds for a layup and ended up with decent though not great numbers given his short minutes (7 points on 5 shots, three assists, two steals) and allowing 4 points on 6 shots if you ignore the MBE fouls. A nice outing, especially with the D and it's too bad it got cut short. --Capt.
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If the guy doesn't get kicked out, he at least gets a passing grade every time. Cousins really knows how to work the grading system.
