Hats off to Jason Thompson and Daren Collison this game. While their numbers might not look spectacular, their defense was reaching top notch levels.
Thompson just absolutely hounded Griffin from his first shot to his last. JT is starting to enter Chuck Hayes territory as far as his defensive level when a man has his back to him and is posting him up. He rarely gives any ground in post up situations and he showed great recovery on this game against a much more athletic Griffin and had 2 solid blocks. He turned Griffin into a liability for the Clippers. I'm pretty curious to know if JT's defense is effective against Cousins in practice during 1 on 1 post moves.
Collison also played masterful defense on Paul. Wasn't as shut down as Thompson was but Paul is 10x craftier than Griffin is. The majority of Paul's buckets were of the "that's why he's one of the best players in the league" variety. Paul made a couple of insanely good post moves and Collison was right there with him both times. Obviously helps when you can go up against him in practice but either way he stuck to Paul like glue. You'd never notice it from Paul's box score stats but a lesser defender gives up 25pts and 15ast against Paul this game.
Landry scored some very important points for us again. His numbers don't look that great but he was defending a much larger man in Hawes, so rebounds were tough to come by for the undersized PF.
Casspi with another one of his half hustle, half crafty games. I really like his drive in the lane and kick out move. Even if he doesn't kick the ball out for an assist, he collapses the defense and gives our offense a chance to score on defenders who are now out of position.
Also, Stauskas with 3 blocks???