Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Interesting game to grade given that I had started making garbagetime notes next to everything by the early 4th, and yet we came back so hard and strong that its hard to typify it as anything but a legitimate effort to win it. If the Hawkls mis a few FTs, if Johnson doesn't beat OMri on that one play at the 1:00 mark, if if if...we had this thing at 5 and then 4 points in the last minute. It coulda happened. And a great look at what the future could be like wiht both our great young weapons in high gear in the 4th -- which is to say just flat unfair.
Theme tonight stems from a little chat I was having with somebody about Alan Rickman -- an actor who as far as I can remember has never once been bad in anything. Always adds something to whatever he is in. So we'll call the theme: The Rickman Effect -- Actors Who Are/Were Always Good
Official Boxscore
Garcia ( C+ ) -- I had relatively few notes about Cicso in this game, other than noting that the Hawks are absolute idiots and did not take advantage of an obvious power mismatch inside with Josh Smith playing SF against Cisco, outweighing him by 40lbs, and doubling his vert. Once or twice Cisco was not able to handle his strength in the post, and certainly there was no question of him grabbing a rebound on a night when we needed help there, but all in all he was largely able to counter Smith's offensive output at least with an early three, a couple of runouts etc. And then suddenly popped up after being the forgotten man in our big comeback (Donte took his place and Casspi was at SG) and knocked down a three at the 30 second mark to cut the lead back to 6 as we kept knocking until the end.
Alan Rickman -- he broke onto the scene as the villain in Die Hard, chewed scenery as the Sheriff of Nottingham, played a long suffering romantic hero in Sense & Sensibility, the Spock spoofing Dr. Lazurus in Galaxy Quest, a mortally bankrupt cheating spouse in Love Actually, and the is he evil is he not Professor Snape of Harry Potter Fame. Nobody plays exasperation better and through it all he's shown a rare charisma stealing scenes no matter the role.
Thompson ( D+ ) -- Jason is getting too old to continue to have these sorts of games popping up all the time where he's just clearly off and it bleeds over to everything, and its one of the primary reasons for the line of thought that he may be best as a PF/C first big off the bench type. Was matched up against a tough player in Horford, but is actually bigger than Horford and able to hold his own physically against him. But other than a nice +1 on a drawn up play coming out of a timeout, just agian looked offensively incompetent, struggling to post againt Horford's strenght, taking a nice interior dropoff from Reke and throwing it up so hard off the glass that it looked like he was mad at it -- nice, er touch there Jason. Topped off his half picking up back to back offensive fouls just flat running over Smith late in the second quarter. At no point looked like he knew what he wanted to do out there. Continued ineffective play led to us switching to the mega Daly/Cousins frontline again (and it was effective), and then using Landry downt he stretch.
Jack Lemmon -- choosing somebody this old is always a bit shaky, and why I avoided a guy like Burt Lancaster -- I haven't seen every single older movie these guys have been in, and actors who came up inthe 30s and 40s tradition of highly mannered acting were always prone to throw in a stinker. But Lemmon notched an amzing EIGHT Oscar nominations between 1963 and 1982, which is pretty ridiculous, so I'm willing to take my chances on the ones I have not seen. And he was great as an older actor, whether playing things for laughs (My Fellow Americans, The Grumpy Old Men Franchise etc.) or the emotional power of serious roles like the ones in Glengary Glen Ross or the 12 Angry Men remake. BTW, I have heard that he may have actually turned in a bad performance in Branaugh's 257hr long Hamlet update in the 90s. Fortunately I have better things to do with that much time, like learn to speak Swahili or something, and so may never have my illusions shattered.
Cousins ( B+ ) -- this is a tough grade after three quarters of struggle that I have no trouble at all attributing to simply not being ready to play -- DeMarcus is as prone as any rookie we have seen in these parts since JWill of being sloppy mentally, and I think he got too fat and happy after that last game and simply did not come out in this one strapped up and ready to play. Just the basic immaturity probelm we have again. But oh boy once he finally did wake up to team with Reke late in this one our two kids treated the Hawks like the untalented wannabes they must appear to be to the truly elite teams/players. Started off the game confidently stroking in the jumper against whichever of the Collins boys didn't just get released by the Clippers -- who no doubt was inserted there specifically as a Cousins stopper as the Hawks wanted no part of little Al Horford on Cousins. Which is a very good thing -- like Reke last year, teams are beginning to make roster and strategy decisions specifically in response to the matchup nightmare posed by one of our rookies. That's a heck of a compliment. Nonetheless said rookie really didn't bring it in the first half, and struggled to finish in the early 3rd and at one point was 2-10 from the field, and the Hawks had to be thinking, aw, this ain't so hard. Finally showed some sparks of life after twice in the waning minutes of the 3rd he grabbed offensive rebounds off of missed FTs (whihc of course there are a lot with us) and followed them inside. And then the 4th rolled around, and Reke and Cousins were reinserted after an awful punchless lineup saw us down 20 with 7-8 minutes to go, and they both went nuts. It started with a huge throwdown on a Reke pass right at the midpoint of the quarter to make it an 18 point lead. Then another finish, then another, and along with Reke running a one man press up top and coming up with steal after steal, Cousins had scored that cut it to 18 again, to 15 wiht the +1 FT, to 10 as we began to believe. To 7 with a minute to go. Along the way he added in a tremendous pass to fumblethumbs Landry, who got fouled and finally scored on a Cousins pass (he had blown several earlier Cousins assists). And then as a capper with us desperately firing away trying to steal it in the final minute he knocked down a three to cut it to 5 with 12 seconds to go. In the end it wasn't enough, it started too late, it was too sloppy mentaly early, and critically he never dominated an undersized Hawks team on the glass the way he should have. But the late run showed again what an enormous talent he is, and just how many of our problems are just kids being sloppy mentally and not yet soldiering forth ready to play 82 games a season. Fix that, and you fix us. What we saw late was somthing that I could have already told you -- we, the 7 win team, actually had the two most talented players in this matchup, and that could be said four matchups we might have with a lot of teams in the league. They, and Cousins in particular, just has to learn how to bring it from the opening top, every night.
Daniel Day Lewis -- such a great actor he almost exceeds this topic. I don't even like half the movies he's in, but the only reaons I would watch them is to watch him. And he doesn't take a role unless he's going to throw himself into it body and soul. There are no money grabs. No half assed efforts just to keep working. Its all in or nothing, and he's so good if he decided to play my father tommorow, I would probably believe him and buy him a clip on tie.
Udrih ( D- ) -- I'm starting to come around to Jerry's Beno is so consistent diatribes -- Beno was consistently good for the last few weeks of December. And now Beno has been consistently bad for the first week of January. In fact when you get down to it, Beno has been consistently bad for the entire decade! Tonight at least you could maybe add the sore knee from the other night to the same sucktatude we've seen from him in the new year. Just not even a threat offensively, and this was against Mike freakin' Bibby. And on the other end kept on running off Bibby at the 3pt line to come help double people, or I guess that was what he was doing. Whatever it was it was a bad idea because that's about the only shot Mike can still hit. Finally got one of his little pullups to fall late in the first quarter, and that was almost entirely it. Just running around in a haze, and got picked at the top of the key after he ran into a double team late in the half. A completely ineffective stint in the early 3rd followed, and I don't think he ever returned to the game after being replaced by Pooh wiht about 2 minutes to go in the quarter. We ran the 4ht with traditional 1 PG sets, with Jeter running the first half of the period, Reke the second, and Cisco and Casspi playing the SG. And it should be noted those standard big lineups racked up 39 points in the 4th -- almost as many as we scored in the 2nd and 3rd periods combined. Avoids the F here again just by not doing so many things terrible, so much as just doing nothing at all. But really, this is about as least productive as Beno Udrih is ever going to be for you. 3pts 2ast 2TO in 26 min?
Richard Harris -- this spot was going to go to Tommy Lee Jones until I suddenly had a horrible Flashback to Batman Forever? Or whatever the one was where Jones tried to play Two Face in some grotesquely over the top maniacal fashion. Makes it hard to shoehorn him into an "always good" thread with such a notorious stinker siting there. So I am inserting Richard Harris instead. And its a little risky inserting a guy who spent the first half of his life drunk, or high, or both, as unless you have seen them all, you never know if one of his early performances could have come off like Lindsay Lohan after a bender. But Harris just had such a great gift for displaying his humanity, whether it be in his hellraiser roles as a youth, or the wounded old men he played in his final decade. -- you could always see the flawed human being behind whatever he played. Should be noted I suppose that he was supposed to have given an over the top perfromance in Bo Derek's Tarzan the Ape Man circa 1980 or so. Now I saw that movie when I was a teenager...but frankly all I remember about it is certain parts of Bo's anatomy. In fact I think that's all anybody remembers about it, so Harris's rep is safe.
Theme tonight stems from a little chat I was having with somebody about Alan Rickman -- an actor who as far as I can remember has never once been bad in anything. Always adds something to whatever he is in. So we'll call the theme: The Rickman Effect -- Actors Who Are/Were Always Good
Official Boxscore
Garcia ( C+ ) -- I had relatively few notes about Cicso in this game, other than noting that the Hawks are absolute idiots and did not take advantage of an obvious power mismatch inside with Josh Smith playing SF against Cisco, outweighing him by 40lbs, and doubling his vert. Once or twice Cisco was not able to handle his strength in the post, and certainly there was no question of him grabbing a rebound on a night when we needed help there, but all in all he was largely able to counter Smith's offensive output at least with an early three, a couple of runouts etc. And then suddenly popped up after being the forgotten man in our big comeback (Donte took his place and Casspi was at SG) and knocked down a three at the 30 second mark to cut the lead back to 6 as we kept knocking until the end.
Alan Rickman -- he broke onto the scene as the villain in Die Hard, chewed scenery as the Sheriff of Nottingham, played a long suffering romantic hero in Sense & Sensibility, the Spock spoofing Dr. Lazurus in Galaxy Quest, a mortally bankrupt cheating spouse in Love Actually, and the is he evil is he not Professor Snape of Harry Potter Fame. Nobody plays exasperation better and through it all he's shown a rare charisma stealing scenes no matter the role.
Thompson ( D+ ) -- Jason is getting too old to continue to have these sorts of games popping up all the time where he's just clearly off and it bleeds over to everything, and its one of the primary reasons for the line of thought that he may be best as a PF/C first big off the bench type. Was matched up against a tough player in Horford, but is actually bigger than Horford and able to hold his own physically against him. But other than a nice +1 on a drawn up play coming out of a timeout, just agian looked offensively incompetent, struggling to post againt Horford's strenght, taking a nice interior dropoff from Reke and throwing it up so hard off the glass that it looked like he was mad at it -- nice, er touch there Jason. Topped off his half picking up back to back offensive fouls just flat running over Smith late in the second quarter. At no point looked like he knew what he wanted to do out there. Continued ineffective play led to us switching to the mega Daly/Cousins frontline again (and it was effective), and then using Landry downt he stretch.
Jack Lemmon -- choosing somebody this old is always a bit shaky, and why I avoided a guy like Burt Lancaster -- I haven't seen every single older movie these guys have been in, and actors who came up inthe 30s and 40s tradition of highly mannered acting were always prone to throw in a stinker. But Lemmon notched an amzing EIGHT Oscar nominations between 1963 and 1982, which is pretty ridiculous, so I'm willing to take my chances on the ones I have not seen. And he was great as an older actor, whether playing things for laughs (My Fellow Americans, The Grumpy Old Men Franchise etc.) or the emotional power of serious roles like the ones in Glengary Glen Ross or the 12 Angry Men remake. BTW, I have heard that he may have actually turned in a bad performance in Branaugh's 257hr long Hamlet update in the 90s. Fortunately I have better things to do with that much time, like learn to speak Swahili or something, and so may never have my illusions shattered.
Cousins ( B+ ) -- this is a tough grade after three quarters of struggle that I have no trouble at all attributing to simply not being ready to play -- DeMarcus is as prone as any rookie we have seen in these parts since JWill of being sloppy mentally, and I think he got too fat and happy after that last game and simply did not come out in this one strapped up and ready to play. Just the basic immaturity probelm we have again. But oh boy once he finally did wake up to team with Reke late in this one our two kids treated the Hawks like the untalented wannabes they must appear to be to the truly elite teams/players. Started off the game confidently stroking in the jumper against whichever of the Collins boys didn't just get released by the Clippers -- who no doubt was inserted there specifically as a Cousins stopper as the Hawks wanted no part of little Al Horford on Cousins. Which is a very good thing -- like Reke last year, teams are beginning to make roster and strategy decisions specifically in response to the matchup nightmare posed by one of our rookies. That's a heck of a compliment. Nonetheless said rookie really didn't bring it in the first half, and struggled to finish in the early 3rd and at one point was 2-10 from the field, and the Hawks had to be thinking, aw, this ain't so hard. Finally showed some sparks of life after twice in the waning minutes of the 3rd he grabbed offensive rebounds off of missed FTs (whihc of course there are a lot with us) and followed them inside. And then the 4th rolled around, and Reke and Cousins were reinserted after an awful punchless lineup saw us down 20 with 7-8 minutes to go, and they both went nuts. It started with a huge throwdown on a Reke pass right at the midpoint of the quarter to make it an 18 point lead. Then another finish, then another, and along with Reke running a one man press up top and coming up with steal after steal, Cousins had scored that cut it to 18 again, to 15 wiht the +1 FT, to 10 as we began to believe. To 7 with a minute to go. Along the way he added in a tremendous pass to fumblethumbs Landry, who got fouled and finally scored on a Cousins pass (he had blown several earlier Cousins assists). And then as a capper with us desperately firing away trying to steal it in the final minute he knocked down a three to cut it to 5 with 12 seconds to go. In the end it wasn't enough, it started too late, it was too sloppy mentaly early, and critically he never dominated an undersized Hawks team on the glass the way he should have. But the late run showed again what an enormous talent he is, and just how many of our problems are just kids being sloppy mentally and not yet soldiering forth ready to play 82 games a season. Fix that, and you fix us. What we saw late was somthing that I could have already told you -- we, the 7 win team, actually had the two most talented players in this matchup, and that could be said four matchups we might have with a lot of teams in the league. They, and Cousins in particular, just has to learn how to bring it from the opening top, every night.
Daniel Day Lewis -- such a great actor he almost exceeds this topic. I don't even like half the movies he's in, but the only reaons I would watch them is to watch him. And he doesn't take a role unless he's going to throw himself into it body and soul. There are no money grabs. No half assed efforts just to keep working. Its all in or nothing, and he's so good if he decided to play my father tommorow, I would probably believe him and buy him a clip on tie.
Udrih ( D- ) -- I'm starting to come around to Jerry's Beno is so consistent diatribes -- Beno was consistently good for the last few weeks of December. And now Beno has been consistently bad for the first week of January. In fact when you get down to it, Beno has been consistently bad for the entire decade! Tonight at least you could maybe add the sore knee from the other night to the same sucktatude we've seen from him in the new year. Just not even a threat offensively, and this was against Mike freakin' Bibby. And on the other end kept on running off Bibby at the 3pt line to come help double people, or I guess that was what he was doing. Whatever it was it was a bad idea because that's about the only shot Mike can still hit. Finally got one of his little pullups to fall late in the first quarter, and that was almost entirely it. Just running around in a haze, and got picked at the top of the key after he ran into a double team late in the half. A completely ineffective stint in the early 3rd followed, and I don't think he ever returned to the game after being replaced by Pooh wiht about 2 minutes to go in the quarter. We ran the 4ht with traditional 1 PG sets, with Jeter running the first half of the period, Reke the second, and Cisco and Casspi playing the SG. And it should be noted those standard big lineups racked up 39 points in the 4th -- almost as many as we scored in the 2nd and 3rd periods combined. Avoids the F here again just by not doing so many things terrible, so much as just doing nothing at all. But really, this is about as least productive as Beno Udrih is ever going to be for you. 3pts 2ast 2TO in 26 min?
Richard Harris -- this spot was going to go to Tommy Lee Jones until I suddenly had a horrible Flashback to Batman Forever? Or whatever the one was where Jones tried to play Two Face in some grotesquely over the top maniacal fashion. Makes it hard to shoehorn him into an "always good" thread with such a notorious stinker siting there. So I am inserting Richard Harris instead. And its a little risky inserting a guy who spent the first half of his life drunk, or high, or both, as unless you have seen them all, you never know if one of his early performances could have come off like Lindsay Lohan after a bender. But Harris just had such a great gift for displaying his humanity, whether it be in his hellraiser roles as a youth, or the wounded old men he played in his final decade. -- you could always see the flawed human being behind whatever he played. Should be noted I suppose that he was supposed to have given an over the top perfromance in Bo Derek's Tarzan the Ape Man circa 1980 or so. Now I saw that movie when I was a teenager...but frankly all I remember about it is certain parts of Bo's anatomy. In fact I think that's all anybody remembers about it, so Harris's rep is safe.
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