Atlanta Hawks season: 100.2ppg
Atlanta Hawks tonight: 124pts
Cousins 28pts 7reb 6ast = yay! Horford 25pts 10reb 5ast = boo. IT played better team game, 20pts 2reb 10ast = yay! Teague 18pts 8reb 15ast = boo. Ben was under control and didn't suck on offense, 10pts 5reb 1ast = yay! Kyle Korver 28pts 2reb 4ast = uh oh. And just etc. The Hawks shot 58% against us, scored 124pts, they shoot 15-25 from 3pt land as a core part of Malone's defensive philosophy appears to be let them have as many open corner jumpers as possible, DeMarre bleeping Carrol shoots 6-9 on his way to 15pts and the only thing stopping me from another rant, this one centered upon the Kings resemblance to a bunch of female body parts/small domestic felines is some general sense that I am a known entity and have a responsibility to be mature and all that bunk. Its hard though. I'm an old defensive guy. I always sneered and considered offensive guys to be those small domestic felines. Pathetic gutless glory hounds that I took great pleasure in frustrating and making cry back in my day. And so you can imagine my nightly joy in watching the Kings do a pretty good imitation of exactly that breed for the past decade. Tonight was one of those nights. They could have used me out there. At least I would have known that you don't run off to "help" while leaving Kyle Korver standing wide open in the corner, you run back hard on the break, and when a team hits every open jumper you give them, you damn well fight through and OVER the screen, not under it.
Anyway, down we go again. Not particularly a talent thing -- Al Horford Paul Milsap and Jeff Teague aren't more talented than Cousins, Gay and Thomas. Its smarts, guts, and cahones. Frankly I'd rather it be talent, at least then it wouldn't be such a waste.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Spudfan
Capt. Factorial
MassachusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 36min 22pts (8-13, 0-0, 6-8) 1reb 3ast 3stl 1blk 3TO
Gay ( B- ) -- this one had a strange, lackadaisical feel to it, but bottom line we got our #2 scorer back and that terrible knee game last time out was hopefully just that, a single terrible knee game. He actually started the game ragged enough that I was worried about a continuation, missed a little in rhythm jumper, flat took his eye off the ball on the catch for what should have been a wide open layup, got one tough inside shot to go, but he had several turnovers trying to post and not recognizing double teams, and the rest of the shots were rolling off and he only had 4 pts until late in the first half, but then began to come alive. Drew a foul on a nice drive, came up with a great block right at the rim to save a hoop, hit JT with a nice assist. He was suddenly back. The thing was, even after he got rolling...its hard to tell with Rudy because he's so smooth. He's like one of those gliding raptors of the bygone Dr.J/Iceman Gervin era. And so it rarely looks like he's trying hard even when he is. But tonight I had some questions. He wasn't on the glass at all, nor even remotely scrapping to get on the glass. There were a few loose balls that he pretty just bent at the waist for them, and that was the extent of his hustle play. Once the offense came online, we once again got the full repertoire of pullups, postups, late in the game he came up with back to back great swoops on the hoop, the second of which involved an amazing amount of English on the ball to get it to fall from a bad angle as his momentum carried him away from the hoop. But on the glass, on defense...you couldn't exactly spot where he was being lazy, he just always seemed to have a little gap between him and the ball or him and his man. Just enough so those plays were consistently going to the Hawks. The only real hustle play he made was when he darted in to grab his own missed FT and get us another possession. Throw in a troubling back to back sequence where he suddenly looked like Marcus Thornton, ignoring an open Ben on the break to get fouled, and only hit 1 of 2 FTs, and then a minute later picking up a loose ball and ignoring a wide open Cousins 8 feet away so he could force a missed layup...and this just wasn't his best effort. The professional scorer was back, and he did it in true #2 scorer fashion with limited shots. But the rest of his game still hasn't really made it through security back at Sac International. --Brick
Stats: 20min 4pts (2-6, 0-0, 0-1) 7reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Thompson ( C+ ) -- This was an odd game for JT. He started off the game rebounding well and playing good defense by containing Millsap who usually plays well against us. Then with about 5 minutes left in the 1st he picked up 2 fouls in about 10 seconds and had to sit down. He didn’t get back till about 4 minutes left in the half. In his 2nd stint he pretty much did what he had been doing previously with the rebounding and defense. He wasn’t doing all that much on the offensive end, but he was contributing none-the-less. His 3rd wasn’t as good as he basically stopped securing rebounds but again his defense on Millsap was solid. He only grabbed 1 board in his 8 minutes of play in the 3rd quarter and will with 3 minutes left in the 3rd he left the game and never got back in as Malone decided to play Williams for the stretch run. So he only played 20 minutes in this one, and though he wasn’t great on the offensive end (only 4 points, and missed 2 wide-open 18ft jumpers and some offensive tip-ins) he had been playing good defense and was rebounding well enough, and so it felt as if Malone should have gone back to him at some point in the 4th quarter. JT didn’t have a bad game and he didn’t have a great game, but his defense and rebounding was good on a night where there was very little defense and rebounding by the Kings so he gets a slightly above-average game for a below average stat-line. --Uncia
Stats: 35min 28pts (10-20, 0-0, 8-9) 7reb 6ast 1stl 0blk 4TO
Cousins ( A- ) -- Although the end result of the game was dissapointing, Cousins showed us some very positive things tonight. After getting off to a rough start in which he made only 1 out of 4 shots, while being blocked twice, Malone pulled him from the game (6 minutes in) to do some coaching and boy did it work. The Kings were down 6-15 when he went out, and 10-18 when he came back. But by the end of the quarter we were only down two thanks to Cousins. Right after getting back into the game he drove strong to the hoop which ended up with 2 points. The next play Acy missed a tough layup off of a pass that came from Cousins. Next Cousins converted an and-1 layup on a pass from Ben. He followed that with a strong move to the hoop and converted another 2 free throws attempts after being fouled. He finished the quarter strong with a pass out of a double team to Derrick for an open layup to bring us back within 2. During the second quarter Cousins offense slowed down while the rest of Kings started to come alive. Although he wasn’t a big part of the scoring during this quarter his defense remained as strong as it had been all night. The only buckets Horford was making were either during transition or on long jumpers. In the third Cousins was the focus of our offense again and he responded with a big 12 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists with more good defense on both Horford and Brand, who only managed to score 4 points while he was on them. In the fourth quarter Cousins only played 5 meaningful minutes that started at the 7:43 mark and the Kings down by 8. During this 5 minute stretch the game was lost when Horford got open look after open look. Yes, Horford was the man Cousins was supposed to be covering but it was impossible for him to do so. Teague repeatedly beat IT and Cousins was forced to show to prevent a layup. Teague would then just kick it out to Horford who knocked down the open shot. One has to give credit to the Hawks for identifying, and taking advantage of this mismatch over and over and over and over and over again. By my count Horford made 4 mid-ranged shots and 1 layup off of this same exact play. There was really not too much Cousins could have done but I doubt that made him feel any better. Cousins frustration showed after the fourth Horford score and he committed 2 back to back turnovers which signaled the end of meaningful game time. Rebounding thoughts: His rebounds were low tonight, but he did manage to grab 3 offensive boards. When the other team shoots 58% there isn’t many left to grab. --Spud
Stats: 34min 10pts (5-6, 0-0, 0-0) 5reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( B ) -- Maybe a generous grade consider the defense being played, but after his recent stretch it's hard not to overreact to any signs of life. Isn't going to get many looks with out starting lineup, not that he deserves to, thankfully tonight he took advantage when called upon. Nice cut to start things off followed by a another make on decently tough shot that was challenge in transition. Didn't take a shot in the second but did manage to pull down a couple tough rebounds and played decent defense on Lou Williams, although Lou doesn't look to be at full strength. Malone ran a nice play for him at the start of the third followed by another long jumper a few minutes later. Didn't get another shot until well into the fourth, which like I mentioned earlier isn't something I have a problem with considering his recent play and who he's on the floor with. Another terrible night defensively. Still waiting on that defensive effort that was promised when the new coach showed up. An improvement for sure and hopefully the end of his recent shooting slump. --Henkel
Stats: 38min 20pts (7-15, 3-7, 3-3) 2reb 10ast 2stl 0blk 2TO
Thomas ( B- ) -- Thomas had a pretty good night scoring (again, who knew?) and outside of one quick three pointer in the third he wasn't really playing the gunner out there - he didn't even attempt a shot until about the final two minutes of the first quarter. It continues to amaze me that a guy his size can not only get to the rim in the NBA but that he can find angles for layups - gotta give him credit for that. As for his defense, well, we already know that IT can't recover from a screen and he can't really stay in front of a quick guard, so Teague's night is not a terrible surprise. Isaiah actually made some nice defensive plays (for some examples, he drew offensive fouls over three possessions in the second quarter, and he completely stymied Shelvin Mack on a drive attempt in the fourth) on the night and he gave good effort, he just isn't a good defender, and he won't be. If it's any consolation to IT fans, I didn't feel that IT's defense was the primary reason we were getting burned on the scoreboard. Jeff Teague's 15 assists looks like a disaster for IT's defense until you realize that the official scorer was handing out assists like they were leftover candy from Halloween - Thomas was credited with 10 assists, I counted 5. On that note, I kept close track of IT's passes tonight to see what he was doing, and I thought the results were pretty interesting. He made a total of 60 passes on the night: 27 to Cousins, 15 to Gay, 8 to Ben, 5 to JT, 5 to Williams. So he was clearly preferentially feeding our beast(s). But it was pretty apparent that we were feeding our guys in blocks. The first four possessions of the game all started with a pass to Cousins, and he got 11 passes from IT in the first (compared to 7 to Ben and only 3 to Gay). But in the second, Cousins got no passes from IT while Gay got all but one. The third quarter started with Cousins getting the majority of IT's feeds but then ended with all those feeds going to Gay. It was just interesting the way we were effectively distributing the ball in blocks.--Capt.
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