Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Alright...I think I remember the drill, Another tough late game loss so...the coach sucks and we need to immediately fire him so that we can make a better run at the playoffs, or win with pace, or play 4 on 5 or something.
The details aren't important. We had tough losses, therefore Karl has to go. I'll be starting up our 3rd thread of the season on who the next coach should be as soon as the grades are up. I'm thinking Vivek.
Boxscore
Stats: 46min 27pts (12-24, 3-8, 0-2) 8reb 5ast 1stl 2blk 3TO
Gay ( B+ ) -- picked right up in this one where he left off vs. Orlando (the scoring, not the defensive brainfarts) and notched 10pts in the early going carrying the offense along with Ben. Back in after we lost Cuz to fouls in the 2nd and continued to hit tough tough shots just right over good defense. Other than Durant and Melo might not be any other SFs in the league who can bury those shots even if you do everything right on defense. Started slowly after half, missing his early 3rd quarter shots, but buried a three on a pass busted out to him by Cuz and returned the favor with a nice pick and roll pass back to a Cuz rolling to the hoop. Battled through the 4th, often against a surprisingly tough Michael Beasley apparently emerging from his pothead fog and realizing this may be his last shot in the league. Got beat by Beasley for a board and finish at a critical time to make it a 1pt game. But came up with another tough finish to get the lead back to 5 and at the end of regulation it was Rudy who got the call to win it -- a good call I thought given the absolute swarm of guys around Cuz by that point. And it worked...he got iso'd on Wade, crossed him over, got the angle, drove in for a little 5-8 foot flip off the glass for the win...and it rolled off. Cuz got a hand on a tip and almost saved us but no. It was right there. Right play, right move, right everything...ah well. At least we played it right. if this was a playoff series that one would stick with you though. There was hustle in the OT, but getting blocked by Bird and he never did score after regulation was over. There was one nice pass to a backcutting Miller with Cuz swarmed, but once we lost the big guy to his 6th foul we were both stupid in not getting Gay the ball, and he was ineffective trying to make anything happen when he did touch it. So instead of Cuz (27pts) and Gay (27pts) carrying us in the OT as they had all night, we got to see Ray (9pts in 39min) Andre (7pts in 30min) and Ben, who had last been heard from in 3rd quarter, dominate the ball and shots. that worked out roughly as well as you would expect. --Brick
Stats: 23min 4pts (1-2, 0-0, 2-2) 3reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( C- ) -- just not much here again. Suffering from his normal lack of touch finishing in the early going, and when he finally got a post hook to fall in the final minute of the first quarter it would be his only hit of the night. After we abandoned the crazed miniature lineup we experimented with in the early 2nd (THREE SFs (Rudy/DWill, Casspi, no bigs at all) we brought back Jason and he promptly fouled/fouled/fouled himself right out of the game within 3min of entering. Nothing in the early third again, and at a certain point just petered out and wasn't used anymore except except to fill in for Cuz. You can't say he was even that bad. Just no more relevant than Ryan Hollins, or me for that matter. Empty jersey and another C- type grade, which is basically Jason's standard when he has nobody to guard anymore. --Brick
Stats: 35min 27pts (10-17, 0-0, 7-8) 17reb 3ast 2stl 1blk 5TO
Cousins ( A- ) -- with news just before the game that Whiteside (they have taken to calling our former center "GOATside" btw -- another one of those things that hurts even if he did look to be failing with us) was out, you knew the Heat were basically going to have no answers for Cuz tonight (except oddly for Michael Beasley, who gave maybe the best defensive effort of his life giving up 3 inches and 30lbs but wrestling Cuz at every chance). Still, having no answers wasn't going to be quite the Knicks having no answers. The Heat still have some remnants of pride and coaching, and so they swarmed the hell out fo Cuz in there, and he actually only began 1-4 in the early going before picking up his 2nd offensive foul after Beasley cleverly arm locked him. Responded to that one with a big angry block -- and I'm not sure how the scorekeepers only had him with 1 in this game. Didn't last long in the second quarter either as Miller turned his head and Napier blew right by him and drew a foul on Cuz trying to protect the rim -- you know one way to save Cuz some fouls might be if our center wasn't having to be basically the FIRST line of defense against all these guards blowing by our guards on the perimeter. Cuz began to rumble (noticed announcers starting to use the word "truck" as a verb in regards to Cuz when he starts rolling) after half, eating up boards and getting on that rim . Beasley was still a pest, but when he got his 4th Cuz went into monster mode with a reverse dunk past Birdman, flat ripped the ball away from Johnson down on the other end, then came up with another power dunk finish and a big roar as Miami called a timeout to rethink things. Unfortunately part of that rethink may have been the idea that hey, we can't guard this guy inside, maybe what we need to try is a zone. Uhoh. Did the zone stop Cuz? No. But he spent the rest of the game with a constant swarm on munchkins swirling around him, often two of them before he even made a catch. it made every post feed a major adventure as they fronted him, doubled him without the ball, collapsed, and generally treated him like Shaq. Bodies were getting knocked around...and they weren't normally Cuz as he repeatedly shed little guys on his way to scores. Picked up his 5th foul down the stretch when we turned it over and he reached back to try to stop the break, not only did it put him in danger, but it got called a clear path foul. On an inbounds play at the 1:50 mark came up with a great baseline spin, tough catch, and quick layin to put us up 2, but we couldn't get the stops. Got a falling down offensive rebound tip off the blown Rudy layup with 2 seconds to go, but the tip rolled in and out too. Had an early TO in the OT, but was big on the glass finishing our misses and clearly again represented our best chance to pull off the win. When we lost him to a risky charge attempt at the 1:41 mark (it was very close, but felt like he got a little overexcited there given his foul situation) we promptly -- stop me if this sounds remotely familiar -- collapsed again, and yay, another loss. I've long been an advocate for the somewhat fringe position that there should not be foulouts in basketball. No other sport has them. Its dumb. If my position ever prevails and we don't have to worry about losing Cuz anymore, we'll probably be a 60 win team. --Brick
Stats: 45min 20pts (7-16, 3-8, 3-4) 4reb 0ast 2stl 1blk 2TO
McLemore ( B- ) -- responded to the Orlando debacle by coming out and having one of "those halves" he sometimes haves. The ones where you go wow, maybe...and the eternal optimists start posting mockups of Ben as Ray Allen etc. etc. Unfortunately as it almost always happens he immediately followed up with one of "those other halves" which cause the doubters to start posting trade posaibilities, and after having 17pts at the break, 30 minutes of gametime later he finished with 20. Early on in the game you were worried that Miami might have been watching the Portland tapes, as Wade took him directly into the post to start things off and just overpowered him. But this time Ben responded, hitting a corner three back down the other way and added another three later in the quarter. He also saved a hoop getting back defending the break to strip Johnson, and had several nice leakouts and finishes at the rim in the open court in the second. Just before half he canned a third three to match Rudy with 17pts going into the break. In fact his first half shotchart would have been a George Karl dream -- all threes or right at the rim. And when he came up with an athletic up and under finish in the early 3rd there was no real evidence that was going to be it. But it was. Whether at S or SF (we ran 3 guards much of the late game) Ben just disappeared, and this during a long stretch of the game where the Heat had gone zone, we could not score, and we desperately need a shooter to break it. Nor was Ben's disappearance in an opponentless vacuum, as Dwayne Wade and Tyler Johnson were precisely the two Heat who blew up and carried them to victory late in the game, leaving Ben as the 3rd best SG in the game even as he had the bounceback from the Orlando nightmare. This grade started much higher, but he absolutely needed to give us something after half as our offense died and his counterparts killed us. --Brick
Stats: 39min 9pts (3-10, 1-2, 2-2) 1reb 7ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
McCallum ( C ) -- Ray had kind of a strange evening from a game flow point of view. In the first half he was doing a very good job of moving the ball, getting four assists (all for jumpers) and attempting only one shot, but then he came out in the third quarter and to use a Karlism he was "thirsty". He went 0-4 in the quarter and I'd say that three of them were inadvisable shots. On top of that, he only managed to set up three shots in the quarter - for one assist - he basically went straight from PG mode to SG mode after the half. Then, an even weirder thing happened, with Ray joining Andre Miller and actually playing the SG for the final nine and a half minutes of the game...and he disappeared. He missed one three and had two assists but was otherwise just taking up space on the offensive end of the court. I kind of get the point of trying to run a two-PG offense and Miami was playing small, but as an actual SG Ray was not able to do anything useful for us - particularly against the zone. He's not going to be able to break the zone with his outside shooting (nor is Miller) so it might have been a better move to get Nik in there to spread that zone a bit and get our big guy a chance to work down low. In OT Ray actually got thirsty again (as he probably should have as the SG in the fourth) and got a basket on a nice cut before things got out of hand. He finally did bury a three but it was too little too late. Defensively, Ray did a very nice job as usual. He allowed 7 points on six shots before "fouling time" which is more or less average, but it's notable that the Heat were more or less avoiding attacking Ray on the defensive side in favor of either Miller (in the fourth) or some other option. --Capt.
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