Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
I have been posting the grades every day over to the Facebook account, so I'm going to abstain from profanity for the length of the blurb that appears in the "say something" box. And now with that blurb likely exceeded I am going to say that I am really really REALLY ****ing pissed off right now. REALLY pissed off. We won this basketball game. In regulation. We won this basketball game. And then the refs stole it from us. Flat stole it. Not debatable. We made the play to win the game, in an absolutely horrific call they spun that around and instead of us winning it down the stretch, they fouled out our franchise player, after hitting him with 6 fouls in the 4th quarter of the game, including 3 offensive fouls. Its enough to bring back Game 5 2002 flashbacks. Except I almost laughed at the absurdity back then. This however...
Now coming on the back of a night when the refs had both our top 2 players with 5 fouls by the mid third quarter, that's two games in a row to start this road trip that feel very much like they were decided by the refs. We haven't played great but we have played scrappy, we clawed back into this one again...and an incompetent (I'll kindly assume incompetence) fool stole a game from us. You want solace, best I can offer is that I truly don't believe that this veteran team and this coach is delicate and likely to spiral from being ****ed over. In a best case scenario it may even foster a very appropriate us against the world ethos.
Until we see that however, I am just going to continue fantasizing about meeting that ref in a dark alley and explaining my disappointment to his face.
Link to Boxscore
Starters
Gay ( A- ) -- gave us a 30pt 12reb night and beat the crap out of supposed defensive stud Justice Winslow all night. Gave us a late burst as well to set us up for the win that was not. But earns a minus too after he and Cuz were benched in the 3rd for sluggish play and defense, and for an absolutely horrid game winning attempt in regulation, settling for a passive long three and not coming close.
Barnes ( D+ ) -- thing is because we have now decided we like Barnes, there is a tendency to overlook any problems. But this game was a problem. First he continued his Atlanta tendency to throw awful turnovers trying to do too much. And secondly, he missed all his shots, including 0-5 threes. Still some defensive scrap and boards, but...not today.
Featured Grade
Cousins ( B ) -- Nothing came easy for Cousins tonight. In the first half, Whiteside made him work for everything - and he still scored 15 points. In the second half, that role fell to Haslem, who denied Cousins perhaps better than Whiteside did, and when Haslem took himself out of the game in the middle of the fourth quarter by giving Cousins a horseyback ride, the officials took over where Haslem left off, getting every single call wrong down the stretch - most notably fouling Cousins out of the game on a made shot that should have been an and-1, fouled Whiteside out, and given the Kings a two-point lead and a chance at three with under a minute left. Instead, he was done for the night. On top of the 8-on-1 defense, Cousins was clearly laboring against himself, coming up the court slowly starting in the first quarter, not having the lift he needed early in the second half and taking a very extended rest in the third quarter. Despite that, Cousins played very good defense tonight, controlling the paint and coming up with a brilliantly-timed straight-up block on Whiteside. I didn't like seeing Cousins get his third tech in five games in the first quarter, but he did a much better job of dealing with the refs from that point on. Unfortunately, they took him out of the game anyway and cost the Kings a hard-earned road win on top of it. -- Capt.
Afflalo ( B ) -- an up and down grade if there ever was one. Started the game with a few hoops, but the bigger story was Dion Waiters lighting him up in a big way. But in the third Joerger pulled both Rudy and Cuz, and Afflalo stepped up as a true 3rd gun to carry us through the quarter and keep us in it. And then he disappeared again in the 4th and OT. So...B.
Lawson ( D ) -- lack of shooting becoming a real issue. Missing wide open kickouts. And Dragic wiped the floor with him n the other side of the court. When Garret Temple is your only PG option, it hurts. The two guys combined to shoot 2-11 and give us 4pts in 67 minutes. ouch.
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Bench
Koufos ( B- ) -- moved to the bench because of the smallball Miami tactics, but ended up getting a full slate of minutes anyway, some next to Cuz, some in his place. Whiteside did not bother him at all, and his 3rd quarter in place of Cousins was strong. Not surprisingly unable to replace Cuz's production in the OT.
Temple ( C- ) -- played a lot of minutes, some at both guard spots. But if a SG shoots, he shot 1-5 for 2pts in 30min. And if a PG passes, he dished out 0 assists in 30min. In the first half even the defense didn't seem to make that big of an impact, but stiffened later as an option to Lawson, and had a big chasedown block on the break.
McLemore ( D ) -- ...and then Ben had one of those games, where he missed every shot and aside from 1 slick pass to Koufos for a slam, did precious little else. See how it effects his newfound confidence.
Tolliver ( B ) -- hey, some good news on the Tolliver front as we had a sighting. particularly important since Willie appears to have played himself right to the bench. But Tolliver not only hit a few shots for us early, but grabbed some aggressive boards too. Much closer to what we need.
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This game ended in typical Kings fashion. New players, new coach, new everything...same result. On to the next one.
Blake Ellington @BlakeEllington 
