Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
MUHAHAHAHA! Watch now as I unleash the power of a fully armed and operational...er...grading consortium!
As to the "game", er... another one of these recent not as close as the score indicates blowouts. We basically controlled the game from the first quarter on, and played 3/4 of keepaway walking down the undefended Hornets lane at will and never allowing them a serious run at things, if they even wanted one. All too easy for a juggernaut like the Kings.
Full Imperial Grading Consortium + Guest Graders for tonight:
Bricklayer
Capt. Factorial
bajaden
Rainmaker
Uncia03
Boxscore
Stats: 32min 22pts (7-10, 2-4, 6-8) 3reb 3ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Salmons ( B+ ) -- see? My magic touch continues. I switch over to take John and MT, and who has a good game in this one? John and MT. John's good game though posed certain problems for me philosophically. Was playing efficiently on offense in the early going, but this was one of those sleepy creaky I'm old and my back hurts looking sorts of games effortwise from John. His defense was at times Smart, but hardly smothering. He gave absolutely no effort on the boards at all, repeatedly having players from both teams step in front or around him for balls as he stood there flatfooted. But he hit the shots he took, and then in the third...well see, there was my difficulty. In the third John scored a bunch of points, efficiently, and I hated almost every shot. Not quite everyone. But we were running the John as Kobe offense, or he was. On several occasions he took an initial pass, dribbled around for 10+ seconds, never passed or looked to pass, and threw up terrible shots... that went in. He got so hot he chucked up three pointers off his dribble, again with no passes. It was the same stupid selfish stuff so many of our guys do, and that even John feels entitled to when he's feeling it. But that's the thing, he was feeling it. And so maybe it was smart. Or Smart. Who knows. In any case, a key to much of it was the Hornets choosing to guard John with Vasquez, and getting absolutely punished for it. We even started posting John up, and he got a strong finish in there overpowering a PG who is used to being bigger than his defensive matchup, and snapping a nice pass to a cutting Reke as well. No doubt he made the most of his hot streak, but when it finally ended the low quality of the shots he was taking became a little more evident as he forced a terrible three that we'll kindly call a heat check, and bricked the three from Isaiah to close the 3rd. In any case, the guy scored 22pts on 10 FG attempts. Gordon did more damage against others than against him. Ryan Anderson did nothing. John won his matchup, was efficient and hot shooting. But I would hate it if this was the way he tried to paly every game. Hence my discomfort again, and hence why I probably grade this down half a grade from where I otherwise might.--Brick
Stats: 34min 20pts (8-12, 0-0, 4-6) 8reb 1ast 1stl 2blk 1TO
Thompson ( B ) -- In a game where the Kings took it to the Hornets in just about every way possible, JT was basically having a quiet game until he stepped in during garbagetime with the lead just barely beginning to dwindle and almost immediately scored six points to stop the bleeding. Overall, his shooting was even a little better than it looked (and his rebounding worse) due to a tippety-tippety-tip sequence in the third quarter where he got three offensive rebounds and two missed shots for the price of one rebound in three total seconds. You have to be very happy about JT's offense tonight. He started by hitting his first four shots, all different - a jumper on a screen-and-slip, a baseline floater, a lefty perpendicular drive into the lane, and a post turnaround. He had a bit of trouble from the free throw line (4-6), but it wasn't destined to hurt us, especially with JT finishing up with 20 points on 15 shots. JT's rebounding, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired. If you don't triple count the rebounding on that one sequence, he only managed a rebound on six possessions (in nearly 34 minutes of play). At the same time, he got outmuscled several times by Anthony Davis resulting in offensive rebounds (including one failed box out on a missed free throw) while not returning the favor. I was quite disappointed in JT's effort (if you can call it that) on the offensive boards when facing Davis, where he simply conceded rebound after rebound without even trying to fight through the box-out. Defensively, JT did do a pretty good, but not stellar job tonight. He got two blocks, one steal, and allowed a solid 11 points on 13 shots (though that number was helped by 3 missed free throws and a contested three in garbagetime) and did a very good job on Anthony Davis, but was not as good on Ryan Anderson, who was able to get by JT at will using his first step. Luckily, the help defense was effective when Anderson got around him so we didn't get hurt too bad by Anderson's drives, but it might have been a better strategy to rest JT when he wasn't able to guard Davis/Lopez and to give Late-Season Travis Outlaw the Anderson assignment as there was a night-and-day difference in the defense there. In the end, JT's 20 points is hard to ignore, but I'm only giving him a B because he should have put forth a much better effort on the boards tonight. --Capt.
Stats: 25min 11pts (4-10, 0-0, 3-3) 4reb 5ast 2stl 2blk 1TO
Cousins ( C- ) -- Other than a decent 1st quarter, this was a poor game all-around for Cousins, but fortunately we didn’t need him to have a good game to dominate this match-up as the Hornets came in tired from their game the other night and put up absolutely no resistance at the rim to the tune of the Kings shooting over 55% for the night. Cousins had 9 of his 11 points in the 1st quarter playing aggressive basketball. His first shot was at the start of the game with a strong take to the rim finishing with the and-one. His next two baskets were the ones you love to see where he hustled down the floor in transition, got great post-position against Davis and had easy lay-ups muscling right through Davis. He hit his 3 free-throws and his last make was one of his patented mid-court steals off a lazy pass and a subsequent rumbling down the court for the jam. He also displayed beautiful passing ability notching 5 assists to only 1 turn-over. He repeatedly made good passes from the post to find the right shooter who were knocking down their shots. Those were the positives (using his strength against Davis in the post and hustling in transition) and they mostly came in that 1st quarter. However there was a lot to dislike in this game from DMC. I had the opportunity to grade all three Centers in this game and my comments will pretty much extend to all of them in regards to their pick-n-roll (PnR) defense. I don’t want to go on-and-on about PnR defense, but there are basically two ways to play it. Either you switch it if you have the personnel, or you hedge (show real hard) to disrupt the guard and allow the defense to recover, then quickly get back to your man. The Hornets play a PnR offense with Gordon/Vasquez working with Lopez/Davis and they ran it over and over and over again. And DMC basically had one good PnR defense at the 8:50 mark of the 3rd quarter after Smart had called a time-out because the team wasn’t playing good defense. On pretty much every other PnR possession he either flat-out failed or didn’t finish the defensive play. I’ve decided to use the term ‘Lay-In-Wait’ (LIW) as to what I saw a lot of in this game. The LIW strategy is to barely hedge at all and basically allow the opposing guard to come off the screen with you in the middle of the paint about 5-8 feet from the guard. It’s essentially putting the Center in no-man’s-land where you are giving the guard either the opportunity to pull up for the jumper or attempt a drive at the rim. DMC employed the LIW quite a few times resulting in good scoring opportunities for the Hornets. There were times where he properly showed hard, but in almost every instance he continued to follow the guard and lost sight of his own man, which ended up resulting in a good scoring opportunity for the Hornets. Also, it was this really poor execution of PnR defense which left DMC out of position on rebounding opportunities which is why he only tallied 4 for the entire game. With about 2.5 minutes left in the 2nd Quarter I noticed that he had essentially taken the last couple possessions off and was looking winded. He was taken out of the game around that time. His outside shot was off tonight including a really bad airball and I think that fatigue might have been a factor there, as other than a few of those hustle plays, he didn’t really seem to have his legs under him. He eventually fouled out of this game after only playing 25 minutes, but I think the fouls along with the poor outside shooting was a result of being tired for whatever reason. If the Hornets weren’t so awful we would have needed a much better performance out of DMC, but fortunately it didn’t matter tonight. --Uncia
Stats: 23min 8pts (4-7, 0-1, 0-0) 4reb 3ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Evans ( C- ) -- It was a blow out win, but Tyreke had little to do with it. He managed 8 points on 4 of 7 shooting, which on the surface doesn't sound that bad, but he really didn't impact that game the way we're used to seeing him do. He started by saving a rebound from going out of bounds, and then recieving the ball back at the other end where he missed an open three. Perhaps the next play should have been an indicator of how his night was going to go when he led a fast break right to the top of the foul line, and then threw it away. I guess you could say it was a mixed bag for Tyreke tonight. He followed just about every bad play, with a good play. Like hitting Cousins under the basket with a beautiful pass. Or the great outlet pass the full length of the floor to I. Thomas for a layup. But unfortunately, he also drove into the lane and had the ball knocked out of his hand and off his knee for a turnover. In the second half he started by grabbing a rebound, going the full length of the floor, exploding past two defenders and laying it in. Then he drove the left baseline into three defenders and left the shot a foot short of the basket. Offensively, it was just one of those nights where he struggled to get into the flow of the game. I had written down that he was playing good defense. But when Douglas came into the game, and gave a clinic on how to play defense, it made me somewhat hesitant to heap high praise on any other King. What separates good players from average players, is consistency. If Tyreke can find a way to be consistent every night, and make better decisions with the ball, he will separate himself from the majority of the players in the league. He has all the tools now, he just has to learn how, and when to apply them.--Baja
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