Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
How's this for a classic Sacramento Kings finish?
Our ball, two down, 10 seconds to go. Reke has been huge all night. IT caught fire and brought us back from the dead in the early 4th. Boogie and Hayes have been taking care of the interior dirty work down the stretch. But of course the stage is set for the hometown hero. We have been playing Jimmer offense/defense in the final couple of minutes trying to set the stage for a Jimmermania hit, and of course because most members of this board could whip John Salmons in a game of 1 on 1 anymore. So the stage is set. A three wins it. Our best three point shooter is Jimmer. After Reke attempts to drive and drop it off to Cousins, and its knocked out of bounds, we inbound under the hoop. Somehow some way the Jazz forget about Jimmer, wide open for a three from the angle..Jimmermania coming!...
...and he airballs it.
Then to make things even better, still down 2, Chuck Hayes flagrant fouls Hayward in the corner, thus slamming the door on any chance we had to win it as the Jazz get the FT and the ball.
AND just to top things off, appears to reinjure his dislocated shoulder in the process.
In 10 seconds we went from well played game/setting up for the tie or win...to Jimmer choking hard in the moment, us losing the game, and probably relosing our PF 1 game after we got him back.
Welcome to Kings basketball. We hope you enjoy your stay.
Theme = Arab Music, By a Non-Fan for Non-Fans.
Boxscore
Salmons ( D+ ) -- well in what qualifies as good news anymore on the Salmons front, he didn't rate an F this time. Actually he very much did for his first half permonace, whihc bordered on embarrassing not only for himself, but for a coaching staff that just refuses to quit playing him. As I mentioned last time out, statisticaly the worst started in the entire NBA. Not one of the, THE. Everybody else as bad as John has been replaced in their respective lineups by other teams. Not us though. We know better. So anyway, just terrible throughout the first half. Was again getting killed on defense as he just can't stay in front of anyone anymore. Turned it over repeatedly. Just nothing. And just kept coming on back off the bench, which just gets really infuriating at a certain point when the other starters are playing pretty well and hard and trying to pull ot the game. We finally got him a couple of hoops on short jumpers in the ealry third of of back to back called plays (or at least it looked like the same play was run both times, called or not). Hurt us one final time when we mysteriously decided to take the ball out of Reke's hands and let John bring it up and initate the offense instead. Result = multiple turnovers and a trip to the bench. Actually I lied, that SHOULD have been the last time he hurt us, but no, he was back again to miss a critical, and wide open, three we neede at the 1:30 mark, whcih directly resulted in us gong offense/defense with him the rest of the way splitting time with Jimmer (Salmons was the "defense" despite showing very limited abilitis on that side anymore). Almost came up with a steal at the 40 second mark which was going to result ina breakway layup to make the lead 1 -- John's chance at redemption!!...but of course its no surprise given the way his, and our, season has gone that the refs blew the whistle and called it a Jazz 24sec violation instead and made us take it out on the side. Best thing that he did was grab a few rebounds, which is normally another area of extreme wekaness, so that was an unexpected bonus. Gordon Hayward is averaging 8.7ppg in a flop of a second season BTW. John comes to town, and its 21 for him and 20 for Miles. Hmm...
Melisma -- first a giant disclaimer: I am neither an expert nor even a fan of Arabic music. In fact you could hardly find a worse guide to the stuff, and if you have any legit interest at all I highly suggest you go find somebody remotely qualified to teach you the basics. To me most of it sounds repulsive and alien, a wailing wavering mess. My knowledge of it results from intellectual curiosity that led me on one of those extensive wikipedia/youtube quests I often go on, nothing more.
Ok, which brings us back to: melisma. What is melisma? Well its one of the things responsible for the characteristic "wail/waver" effect of Arabic music. Melismatic singing (or playing) is the singing of multiple notes per syllable. So for instance instead of singing A-maz-ing Grace as DGBG, one note per syllable, you might string together 4 notes in "maz" by itself. This is actually very similar to what modern R&B artist do (Mariah Carey is credited with popularizing it) with all the "vocal runs"/messing with notes/sounding like they are singing scales stuff. Just in more disciplined fashion.
Thompson ( B ) -- played a strong roleplayer game until losing his focus a bit later in the game and getting replaced by Hayes for most of the stretch run. Again showed just the nice easy chemistry with Reke that only Donte and Cisco (not surpsingly the three guys who've been with him the longest) can rival. Was running the floor from the start and keeping his hands up for guys to hit him. Showed a few more of those solid little backins and tunarounds in the post too, and had 10 very efficient points in the first quarter alone as we hung right with the Jazz. The one place where he didn't get the job done was on the glass, where the mch smaller Mislap was going right over him for boards all night long, and outrebounded him 14-4. Production began to tail as the game went on, and getting a technical arguing a call appeared to irk Smart into handing the sport off to Hayes.
Twice the tones --I am not going to try to explain to you the intricacies of the maqam system, in particular since I don't have a complete grasp on them myself. Suffice it to say that another factor leading to the strange sounding notes of Arabic music to Western ears is that their musis scale includes "quarter notes", and thus it is a 24 tone scale, twice as many as the Western chromatic scale. Now actually there seems to be some debate whether calling it a 24 tone scale is truly accurate, as only some of the tones have quarter tones between them, and the exact intonation of the tones varies between countries (which may explain why it often sounds off key to me), but again me = amateur on this topic, and the generally held 24 tone Arabic system is close enough for our purposes.
Cousins ( B- ) -- Had oddly little to say about the outcome of this game. Was never bad, nor ever particularly good. Was passing well early, and with he and Reke both setting guys up it was a great sign for our offense, today and for the future. Those are the guys who need to run the show, and they were. Seemed to go for every fake BigAl threw in the early going, but overall results against Jefferson were MUCH better than when we faced these guys last year. Offensively was just a little of this a little of that. Jumper was not quite there. There was no concerted inside attack for most of the game. Even took an early three from the corner for some reason. Began to get the power game going a little in the final minutes before half but lost that momentum during halftime. Down the stretch of the game he and Hayes began to win the dirty work battles inside. Not dominate. But just come up with most of the boards we needed, to set good screens, get hands on balls on defense etc. At the 30 second mark made one final nice pass to Reke on the backdoor work along the baseline to get us back within 1.
Farid Al Attrach, 1st of the "Great Four" -- Arabic music has/had a generally recognized "Great Four" performers who became legends during the modernization period of the 50's-70's esepcially. Each of them brought something different to the table, and perhaps due to the greater Balkanization of Western music they kind of represent the collective modernization of Arabic music and still hold spots of prestige rather greater than whatever the Western equivalents would be (maybe Elvis + The Beatles in rock or something, or Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra etc.) Farid would do the movie thing ala a Sinatra, always playing sad lonely romantic types and crooning out long mawals, which are a traditional arabic form of music involving poetic improv.
Our ball, two down, 10 seconds to go. Reke has been huge all night. IT caught fire and brought us back from the dead in the early 4th. Boogie and Hayes have been taking care of the interior dirty work down the stretch. But of course the stage is set for the hometown hero. We have been playing Jimmer offense/defense in the final couple of minutes trying to set the stage for a Jimmermania hit, and of course because most members of this board could whip John Salmons in a game of 1 on 1 anymore. So the stage is set. A three wins it. Our best three point shooter is Jimmer. After Reke attempts to drive and drop it off to Cousins, and its knocked out of bounds, we inbound under the hoop. Somehow some way the Jazz forget about Jimmer, wide open for a three from the angle..Jimmermania coming!...
...and he airballs it.
Then to make things even better, still down 2, Chuck Hayes flagrant fouls Hayward in the corner, thus slamming the door on any chance we had to win it as the Jazz get the FT and the ball.
AND just to top things off, appears to reinjure his dislocated shoulder in the process.
In 10 seconds we went from well played game/setting up for the tie or win...to Jimmer choking hard in the moment, us losing the game, and probably relosing our PF 1 game after we got him back.
Welcome to Kings basketball. We hope you enjoy your stay.
Theme = Arab Music, By a Non-Fan for Non-Fans.
Boxscore
Salmons ( D+ ) -- well in what qualifies as good news anymore on the Salmons front, he didn't rate an F this time. Actually he very much did for his first half permonace, whihc bordered on embarrassing not only for himself, but for a coaching staff that just refuses to quit playing him. As I mentioned last time out, statisticaly the worst started in the entire NBA. Not one of the, THE. Everybody else as bad as John has been replaced in their respective lineups by other teams. Not us though. We know better. So anyway, just terrible throughout the first half. Was again getting killed on defense as he just can't stay in front of anyone anymore. Turned it over repeatedly. Just nothing. And just kept coming on back off the bench, which just gets really infuriating at a certain point when the other starters are playing pretty well and hard and trying to pull ot the game. We finally got him a couple of hoops on short jumpers in the ealry third of of back to back called plays (or at least it looked like the same play was run both times, called or not). Hurt us one final time when we mysteriously decided to take the ball out of Reke's hands and let John bring it up and initate the offense instead. Result = multiple turnovers and a trip to the bench. Actually I lied, that SHOULD have been the last time he hurt us, but no, he was back again to miss a critical, and wide open, three we neede at the 1:30 mark, whcih directly resulted in us gong offense/defense with him the rest of the way splitting time with Jimmer (Salmons was the "defense" despite showing very limited abilitis on that side anymore). Almost came up with a steal at the 40 second mark which was going to result ina breakway layup to make the lead 1 -- John's chance at redemption!!...but of course its no surprise given the way his, and our, season has gone that the refs blew the whistle and called it a Jazz 24sec violation instead and made us take it out on the side. Best thing that he did was grab a few rebounds, which is normally another area of extreme wekaness, so that was an unexpected bonus. Gordon Hayward is averaging 8.7ppg in a flop of a second season BTW. John comes to town, and its 21 for him and 20 for Miles. Hmm...
Ok, which brings us back to: melisma. What is melisma? Well its one of the things responsible for the characteristic "wail/waver" effect of Arabic music. Melismatic singing (or playing) is the singing of multiple notes per syllable. So for instance instead of singing A-maz-ing Grace as DGBG, one note per syllable, you might string together 4 notes in "maz" by itself. This is actually very similar to what modern R&B artist do (Mariah Carey is credited with popularizing it) with all the "vocal runs"/messing with notes/sounding like they are singing scales stuff. Just in more disciplined fashion.
Thompson ( B ) -- played a strong roleplayer game until losing his focus a bit later in the game and getting replaced by Hayes for most of the stretch run. Again showed just the nice easy chemistry with Reke that only Donte and Cisco (not surpsingly the three guys who've been with him the longest) can rival. Was running the floor from the start and keeping his hands up for guys to hit him. Showed a few more of those solid little backins and tunarounds in the post too, and had 10 very efficient points in the first quarter alone as we hung right with the Jazz. The one place where he didn't get the job done was on the glass, where the mch smaller Mislap was going right over him for boards all night long, and outrebounded him 14-4. Production began to tail as the game went on, and getting a technical arguing a call appeared to irk Smart into handing the sport off to Hayes.
Cousins ( B- ) -- Had oddly little to say about the outcome of this game. Was never bad, nor ever particularly good. Was passing well early, and with he and Reke both setting guys up it was a great sign for our offense, today and for the future. Those are the guys who need to run the show, and they were. Seemed to go for every fake BigAl threw in the early going, but overall results against Jefferson were MUCH better than when we faced these guys last year. Offensively was just a little of this a little of that. Jumper was not quite there. There was no concerted inside attack for most of the game. Even took an early three from the corner for some reason. Began to get the power game going a little in the final minutes before half but lost that momentum during halftime. Down the stretch of the game he and Hayes began to win the dirty work battles inside. Not dominate. But just come up with most of the boards we needed, to set good screens, get hands on balls on defense etc. At the 30 second mark made one final nice pass to Reke on the backdoor work along the baseline to get us back within 1.
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