Muss ( D+ ) -- and so the adventure continues. So hard to grade Muss anymore, becuase its always just shades of unhappiness. And tonight, did not think he was awful all the way through. But it was punctuated by total..mistakes. Just duhs that drag the whole thing down again. Anyway, let's just hop right in. We did not seem ready to go in this one, as the Lakers came right out and popped us in the nose and we did nothing. But Muss was smarter this time and called several early timeouts trying to wake us up as we fell behind 19-6. A huge part of the problem stemmed from this simple observation: Lakers big, Kings small (and even smaller after Muss's first substitution was to put in Salmons for KT). And they pummeled us relentlessly on the glass because of it. We were still managing to hang around as we are always pretty tough in a FT shooting contest, but critical breakdowns in the dying seconds of the half let the Lakers can two three pointers to pull out to a game high 16pt lead. And in the third things started to turn from bad to worse as at one point we were down by 20 and Charles and Marv were blathering on inanely about Charles's ability to beat 67 yr old Dick Bavetta in a foot race rather than announce what was clearly going to be a blowout. But a funny thing happened. Muss started messing around with lineups, at one point going with a big lineup with Ron at OG and Corliss in the game at SF in place of Kevin. Might have helped. Then Reef, who was otherwise ineffective, hit a string of jumpers form the top of the key as we began to find ways to take advantage of Bynum rather than the other way around. And before you know it we were creeping back into it. In late regulation, Muss was making moves that were helping -- late traps and doubles on Kobe were effective, and Mike and Corliss were running a pick and roll the Lakers never did solve (using Corliss as a mini-center to bother the inexpereicend Bynum really worked as well). But things went awry after blown FTs and a missed defensive coverage let the Lakers tie it back up and send it to OT. All of a sudden the inexperienced kiddie coach being too clever for his own good rememerged, and you could almost here the squeals coming out of our timeout huddles of "that would be soooo kewl!!!". So with a minute left and down by 5 we come out of the timeout and, get this, our play is to reinsert Quincy Douby stone cold for the first time since the first half of the game, and ask him to drain a three? That was the best we could come up with? I suppose I'll mention it did not work. And so we miss, and go onto the next screwup as down by 3 with 25 seconds to go, Lakers ball with a 24 second shot clock, we don't automatically foul until 12 seconds had run off the clock? And then in spite of that, Mike comes back and hits another enormous three, so we still have a last gasp. And on our final play to tie or win we... come out of the timeout with a surprise call to Corliss on the drive inside, which he missed despite a great look. Good look, but damnit that's classic Muss again -- the smart kid playing an NBA game like its NBA Live and thinking wouldn't that be cute? Just give the damn ball to your best player on the night and see what happens Muss. He's been there before. Win or lose with him, and save yourself a grade.
