[Grades] Grades v. Lakers 03/30/2013

Kings difference maker of the night?

  • Salmons

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • Thompson

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Cousins

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • Evans

    Votes: 13 52.0%
  • Thomas

    Votes: 1 4.0%
  • Thornton

    Votes: 1 4.0%

  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .

Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#1
Just like old times.

Unfortunately that also means, just like old times.

So we started with a bang, fell back, competed well, had so many chances to go up, and then down the stretch appeared to suffer from a terminal case of either youngness or Smartness (our apparent plan to win the game in the final minute was DeMarcus Cousins shooting threes, believe it or not). And so it becomes yet another in the long line of close game, lost at the end, against the Lakers. Excellent crowd though. Way to kick off BOG month.

P.S. To add insult to injury this loss also mathematically eliminated our chances of catching the Lakers for the #8 spot. Boo!!!

Highlights:

Two Legged Grading Consortium for tonight:
Bricklayer
Capt. Factorial


Boxscore


Stats: 44min 13pts (5-12, 3-7, 0-0) 3reb 3ast 1stl 1blk 1TO
Salmons ( A ) -- Salmons was on his way to an A+ in the first quarter, playing incredible D on Kobe and hitting his first three triples to outscore Kobe 9-0, forcing two turnovers on Kobe, breaking up a pass that would have been a dunk, and turning down a three to hit JT wide open under the basket for an easy two. The rest of the game wasn't quite so great - Salmons only hit 2 of his remaining 9 shots and was unable to keep Kobe scoreless for the final three quarters. Still, Kobe scored a total of 9 points on Salmons (and the free throw was pretty much a cow patty call) on 4-11 shooting - and that was basically the whole game. Salmons sat for less than four minutes and was still able to shut Kobe down in the fourth quarter (0-4, 0-5 if you count "the foul") including a nice block on a Kobe drive. In the end, I don't care that John didn't score after the second given his defense. I just can't give him the plus because of it. --Capt.

Stats: 24min 15pts (7-10, 0-0, 1-1) 4reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( B ) -- just as we have for the last few, we attacked the opponents with JT in the early going as they focused on Cousins, and JT responded again with another fast start as IT and Reke found him repeatedly for little jumpers. But impressively showed he was willing to go right at Dwight with power as well. Unfortunately that impressiveness vs. Dwight only ran to the offensive side of the ball. Gasol is just a roleplayer for them anymore and he didn't badly hurt JT offensively, but when we tried JT on Dwight at various times to try to save Cousins from fouls, it inevitably went badly as Howard simply overpowered him. Long been the thing about JT as a center -- and here you can feel free to completely ignore Jerry Reynolds' blatherings -- JT is not nearly as strong as his size would suggest. So Dwight just banged him back out of the way, and finished at the rim. And on the glass JT was nowhere to be seen. We actually won the board battle thanks to Cuz and some great boarding efforts from our guards -- Reke and MT had 16rebs, JT had 4. it was another. Resumed the third with a hit from Reke again, but then as kept going back to it it seemed to dry up and we weren't getting much out of it. Had one more highlight play with a very aggressive offensive board flying in, and then following his own blocked shot for a finish. But in the 4th we went to Patterson...and stayed with Patterson no matter how unproductive he was on the night. --Brick

Stats: 39min 19pts (8-20, 0-2, 3-4) 11reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
Cousins ( B ) -- played 39min in this one accumulating only 3 fouls, which is even more impressive when you consider that to start the game he immediately picked up a foul on Howard in the post, and then had to play with his hands in his pockets. Of larger concern was the effect that avoiding foul trouble had on his defense over the course of the game. He was the only one on the team capable of contending with Howard, who simply overpowered JT at every opportunity, and treetopped Hayes. But DeMarcus was rarely willing to fully engage with Howard on defense or the glass, instead backing off whenever a potential fouling situation arose. On offense ended up settling for long jumpers in the early going, but once we began to feed him down inside he became very effective around the hoop, hit a couple of circus shots in there, and Reke found him repeatedly for dunks. When he returned started off with another jumper, and again it did not look like a comfortable stroke, which made the end to this game even more dubious. Began the 3rd active and muscling Gasol, but the game was probably lost for us in the later stages of the quarter when all of a sudden it became a turnoverfest, and Boogie was at the heart of it, I think picking up 3 turnovers himself in the space of 3 minutes. Still played big down the stretch, drawing a foul, and draining an open jumper to keep us within 4. But the brainfart plays in the final 30 seconds absolutely require somebody to get slapped by a stinky smelly week old fish. I just can't be sure whether it was Smart or Boogie who came up with the brilliant plan to win this one by having our 275lb center stand out at the three point line and chuck up threes. If it happened just once you say, well, desperation time and a guy just panicked. It didn't. On one of the plays it looked like we almost called it. On both of them he was certainly extremely involved receiving the ball multiple times at the three point stripe, and in fact on the first one he tried to put one up, may have gotten Howard to foul him, and then when the refs didn't call it pulled it down and ended up shooting it anyway. Sigh. Still, this was a game where our young stars looked like they absolutely could play with the Lakers old ones. They just in the end played like young guys.--Brick

Stats: 43min 21pts (9-15, 0-1, 3-3) 9reb 6ast 0stl 0blk 4TO
Evans ( B ) -- I've got to breathe a little bit here and focus on offense. OK. So Tyreke started out distributing the ball really well, getting four of his six assists in the first quarter, while taking (and making) only two shots. After that he got a bit more selfish on offense, only setting up six more shots (two assists) the remainder of the game. In the second half Tyreke scored 15 of his 21 points and spent a lot of time at lead guard (including all of the fourth quarter as IT sat). Tyreke also came perilously close to a double-double, grabbing nine rebounds on the night. But defense? Oh, defense. Oh, oh, oh the...defense. Since one is always supposed to say something nice, I'll point out that for the few minutes that Salmons sat, Tyreke did a nice job on Kobe - even though on the first possession he got beat on a screen for a layup, he picked it up and that was all Kobe got off of him. Kobe did miss a no-chance well-defended three and a good sideline doubleteam earned Kobe a jumpball with Cousins. But when Tyreke was NOT on Cousins...he spent much of the game slumping off of his man and guarding the paint, and the Lakers took full advantage of it (or at least tried to). The Lakers attempted 10 threes against Tyreke (only making three), and outside of the one Kobe shot mentioned above, all of them came when Tyreke had established defensive position fifteen feet from his man. The idea must be that he's playing "help" defense, but there's literally nothing "helpful" about it. In fact, I believe Tyreke had two useful help plays on the day, once fouling Howard hard to stop an otherwise easy layup, and once helping John stop a Kobe drive (though that resulted in Kobe passing to Tyreke's man, who hit a three, so...) For instance, on one play, Kobe drove past Salmons into a lane patrolled by Evans - who obligingly watched Kobe pass within arm's length for a dunk. Remind me again why he's there? Anyway, I've got to believe given the game-after-game, guard-after-guard pattern, that this is a "Smart" strategy, so I can only blame Tyreke a little bit. Enough that the defense drops him down to a B, but not as far as it would had I thought he was doing it on his own. --Capt.

Stats: 25min 10pts (3-5, 2-4, 2-3) 0reb 5ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thomas ( D+ ) -- Thomas had an uncharacteristically quiet game considering his history of late, with a lot of the on-ball duties passed over to Tyreke. He did a very good job of distributing the ball early in the game (3 assists, 2 setups in the first quarter) but finished with only 2 more assists and 2 more setups. His 10 points on 6 shots were nicely efficient, though he did have to hit a crazy turnaround three at the end of the second quarter to get there. He finished off the third quarter with a pretty bad turnover driving into a crowd, and given a couple of shaky possessions in the first, he was pretty lucky that was his only TO for the game. Defensively, Thomas had his normal struggles, despite the fact that the Lakers (mostly Steve Blake) didn't attack him much. 16 points given up on 8 shots is really not getting it done, and while there was only one play where he got beat badly (early in the first when Nash got loose on a screen and found a giftwrapped empty baseline for a layup) the Lakers just didn't have any trouble shooting over him, going 4-6 on threes. --Capt.
 
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Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#2
Bench

Stats: 26min 18pts (6-15, 2-7, 4-5) 7reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Thornton ( C+ ) -- put up about his normal allotment of points in the game, but did it in unusual fashion. In fact in most ways you wouldn't even say he was having a good game, and yet he hustled his way into productivity that saw him on the floor in the late game making IT look depressed. Was quiet to start as our lead disappeared. Finally hit a corner three in the mid 2nd and began to play a more physical game after that. The outside gunning never was on, but he was working around the glass all night. Returned in the third to force an ill timed contested shot, and brick an open three and I thought this might turn into a short night. But began the 4th with a layup +1 off as ball that just fell to him beneath the offensive glass, followed that with a three to cut the lead to 3, and while their were a number of selfish shots and some confusion -- on one amusing play Reke appeared to direct his entire possession for him, telling him where to go, who to pass to etc. -- he made himself valuable just by hustle and being around the ball, at least on the glass (defense is another issue of course). I'll "+" this. Certainly was not hot, but the hustle plays gave us some spark and helped us hang around. --Brick

Stats: 12min 2pts (1-5, 0-0, 0-0) 5reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Hayes ( D ) -- got three short stints, only one of which went well. Was brought in initially to push with Howard, but when Howard left it was Gasol instead, who played over his head with shots and boards. Did finally get a block on Gasol just before leaving for the first time, but it was an isolated play. Back in in place of JT and his foul trouble for the final minutes of the half and played better alongside Cousins as well as scoring his only bucket of the night with one of his flips from Reke. His final short stint to start the 4th was shortcircuited when he just wasn't able to rebound with Howard at all, and for some bizarre reason kept on wanting to try to go 1 on 1 vs. him. I mean, huh? Taht's a surprise tactic for a 6'6" big, not a goto play. In any case when your defensive specialist isn't getting it done on D, not a good sign for the ole grade.--Brick

Stats: 20min 0pts (0-4, 0-3, 0-0) 4reb 1ast 0stl 1blk 0TO
Patterson ( D ) -- and so it finally happened -- you knew sooner or later that Pat Pat would have to have a legitimately bad game, its just too bad it had to come against the Lakers of all teams. Ineffective from the start, when he was part of a reserve crew that lost the nice lead we had built up in the first quarter. Wasn't on the glass, and while I think he competed well on defense, it felt fluttery, like the way JT gets when he started bouncing around wanting to do something but with no real plan on what that might be. Still was brought back to start the 4th -- reasonable enough as he is a rotation guy. Continuing to play for the entire quarter however was less reasonable, as he never did come through for us. Was a nonfactor on the lass, and missed multiple open threes spoon fed him in the corner and on the angles, which I think was the whole reason he was out there. Never did anything else. Was this an F? Interesting question. I say no because I generally need my F's to feature active contributions to awfulness from the recipients. Pat Pat here was more just invisible than he was actively awful. But didn't get it done either way. --Brick

Stats: 6min 0pts (0-0, 0-0, 0-0) 1reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Douglas ( INC ) -- Only played 6 minutes and spent most of his time guarding Chris Duhon, which is pretty much a waste of his defensive abilities. Sure, Duhon didn't score in that period, but uh...what was the point? --Capt.

Stats: DNCD-CD
Keith Smart ( F ) -- Does not know how to coach defense. Has absolutely no clue. Insists that his guards must defend an empty lane when their three-point-shooting man is outside the three point line. Given that all of his guards (and his PFs, when a guy like Jamison is on the floor) do it, I can't believe that it's not a "strategic" move. And considering that his guards are typically less than useless in help defense (see Tyreke's wonderful performance above), there's no reason to keep doing it. Game after game after game...it's like Smart thinks that giving up an open three is a GOOD STRATEGY. I can't wait for this guy to get fired. --Capt.
 
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#3
Yep, Lakers get all the calls and we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Our coach is something else. Lets play a completely ineffective Patterson the entire 4th quarter while an extremely effective JT sits on the bench.

Low basketball IQ....Demarcus? Are you kidding me? Then again how can you expect these guys to have a good IQ when their coach is dumber than any Jr High JV coach?

Kobe is having an off night offensively....so lets triple team him every possession so he can just find wide open shooters all game.

Game was just full of fails that could be easily fixed with a competent coach.
 
K

KingMilz

Guest
#6
Keith Smart did the work from the first through until the final 2mins of the last than the refs delivered a Juan Marquez type punch on the Kings with those two calls in the 4th.

Anyway I thought our defense was terrible doubling Kobe and leaving everyone else wide open killed us, we would have been better of Kobe getting 30+ and defending everyone else but hey at least we have a great coach. First bad game by PPat to didn't help and Steve Blake getting 15 points is about 11 to many. JT was very good I thought.

Cousins just at this point of his career does not recover back well enough on rotations on picks and employing that type off defense with him is a disaster, Smart should have never but him in that position on defense during the whole game, its simply bad coaching. On top of that when you have Gasol out there who himself is a elite playmaker getting plenty of space and time due to the doubles its going to result its just getting buried with easy dunk/wide open 3's and easy layups/easy offensive rebounds.
 
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#7
Agreed... what was the point of doubling Kobe? Dude has a bad wheel and is gonna be a playmaker... why make it easier on him?

I get the idea of trying to make someone else beat you, but can we adjust when it's obvious the strategy isn't working?
 
#10
Well, the good news (great actually) is we are very competitive in every game we play now. Very rarely do we have to question anyone's effort on the floor and our young guys are starting to play to their potential. The SF position and Smart are the real killers of our team now. Salmons, bless his heart, is just not a guy you can depend on for 44 minutes of SF production. Ideally, we have him in a 18ish min ball-handler role off the bench. Stick him there and all of a sudden, our bench is looking solid with a core of IT/Thornton, Patterson, Salmons, Douglas, and Cole
 
#13
Kobe Bryant on the possibility of this being his last game in Sacramento:

"No it's not. You guys have been saying the @#$% for three years. I'm tire of hearing that @#$%, you guys ain't going no where. Cowbells are still in the building."
 
#14
Despite some circumstances beyond their control and one bad TO stint, our guys played their absolute hearts out. I'm proud of this team and the way they handled themselves.
 
L

LWP777

Guest
#16
Foul on Salmons was correct. He banged Kobe's shooting elbow, hence the shot that didn't even hit the rim. Kobe isn't going to miss that badly. No call against DMC was incorrect. That was a foul and he should have been shooting 3 FT's. But why in the hell is DMC even trying to shoot a 3 there? Oh yeah.....I forgot. Smart.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#17
what happened to the heart?


I saw the look on Isaiah's face on the bench. He was a big part of our efforts in the first half of the game and I do not know why he was benched in favor of Marcus Thornton. You may not think IT is the right point guard for the future but he's been playing his heart out and he deserved better than what he got tonight.
 
#18
I saw the look on Isaiah's face on the bench. He was a big part of our efforts in the first half of the game and I do not know why he was benched in favor of Marcus Thornton. You may not think IT is the right point guard for the future but he's been playing his heart out and he deserved better than what he got tonight.
i agree. IT and JT shouldnt have been benched. i was just poking fun at the IT/Reke Heart joke

and thats just Keith Smarts patented "forget about your players on the bench in the 4th". he did it to Cousins the last 2 games and Reke has been the victim of it countless times this season.
 
K

KingMilz

Guest
#19
Foul on Salmons was correct. He banged Kobe's shooting elbow, hence the shot that didn't even hit the rim. Kobe isn't going to miss that badly. No call against DMC was incorrect. That was a foul and he should have been shooting 3 FT's. But why in the hell is DMC even trying to shoot a 3 there? Oh yeah.....I forgot. Smart.
With the 3 pointer I think he was trying to do a suprise play, who would have thought that they would go to Cousins for a 3 (it turned out being a horrible play and no call but still). Now that I have cooled off what cost us the game was the doubling on top of the key which clearly was horrible with the personal we have and the personal they had on the floor (i.e Gasol/Kobe doubling one is basically suicide with our defensive rotations).

All we accomplished with that defense was wearing out Cousins/Thompson and letting everyone else kill us. A good coach knows what his players can and can't do and does not put them into positions where they will fail 99% of the time. Dwight Howard is useless if you body him 1 on 1 and force him to make a post move, on the other hand hes superman getting spoon feed for wide open baskets as a result of double teams.
 
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Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#20
IT was benched for his defense. And because Smart is Smart. MT's hustle on the offensive glass is what kept him in I think. Salmons had to stay to contend with Kobe.

That said, its never good to have a guy leave without talking to the media. And the thing I don't like is that the last two nights IT's shots to assists ratio has been much more what we need out of a PG. Pretty much 1 to 1. But as the little guy out to prove it to the world, he's very likely to take the wrong message from losing minutes in a game like this, and come back and show everyone by gunning like a madman next time out, because that's how he and far too many of our guys translate showing 'em. And that would just be a shame.
 
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#22
He looked very unhappy when the camera panned him with about 2 minutes to go. I thought he was ready to cry.
saw that. was resting his head on his hand.

and people ripped Cousins for looking unhappy on the bench when he was benched during his potential career game against PHX.......
 
#23
IT was benched for his defense. And because Smart is Smart. MT's hustle on the offensive glass is what kept him in I think. Salmons had to stay to contend with Kobe.

That said, its never good to have a guy leave without talking to the media. And the thing I don't like is that the last two nights IT's shots to assists ratio has been much more what we need out of a PG. Pretty much 1 to 1. But as the little guy out to prove it to the world, he's very likely to take the wrong message from losing minutes in a game like this, and come back and show everyone by gunning like a madman next time out, because that's how he and far too many of our guys translate showing 'em. And that would just be a shame.
Im confused. What you don't like is IT's shot-assist ratio the last two nights? I think he's been playing a much better PG lately
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#24
Kobe Bryant on the possibility of this being his last game in Sacramento:

"No it's not. You guys have been saying the @#$% for three years. I'm tire of hearing that @#$%, you guys ain't going no where. Cowbells are still in the building."
If you do a Google Image Search for "conflicted" you'll find a picture of me reading this quote.
 

rainmaker

Hall of Famer
#25
He looked very unhappy when the camera panned him with about 2 minutes to go. I thought he was ready to cry.
Then maybe someone should get the little guy some tissues.

Tell that boy to toughen up. He's been all about himself numerous times, looking off Reke/Cuz to get his own, celebrating every other shot he hits, contributing to Reke getting benched repeatedly because he won't give up the ball. He sits one 4th quarter and he's teary eyed? Napoleon complex rears its head once again. It's about IT and IT getting his points. Thinking he's the top option and should be our leading scorer. This is what happens when you turn a role player into someone who thinks he's a top option.
 

Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#26
Im confused. What you don't like is IT's shot-assist ratio the last two nights? I think he's been playing a much better PG lately
you just misunderstood -- what I don't like is IT playing the right way the last couple of games, and now being upset about minutes and likely coming out and thinking that he's going to change that and not let anybody take him off the floor etc. by going back to gunning.
 
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VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#28
And what I don't like is IT playing the right way and being built up to an almost impossible level by the Grant, Jerry, et al and then being benched by his primary cheerleader. While we might speculate that IT was benched in reference to defense, I won't give Smart that much credit. You just don't treat players the way Smart has done. Luckily we only have 9 more games in the Smart era. I shudder to think at how much more damage he could do during that time.

EDIT: All this goes back to my original complaint about Keith Smart. He has no idea what roles players should have and, in turn, none of our players feel secure in what they're doing.
 
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#29
We lost this game because both JT and Patterson were absolutely useless for us. JT wasn't even trying to get a board in that stretch where Dwight got offensive tip in after offensive tip in.

On a side note: the Lakers feed was so so so so so refreshing. Sometimes you just get sick of G&J repeating the same thing over and over again about THE HUSTLIN HUSKIE
 
#30
i agree. IT and JT shouldnt have been benched. i was just poking fun at the IT/Reke Heart joke

and thats just Keith Smarts patented "forget about your players on the bench in the 4th". he did it to Cousins the last 2 games and Reke has been the victim of it countless times this season.
Gotta be somewhere...