Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
As my grandma used to say: goodness gracious sakes alive. Actually I don't know if she said that entire phrase or not. But she was a tough old southern lady, and if she was watching stuff like this she might have. Think that's 0-10 now on the season without Cousins. You have to wonder just what would our record be this year if he missed the entire season. he should start getting darkhorse MVP votes because apparently he's worth about 30 wins a season by himself.
So...we got D'Antoni'd in the ugliest way. I don't know if it ended up being a record for them from three point land, but it was close. Just absolutely bombed us into the stone age. Pretty much all of our starters except for Ben, who is in a potentially career altering death spiral at this point, put up big pretty numbers the other way. Evans once again really helped off the bench. He's handy. The new guy, Johnson, came in and looked better than his numbers. But as I have said too may times this season, a sickening number of times, the problem isn't the scoring. A good team should be able to go 82-0 if they scored 122pts a night. We score 122 and lose. that's pathetic.
Theme will be...give me a min. Actually have several queued up. Believe it or not I was actually guessing we might lsoe a few before the end of the season. Alright, Theme = Phenakistocopes
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Capt. Factorial
MassacheusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 41min 32pts (11-22, 1-4, 9-9) 7reb 5ast 2stl 1blk 2TO
Gay ( A ) -- The Lakers decided to go small and play Kent Bazemore who is a SG at the SF spot which of course is a great match-up for Rudy due to his good size and length. And Rudy took advantage of that match-up all night long. With Cousins out, Rudy handled the ball a lot. He directed traffic, found open guys, posted up, used screens to attack the rim, and all-in-all played a smart offensive game. He wasn’t on from the 3pt line going 1-4, but other than those shots and a couple of isolation contested forced jumpers he picked his spots and hurt the Lakers non-existent defense. He had a really efficient 1st half going 6-9 for 15 points and 2 assists. In the 2nd half he forced it a bit more going 5-13, but he also notched another 3 assists and would have picked up a couple more had guys made some shots. What was great about Rudy’s game in this one was that he was aggressively at the rim all night long. He ended up at the line 9 times which was the 2nd most of any player and he hit all of his free throws, which greatly improved his overall performance. He took a few too many difficult outside shots, but his aggressive play at the rim easily made up for those bad possessions. Bazemore was able to use his quickness to beat Rudy a couple of times, but Rudy dominated that match-up with his length and smooth scoring touch. He rebounded pretty well, though he probably could have had more due to his size advantage, but we killed the Lakers on the boards 44-31 and Rudy definitely won his match-up. It was probably a tough game for Rudy since he dominated his match-up only to see the Laker’s PGs, SGs, & Centers decisively win their match-ups to pull out the victory. Even though there were never huge stretches where it felt as if Rudy was dominating the ball, he picked his spots well and played a good #1 option game with great over-all performance.--Uncia
So What is a Phenakistocope? -- ever see a flipbook? Or make one? I knew a girl in biology class in high school who spent the entire semester turning the corners of her textbook into a flipbook with her little stick figures doing all kinds of stuff. Anyway, the idea is simple, the same one behind stop motion animation, or really any motion picture. the 'movies" aren't really moving at all either, there are just compilations of thousands of still frames, and our eyes/brains put the picture together and imagine the movement that ties it all together (actually, that's the way our vision works too). So, 100 years before moving pictures were invented, the phenakistocope filled somewhat of a similar role. What you do is paint a series of pictures on a plate, then spin that plate, and let peoples' eyes fill in the blanks. Some of them were quite elaborate and inventive. Here's a fairly simple example showing a fair maiden emegrging from the center of the plate, and aging into an old hag as she approaches the edges:
Stats: 40min 26pts (10-20, 0-2, 6-10) 12reb 2ast 2stl 0blk 0TO
Williams ( A ) -- The Lakers went small at the PF spot too, playing Wesley Johnson (who isn’t close to being a PF in any way shape or form). This actually allowed Williams to be able to start at PF and not be undersized. So he went into this match-up the bigger player and he played the bigger player game. One of the criticisms about Williams is that sometimes he seems to float while on the court. Well, with Cousins out, he was incredibly aggressive. He attacked the rim over and over again, leading to a game high 10 free-throw attempts. His jump shot was completely off and he missed every single jumper he attempted, but that should indicate how aggressive he was, as he scored 26 points on lay-ups, dunks, and free-throws. He bullied his way into offensive rebound position getting multiple offensive rebounds and put-backs, and in isolation situations he forced smaller defenders to either foul him or let him finish at the rim. He ran the floor to score in transition and made good cuts to the rim and finishing at a high rate when teammates found him. In addition, he was a monster on the boards…at least in the 1st half. He finished the 1st half with 10 rebounds, including 4 rebounds in the last 2 minutes of the half. In the 2nd half his rebounding died down considerably as he did not manage a single rebound in the 3rd quarter and had just 2 offensive rebounds (and put-backs) in the 4th quarter. This great game really only worked because he wasn’t facing a traditional PF or even an undersized one, but rather a straight SF in Johnson, but it was very encouraging to see him take full advantage of his opportunity and match-up to have a great night. Hopefully we’ll continue to see strong performances from Williams through the rest of the season. --Uncia
Scrambling Mice
Stats: 29min 17pts (8-12, 0-0, 1-2) 11reb 2ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( B+ ) -- ok, I am worried about too much grade inflation in what was after all a pretty bad loss to our fellow WC cellar dwellers, but damn if I don't have a hard time seeing how that can really be laid at JT's feet. Our guards got absolutely annihilated on defense -- Jodie Meeks, MarShon Brooks and Jordan Farmar combined for 75pts on 14-16 from 3pt land(!!) (career averages of 9.1, 8.0 and 7.8pts). JT is not a guard, and in fact was matched up with by far the most talented/accomplished Laker left in uniform at center. And he held his own and then some. In the early going despite looking comfortable on offense, it looked like he might hack his way out of a strong game, as he committed multiple overbanging fouls just slamming into Pau and then complaining to the refs about how he hadn't done anything. He picked up his third foul again slamming into Pau's chest, this time on offense, in the final minutes of the half. But he came out the second half determined and physical, was on the glass, came up with several offensive follows inside, and mostly kept Pau out on the perimeter on defense. Got back in the game for the stretch run, and di not have as much luck. Got fouled but only split a pair, and got blocked at the rim at the 2:30 mark. The overall game was solid though, and while Pau had a good offensive game, overall it may not have been JT's equal, and a number of his points came while Jason was on the bench. This was strong/solid, certainly about all you could ask given the circumstances. --Brick
Leap Frog
Stats: 30min 0pts (0-4, 0-4, 0-0) 2reb 2ast 2stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( F ) -- Dire. It would be picking on the kid, except the kid is right out front and center picking on us. Or maybe the coaches are picking on him by insisting on executing PDA's oh crap oh crap maybe we ****ed up play him til he drops plan. Whatever the truth of it, here's what dire means: since being handed the keys to the position 5 games ago at the trade deadline, Ben has combined to average 7.2pts on 11-43 shooting (.256), 4-20 from 3pt land (.200) in 30min a night. Then there's the little question of what his opponents are averaging. So what was dire Friday night edition? Well how about getting outscored 45-0 at his position. 45. To ZERO. Now there is slight fudge there in that Marshon Brooks and Jodie Meeks played some minutes together, and of course Ben could not play every minute against them. indeed even under orders at several points Malone had had enough and benched him in favor of a second round pick (shades of Jimmer's predicament) or a waiver wire claim we picked up 2 days ago. But it was what it was. Almost completely uninvolved on offense -- basically would get one three point brick a quarter, that was it. Late in the third got himself yanked after he committed another almost funny ballhandling error leading him into an offensive foul on the break. And on defense... will somebody please slap him? Nice kid, but watching the same thing happen 100 times in a row with no apparent learning curve is enough to make you into an advocate of corporeal punishment. How many times, HOW MANY TIMES, do we have to see Ben just cluelessly duck UNDER a screen against a guy lighting him up? How many times do we have to see him bounce around half in the lane, half out, "helping" while his man spots up and waits for the open three? He got slaughtered out there by nobodies (Brooks and Meeks combined to shoot 17-21!), even went under a screen to let Farmar have one of his EIGHT threes as well, and maybe the slaughter is finally effecting the effort, because there were times when the resistance was not there, where it looked like he was just going through the motions and gingerly following and wandering around in a shellshocked haze. To add insult, got scored over by Brooks inside for maybe the game sealer in the final minute. I have been quietly questioning his fight, his fire and desire, but tonight moreso than ever. I think he may have been relieved when he wasn't in the game after a while. So first 5 games of his audition for next year's lineup have been an utter disaster. Now March dawns, and this is it. If he has another terrible month, I doubt anything he does in April, traditionally a month when many scrubs put up suddenly solid numbers, is going to change the impression. --Brick
Children Frog Jumping Into Lion Mouths? -- as I mentioned, some of them are quite strange and inventive.
Stats: 32min 26pts (10-16, 2-2, 4-5) 8reb 2ast 1stl 2blk 5TO
Thomas ( B- ) -- With DeMarcus Cousins serving his suspension tonight, I figured we’d see a lot more of Thomas gunning in this one than we actually did. He was deferring quite a bit to both Rudy Gay and Derrick Williams early (only 4 shots in the first quarter), and both of those guys were able to get their offense going. When he returned in the second quarter, he went on a pretty good run that felt like he had assisted or scored on every basket. I went back and looked at the play-by-play, and that backed up what I saw. With 7 and ½ minutes left in the 2nd quarter, Thomas assisted 5-straight Kings baskets, Rudy Gay hit a layup, and then Thomas closed the quarter with 7-straight points. It was the Kings best quarter of the game, and gave the Kings a healthy double-digit lead going into halftime. Thomas would sprinkle in a few more buckets and assists throughout the second half, but he never reached that same level of effectiveness. I thought he had the right approach tonight, though, and he let other guys who had good games going (Gay and Williams) keep doing what they were doing. Where his game starts to fall off a bit was on the defensive end, where I feel like it’d be appropriate to give the guards on this roster F’s across the board for how they defended the 3-point line. Now, in Thomas’ defense, he spent a majority of his time in this one defending Kendall Marshall, who didn’t score a point all game, but in the fourth quarter when the game was on the line the Kings just couldn’t defend anyone, and Thomas certainly belongs in that same company. Jordan Farmar was a real issue for the Kings point guards, but by the time Thomas was defending him in the fourth, Ray McCallum unfortunately allowed him to get hot. I’m not excusing Thomas, just pointing the fact that after Orlando Johnson, Thomas was probably the Kings second best perimeter defender. And no, that is not a complement. The Kings could not defend the Lakers guards, period. Offensively, Thomas exceeded my expectations tonight. He was efficient (something he hasn’t been with Cousins out of the lineup), and he allowed Rudy Gay to play as the first option. With how the Kings guards defended the 3-point line, though, I just can’t give him a grade higher than a B.--Mass
This 1893 American plate by Eadweard Muybridge shows the development of a more realistic style near the end of the era. Nice animation on the horse especially.
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