Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Well, you can scarcely call a buzzer beating win over the 1-8 Nets on your home floor encouraging, but at least we made it fun. Well, after a pathetic energyless first half at least.
Boxscore
Stats: 19min 5pts (2-5, 1-3, 0-0) 4reb 2ast 2stl 0blk 1TO
Summary: lack of energy as a fill in starter in the first half, but made little plays to help our run after the break
Butler ( C+ ) -- hit a three for our first score, but overall our early play was atrocious and Butler had all the energy of a old man. But earned his stripes, and this grade, after half, when he became one of the roleplayers to step up and assist behind the Boogie/Rondo tandem. Still solid on defense, and he grabbed some long rebounds to close out possessions. A minor contribution, but a contribution nonetheless. --Brick
Stats: 19min 1pts (0-0, 0-0, 1-2) 9reb 0ast 1stl 1blk 1TO
Summary: Minutes were again limited, but may have saved the game with a long armed tip on the final inbounds play.
Cauley Stein ( C+ ) -- Willie only played 18 minutes tonight, and personally, I think he should have played more minutes. He only scored one point and that came off of going one for two at the free throw line. Technically he didn't take one shot in the game. But he did play very good defense. Except for getting there late a couple of times with help from the weakside, he did an excellent job. He grabbed 9 boards, all defensive rebounds. All I know, is that our defense becomes better every time he's on the floor. Too many times when he goes to the bench, we get beat down the floor with our transition defense. That seldom happens when Willie is on the floor. He put his final touch on the game when Karl remembered he was on the bench, and decided to replace Koufos with Willie to guard the the inbounds pass. And it paid off, because Willie was able to tip the ball enough for Rondo to steal it, and that folks, was the ball game. --Baja
Stats: 35min 40pts (13-27, 2-4, 12-13) 13reb 1ast 0stl 1blk 1TO
Summary: played a lousy first half, and then completely exploded in the third and fourth to finish with the monster statline
Cousins ( A ) -- make no mistake about this -- Boogie played a lousy first half, and a particularly crapty first quarter. With no Rudy the Nets were sitting back waiting for him, and then jumping him. And in response there was no energy, just a sluggish frustrated junkball game of chucking up bricked threes or driving right into Brook Lopez's teeth inside to get his shots smushed. To add insult to sucktatude, he picked up his third foul late in the half and went into the halftime break sitting on a stinky 1-10 (yet still having 10 points because Cuz leads the league in FTs). In fact I made a quick note of "this one is on Cuz", because if we had lost it would have been. No Rudy, no Darren, Cuz absolutely could NOT come out the way he did, he had to be huge. And he wasn't. And then the 3rd quarter came around, and I might as well have just thrown away all the preceding notes entirely. It all started just about the time that the brilliant basketball minds of the Kings broadcast crew suggested that maybe Rondo should start freezing Cuz out and stop passing to him. And then Cuz suddenly drained a three. And Rondo, not being quite as bright as our broadcast crew, decided to hit Cuz on a long quick hitter, and then start feeding him again and again. there was another jumper, a drive, and suddenly Cuz was off and just in I will destroy mode, raining in shots everywhere from the 3pt line to the rim, and getting to the line again and again too. Not only did he pour in 21pts in the quarter, he poured in 19 in the space of 5 minutes. And after sitting for 5 minutes, when he returned to the fray in the 4th he hadn't cooled down. the Nets had no answer for him. But the refs did, Blowing not one but TWO charge/block calls involving Cuz, one on either end of the floor, and setting up his early exit in the final minutes. A departure we barely survived. Quite frequently I will weight in a bad first half in a grade, because the whole game matters. But when the whole game in question in 40pts 13rebs on .611TS%...um no. The extent of my nose wrinkle becomes leaving off a plus.--Brick
Stats: 6min 0pts (0-1, 0-1, 0-0) 0reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Summary: Got the start, and again did we had so little energy he may have lost his spot
Anderson ( INC ) -- see the mini-description above. About the only other thing that can be said is that maybe we could have used his thick body when Joe Johnson began to bang Belinelli around late in the game. But a roleplayer without much energy isn't going to get much leash. --Brick
Stats: 44min 23pts (10-19, 2-4, 1-4) 10reb 14ast 2stl 0blk 4TO
Summary: Three triple doubles in a week, almost as good as Ray McCallum, right Grant?
Grading Note: our semi-professional grader in this case, the brave Capt. Fact, appears to own a particularly perverse DVR player that may in fact be a Lakers fan, and which recorded the crapty first half, the crapty final minutes, but somehow left out all the good juicy stuff n the 3rd and 4th quarters. Accordingly he can only grade what he saw. While I think if he had seen the rest an A- or better is likely, Capt.'s notes about the finish of this one are significant -- one downside of the close was that for the first time Rondo's FTs became a liability in us trying to close out a game, as we couldn't just have our best ballhandler/leader just handle the ball because they started intentionally fouling him. And it kind of worked. Which means in a copycat league we'll see that again.
Rondo ( B+ ) -- It's tough to give a guy something less than an A when he notches a triple-double while gutting out 44 minutes in the face of an ineffective backup, but in this case I think it might actually be deserved. But, just to cover my fanny, I'd like to declare that due to some sort of software SNAFU, my DVR stopped recording with three minutes left in the first half and I only managed to catch the final two minutes of the game on the replay - so maybe Rondo's second half looked better than his first (he definitely must have shot better). To me, Rondo looked gassed in the first half (and why shouldn't he?) He was making great passes as we've come to expect, and he was tenacious on the boards, but he was missing layups, he bricked a three, he was a step slow and he was not getting really back on transition D. Then at the end of the game, Rondo nearly let this one slip away, going 1-4 from the free throw line and then turning the ball over on the inbounds with 1.9 left to give the Nets hope. Fortunately, Willie Cauley-Stein ensured that we would not get Grizzed again with a convincing deflection on the inbounds and Rondo chased down the tip to seal the game. --Capt.
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