Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Pace pace pace pace pace pace pace pace.
RUN!!!
PACE PACE PACE PACE PACE PACE PACE PACE!!!!!
RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN!
Now we know what goes through the empty little head of a rodent on a wheel.
So anyway, we lost another game where we tried to outrun an opponent better at it than us and did not defend at any point in the game. I held my tongue at a fairly disgusting defensive first half. Boogie at least was big with the help defense, but everybody else was pathetic, and man on man even Boogie's guys were scoring. And a funny thing happened that gee, not even a billionaire tech genius could possibly see happening: when we hit an offensive lull, and the opponent did not, our defensive crew of Kings 2006-2014ers got blown off the court, Boogie or no.
Also, I should mention we were down a man on the Consortium tonight, and the result was therefore predictable. We should really get a salary.
Boxscore
Stats: 38min 22pts (9-15, 2-5, 2-4) 2reb 0ast 1stl 1blk 2TO
Gay ( C ) -- 22 pts on 9/15 with 2 3’s and not much else.
Rudy starts game on and vs. Darrel Arthur. Makes quick pass to Ben but a travel for quick TO. Tries 3 from elbow, long. Denver makes 5 of their first 6 shots. Rudy not involved, some screens in first 4 min. Feed from DC to Rudy in corner for a 3. 16-15 Nuggets @ 7:00 min mark. Nuggs passing more and better and out hustling Kings. Rudy climbs big ladder to block a JJ Hickson shot but goal tending called, replay showed was good block. !st quarter quiet for Rudy but shooting 3/5 playing entire 1st quarter. DWill starts 2nd quarter Rudy replaces an in-effective DWill at 6:51 mark of 2nd . Rebound via JT for elbow jumper. Next down steps back for nice 3. Pass from DC to Rudy who works baseline jumper for 2. Rudy sprint out gets pass from DC for two hand dunk now leads all scorers with 16 on 7/9 shooting and only 1 TO and takes those stats into half time. Early in 3rd quarter Rudy tries step back jumper but changed mind half way when the 7 ft Croatian guarded him and threw it away. Two quick buckets by the Nuggs rookie, then a steal from Cuz and a 3rd quick 2 on the run out. Then Rudy’s man blows by him on a P&R for 2. Den goes on 13-2 run. Rudy drive down the key for tomahawk jam. But Nuggs hitting everything and now lead by 7 then by 12. DWill in for Rudy at 6:10 mark of 3rd. Rudy starts the 4th with Kings down 15. A minute later down 19. at about 7min mark of 4th Rudy and Cuz jawing at each other about something. Gets fouled on a breakaway, makes 1/2. Nuggs just constantly out hustling the Kings and making most jumpers. Kings defense gone, has been most of game. Little spurt of 3 steals but too little too late. Affalo tries jumper with Rudy in his face and Rudy takes the ball. At other end gets ball and does great spin move to baseline with long arm lay in. But shortly air balls a 3. DWill in for last 3 min of game. Rudy had a very quiet 22 pts on 9/15 and only 2 TO’s (a B grade) but his defense was subpar dragging down his grade. --Cruz
Stats: 28min 6pts (3-5, 0-0, 0-0) 4reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Thompson ( D+ ) -- these empty minutes games are harmful, but again it should be noted we scored 108pts on the night. For any serious team that is more than enough to win. Its the other end. And Jason...just looks so incredibly mediocre out there on nights like these. He got one early post hit overpowering the smaller Faried. And that was it. After Cuz left got an easy little dunk inside from DC. At least in the early going he was doing a good job of getting his body between the Nuggets and the rim on the glass, even if Jason barely grabbed any himself. Amazingly ineffective as a help defender, he and Cuz are the same height, Cuz was widely panned for his lack of defense, but somehow Cuz gets wide and disruptive now, and Jason just seems to bounce on by while guys ignore his 6'11 presence. Bounced around hunting for boards, but seemed to lose every board battle too. In the 3rd...well there was no 3rd. JT did not come out, and Cuz was out there alone while Jason apparently caught up on his nap time while Faried ran right by him for boards. It led us to experiment with other guys, who were barely better. The disappearance of JT's boardwork as he's gotten older remains a great mystery. --Brick
Stats: 39min 32pts (12-25, 0-0, 8-9) 13reb 4ast 3stl 4blk 7TO
Cousins ( B+ ) -- there may be those among us who out of general pique would give a HOF center who puts up 32pts 13reb 4ast 3stl 4blk (season high) and makes multiple great hustle plays including diving into the stands after chasing down Nate Robinson a lower grade here just as an expression of general discontent, but they ain't me. On the other hand, 1) Boogie's jumper is currently broke. I don't think he's made one this homestand, and with teams REALLY swarming him inside now, he has been settling for too many. Well at least too many if its broke. On a normal shooting night for him he drops 40 tonight. 2) turnovers. Again. But damn, these did not feel as unnecessary. Only one egregious one as the wheels fell off in the third. Mostly though created by the swarm of defenders around him, and that has gotten extreme. He's getting the full LeBron treatment now. 3) Nukic can play. For those that haven't seen him before, the kid can flat play and he competes. And at the critical moment in the early 3rd he was able to go right at Cuz and score over him repeatedly. Anyway, those were the flaws this time for Cuz. But it should be clear that he was by far the best thing we had going. No "Kings Player of the Game?" poll this time. He was active and aggressive from the beginning of this one, and so were the Nuggets against him as they repeatedly swarmed him right off the catch. He tried to beat those swarms with passes, and while Ben was in refuse to hit mode, the Kings as a whole were scoring and scoring easily. I should also note that I had forgotten a play when I said Cuz had not hit a jumper all homestand -- one of his first shots in fact was a jumper he was forced to knock down after he got doubled hard and couldn't find anybody, so he just fell backward and threw up the only shot he had, and it fell. But mostly what he was scoring on again were some truly spectacular power drives, he was very active and physical blocking Nurkic off the boards on defense, and his help defense...well he was the help defense. he notched 4 blocks on the night, and made some special plays chasing down guys on the break, getting blocks, once racing back at full speed to pick off a Nuggets pass and throwing it off Nate Robinson to gain possession before flying out of bounds and landing on some lady in the stands. Those are GREAT plays, inspirational plays when made by your star...but where was everybody else? Nobody seemed to join in. In the second quarter Nik finally began to reward him for those kicks out of double teams by knocking down his shots, and Cuz was notching assists as well. Now the negative at that point was that Nurkic had gotten a couple of buckets through him early, and then JJ Hickson had come in off the bench and...well, its hard to really blame a defender when Hickson does one of those wild jump up in the air and awkwardly have turn and throw a flying hook of the glass things, but Hickson hit several of them too. Wasn't bad Boogie defense per se, but maybe not doing enough work early? Or, and here's something to consider -- Boogie isn't fouling anymore. He;s notching huge minutes, but you see him out there constantly throwing his hands back so he doesn't get called for anything, and so he's now able to push 40 min. His numbers are accordingly enormous, but maybe that means he isn't banging as hard on defense. At halftime all three of the "Big three" had shown up, and so despite the teamwide pee poor defense, we were hanging right with the Nuggets in the pace pace! pace!! game. Unfortunately after half only Cuz did, and even he got directly challenged and maybe even beat by Nurkic in the critical 3rd period, when the Nuggets came out firing, Nurkic went right over Cuz to start the quarter, adn while Cuz responded in huge fashion chasing down Afflalo on the break for his 4th block, then driving past Nurkic for a huge two handed dunk, nobody else helped. It was pathetic. Collison got destroyed. Gay disappeared. Ben never showed up. JT was dominated by Faried. And so the Nuggets swarmed the hell out of Cuz, he got a couple of turnovers trying to beat it, felt forced out to the perimeter for jumpers, which were not falling, and he was hanging his head and looking exhausted by midquarter. And I thought that was it for us. In this one Cousins WAS our moxie. He WAS our fight. When the Nuggets got the best of him, nobody else on the team showed any guts or fire to pick up the slack. Now the thing for this grade was, Cuz wasn't remotely done himself. After resting on the bench he came out in the 4th firing in a huge way. He WAS the team out there with follows, drives, and briefly at one point it looked like he spilled some courage over to Rudy, who joined him to finally hit a few. But it wasn't enough, not enough guys were helping. And when he got a defensive rebound knocked out of his hands from behind (the 2nd time on the night when that happened) at the 6min mark and that turned into a 3pt play for the Nuggets, we were pretty much done. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean I'm going to drop a silly grade on the one guy who was competing, and who led us in points, rebounds, steals, blocks and was second in assists. Cuz was often great. But you play no defense, this is what you get. Learning yet Vivek? --Brick
Stats: 30min 7pts (2-8, 1-6, 2-2) 2reb 3ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
McLemore ( F ) -- Ben gave us absolutely nothing tonight. He started out pathetic, giving Afflalo 8 points on four shots in the first six minutes (and the only miss Afflalo had in that span was a three that Ben FELL DOWN ON trying to run over to contest). Just to be friendly, Ben missed two wide open threes in the quarter. Ben wasn't very involved i the second quarter, but he did get fouled for a couple of free throws late, then grabbed a board and ran down court to hit a buzzer-beating three to give us a six-point lead. That was the best Ben was going to give us on the night, and the best it was going to get. Things went south so badly in the third that halfway through he was taken out to allow DERRICK WILLIAMS to play the SG, just to try some completely random thing that couldn't possibly be worse than what we were doing. It wasn't any better either. The bottom line here is that Ben scored 7 points on 9 shots, and Ben's man scored 17 points on 11 shots. If everybody on the team jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff too? Ben says "yes". --Capt.
Stats: 36min 15pts (7-13, 1-4, 0-0) 2reb 7ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Collison ( C ) -- Overall his stats look pretty good. 15 points on 7 of 13 shooting to go along with 7 assists. But it was truly the tale of two halves tonight. At the end of the first half, Darren was looking at A. He got most, if not all of his assists in the first half. He did a decent job of getting back in transition to stop Lawson and the ball. He also kept Lawson in front of him fairly well in the first half. No mean feat, as Lawson may be the quickest PG in the NBA. He had a very nice drive and kick or dish game going, with JT and Cuz benefiting. His only major flaw defensively was the last defensive play of the 1st quarter, when he turned his head and Lawson blew by him for an easy bucket. He also shot the ball well in the first half. The second half was a different story, or maybe nightmare is a more appropriate description. Everything just fell apart in the third quarter, and by its end, the game was over. Lawson started pick and rolling the Kings to death, almost scoring at will. However it wasn't all Collison's fault. He got very little help from his frontcourt teammates, except for Cousins. JT, and Landry reverted back to their old ways and became spectators. JT actually got in Collison's way as he was trying to go under a pick. Collison is quick enough to go under a pick and still close out, but not if your own teammate gets in your way instead of stepping out to defend the ball. His lone turnover came in the second half, but by the time it happened it was of little consequence. By the end of the 3rd quarter I had lost interest. Will the real Kings please stand up! --Baja
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