Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Well... that certainly could have gotten us a little attention. But...sigh. Got tight, we had it...and then our youth and dumbness kicked in and we lost it. The newly minted Bonehead Award has to go to Derrick Williams for somehow doing the one thing you absolutely cannot under any circumstances do when up 4 in the final 15 seconds, and he fouled a three point shooter to let the Pacers tie it (later in OT he would also ridiculously charge right into Hibbert's chest at a critical moment). And the Iverson Wannabe Award has to go to IT, one half of our Two Amigos offense tonight, who completely lost his head and forgot it was a team sport for the final 7-8 minutes of the game, took all the shots, missed most of them, including the game winning attempt in regulation, then turned it over when we were trying to tie it up at the end of OT. So one hell of a game effort goes by the wayside. Certainly beats laying down like dogs, but its just unfortunate, because we had the big shocker right there at the tips of our fingers, and just gave it away.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
sdballer
Capt. Factorial
MassachusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 34min 7pts (2-9, 0-1, 3-7) 11reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Williams ( D+ ) -- DWill taketh and DWill giveth away. Williams came up with a huge steal in the endgame with the Kings down 3 and about 45 seconds to go in OT, and he drove into the teeth of the defense and turned it back over. It's hard to forgive. And it's only one of Williams' mistakes along the line in the endgame. With 35 seconds left in regulation and the Kings up by one, Williams came up with a huge offensive rebound, and was fouled on the putback attempt, but he only made one of two free throws to give the Pacers hope (he was a dismal 3-7 from the charity stripe in the game). Then, with the Kings up four with only fifteen seconds in the game, Williams was called for a bovine excrement foul on Paul George well before he shot and hit a three. With fifteen seconds left in the game, that's not a foul. And even if it is a foul, it's not continuation. But Williams is the goat on this one, because he was called for the unfoulable foul; the NBA's newest superstar Paul George got a superstar call and tied the game with a four-point play. The rest is history. And frankly, the rest is easy enough to not think about. This was the strangest of games, where in a contest that went into overtime only TWO Kings players had in excess of two FGM. Did Williams have a great offensive game overall? No. Was he involved? No. And he really didn't have the greatest of results on D. He was giving his all, and he had only allowed 7 points at halftime despite spending a lot of time checking Paul George, but the second half was not so kind to him, and he ended up by allowing 27 points on 14 shots. Ugh. In his defense he was active on the boards and pulled down 11 on the night, but after saying that, the defense rests. Derrick Williams is who Minnesota thought he was - and he's no Rudy Gay. --Capt.
Stats: 32min 1pts (0-8, 0-0, 1-2) 10reb 1ast 0stl 1blk 1TO
Thompson ( D ) -- With Cousins and Gay out we needed JT to step up on the rebounding and do as good a job on West as possible, while hopefully providing some offense. Unfortunately JT had a pretty miserable game. He played pretty solidly in the 1st quarter, mostly because David West picked up 2 quick fouls and had to head to the bench. JT played the entire 1st quarter, and while solid, wasn’t great. For the remainder of the game, when he was in, he was going against David West. There will be two things that will be remembered from JT in this game. The one that hurt the most was the 6 straight points that David West scored in the closing minutes of the 4th quarter to allow the Pacers to tie the game. JT had 5 fouls, and though he kept a body on him, West was able to get good enough position and good enough looks to knock down the shots. I was watching the Pacer’s broadcast and they kept calling for West to get the ball because they knew it represented their best chance for easy buckets. Unfortunately that minute or two stretch was symptomatic of the entire game for JT as West scored 22 on an efficient 9-14 shooting, with those 3 straight buckets the clincher. What also really hurt was that JT was completely ineffective on the offensive end. He missed his open jumpers, he rushed his post moves, and generally showed zero feel for the basket in this one. He had a couple of clean looks and ended up taking 8 shots, but he missed all 8 of them. He split a pair of free-throws leaving him with a single point for the entire game. Think about that. If he’d made both free-throws or if he’d converted a single attempt, the Kings probably win the game. I will mention that by-and-large he didn’t have any easy bucket opportunities at the rim. He had a single slip-screen roll that Thornton then got to him, but he fumbled the catch and didn’t get the clean look he should have had at the rim. The fact that the team only had 14 assists in an overtime game points to the lack of ball movement, and his teammates never really found him for easy scoring opportunities at the basket. In the rebounding department he did a respectable job of 10 rebounds in 32 minutes, but it was his inability to stop David West as well as his complete absence in the scoring column which really hurt the team in this one. Had he been able to give the team just a little bit of something, they would have probably pulled it out. JT finally ended up fouling out of the game with 48 seconds and wasn’t there on the court as the Pacers took the game in overtime. --Uncial
Stats: 36min 3pts (1-3, 0-0, 1-2) 7reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 4TO
Gray ( C ) -- Not totally sure how to grade a guy that gave his all in probably more than 2x the minutes he should ever be playing. Gray takes up space, does the dirty work and may do more than anyone on the team to try and help teammates get in better scoring position. Unfortunately he just isn't very good. Aside from setting terrific screens, the best thing he does on offense is stay out of the way. He had a costly turnover at the end of regulation when he was pushed way outside his comfort zone. He rebounded a bit but isn't mobile enough to keep an aggressive team like the pacers off the boards. His defense is all effort and mass but his impact was lessened by his inability to defend at the rim. He had a few moments at the end where he wasn't able to stop shots at the basket. All in all, commendable effort filling in for cuz but the big guy needs to come back soon. --Baller
Stats: 42min 42pts (16-27, 7-15, 3-4) 5reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Thornton ( A+ ) -- WOW. I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know if I could write words that would do this game, or this performance justice. Lets just start with the obvious – this was an incredible game for Marcus Thornton, and a huge part of why this was so fun is because he’s been so bad all year. He was literally (ok, maybe not literally) on fire for the entire game. He never really cooled off as much as he just stopped getting as many opportunities to score. It was one of those games where it felt like any time the Kings needed a big shot Thornton was there to provide it. It’s been so long since he’s been that guy. He had one of the most ridiculous 1st quarters of basketball I have ever seen. He had 22 points on 9-12 shooting, including 4-6 on 3’s in that quarter alone. He was doing this on the Indiana Pacers. It doesn’t get any more legit than that. At one point in the first half Grant Napier mentioned how Thornton was only averaging 3 points a game since he was inserted back into the starting lineup 9 games ago. That’s how bad he has been compared to how good he was tonight. He was doing all of the old Marcus Thornton tricks we’ve missed this season. It started off with a classic Thornton offensive rebound tip in. Then came the barrage of 3’s, and then came the hard drives to the basket in transition. For lack of a better word, he got his swagger back. He had one drive to the basket where he faked a bounce pass to Aaron Gray who was rolling to the rim, and Hibbert bit on it leaving him all one for an easy layup. The Pacers defense on Thornton definitely picked up after that 1st quarter run, but Thornton still found ways to get open and knock down jumpers. For most of the second half Thornton had to deal with Paul George’s length, and I thought he battled through the length as well as you could expect. He didn’t get the ball as much as I’d like towards the end of the 4th quarter and overtime, but to the Pacers credit they really started to find their rhythm defensively in crunch time. On the other end I thought Thornton was bringing that effort defensively that he has been all year (in an effort to contribute something to the team while his offense was in the tank). His defense was solid, but that’s not what tonight was about. It’s really unfortunate that the Kings couldn’t pull off the upset (if not for some dubious officiating they probably would have). It could have been a huge boost for team chemistry, but at the very least I hope this game woke up Marcus Thornton. This is a pretty good indication that he still has talent, and it is the kind of extraordinary performance that can turn a players season around. I’m very intrigued to see what kind of Marcus Thornton we get from this point forward. I have no idea what to expect.--Mass
Stats: 43min 38pts (13-31, 2-9, 10-10) 3reb 6ast 1stl 0blk 5TO
Iverson ( A- ) -- much to grade here as this grade weebled and wobbled in all directions. First it should be said that for about 3/4 of this one Isaiah was good, and aside from a few stretches of forces, he was largely being good without disrupting or competing against the guy who was going GREAT (MT). He started off missing his shots again and was very much in the background behind Thornton for most of the early going as Thornton just went off in huge fashion. But he hit an off balance +1 near the end of the quarter to get us to 33pts. Then added back to back drives and high flips over Hibbert on the left side -- that in fact would be the shot that was his main weapon on the night -- difficult high flips pulling up well short of the rim to avoid the Hibbert roadblock. Played the final minute of the half poorly, forcing a stupid three too quickly and giving Indiana a 2 for 1, and then forcing a selfish attempt against Hibbert to close the half. Recovered and played solidly in the early third, starting the quarter with a nice drive and dish along the baseline, and picking up a hustle steal at halfcourt to breakup a Pacers transition opportunity. But began to have turnover issues as the Indiana defense stiffened late in the quarter, including dribbling right into the chests of the defense with 2min to go on a play that triggered a Pacers fastbreak that got JT his 5th foul. After Jimmer failed in his second stint, IT came back in in the early 4th and got a corner three on the set play from the sidelines. But from that point on the good Isaiah (at one point he had 18 points on 17 shots and I was going to use it as an example of where efficiency doesn't capture how well a guy is playing) began to succumb to his green eyed "we talkin' about practice?" little gunner, he quick shot another three off his dribble, and bricked it. He panicked and threw up another three as the Pacers took everything away and finally took the lead. He stepped up big time to hit 2 shots in a row to hold us right there and give us back the lead at the 1:30 mark, but by that point he was just about the only guy who COULD hit a shot for us, because he was the only guy taking them. He also had the game winning attempt in the dying seconds, but missed an off balance midranger from the leftside. And then OT rolled around, and after one early Thornton splash, it was IT left, IT right, IT middle, and IT getting stripped on our last gasp play to try to tie it when he went to the reverse dribble one too many times and Paul George anticipated it. Game over. As I mentioned in the Game Thread, in the final 3 minutes of regulation and the 5min of OT Marcus Thornton got to take exactly one shot, which he hit. Meanwhile Isaiah went completely Iverson on us (and A.I. twice in his career had 13-31 shooting nights actually, once even with 6ast), and threw up 11 shots to Thornton's 1, forced half them, missed the game winner at the end of regulation, and got stripped to finish us at the end of the OT. So...harrumph. But this grade has to be more than just the harrumph. Before killing us with his need to be the hero, all he did was tie a career high I think with 38, and combine with Marcus Thornton for the most points we've ever had a backcourt score for us (80 between 2 guys). We are an incredibly hierarchial team now, complete anti-Petrie/Smart now. All the shots go to Gay and Cousins and IT. With 2 of those 3 out, all of them went to IT and MT, 58 shots, 42 pts, 38pts, and nobody else with more than 7. To drop the grade too much here because of late game heroball would be missing the entire point of how we were close in the first place.
--Brick
Last edited:
