[Grades] Grades v. Pelicans 1/28/2016

[Bricklayer]

Ok, let's long story short this:

We Didn't Come Out to Play.

There, about sums this up. This team is a mystery. They never do the right thing, are unbearably sloppy with their mental preparation I guess. I have no idea what their pregame rituals, game day practices or whatever look like, but whatever they are, they probably need to be changed. Bang-bang-bang, we drop three straight against easy opponents, although Portland was going to be tough after we quit defending the Hornets and went to double OT.

Ben played one of his best this season. Early on he was joining everybody else in just bending over and picking up the soap on defense for a half strength Pels team, but he kept scoring and kept scoring, and became the third player to have a productive game. Boogie was not on and helped create the early problem by not being ready or focused early. But he wanted to win, got upset, forced himself into an effort, found ways to contribute protecting the rim and passing, and in the end if you can't win with your center going for 26-10-6ast and 5 blocks saving hoops as your guards got blown by, you have an issue.

Meanwhile Willie had his kryptonite game. I have been mentioning in grades threads that Willie has a hole on defense -- he doesn't seem to get how to keep contact with and challenge 3pt shooters. And then along comes Ryan Anderson, and Willie was so bad he got benched over it. Omri fired off a couple of early shots, then entirely went away, and played poor defense. Collison remains asleep and getting his butt handed to him by every other backup PG in the league, and Belinelli was every bit as bad as recent legend has made him out to be. We lost Bels' 20 minutes by 24 points. We won his 28 minutes off the floor by 15.

Embarrassing effort that makes no sense, just as this team never does. This team would fart at your black tie dinner party, and spout 19th century French poetry in a mosh pit. They respond to everything completely inappropriately. Its difficult to understand how that malaise can be so teamwide universal.


Boxscore

Stats: 29min 8pts (3-9, 2-5, 0-0) 6reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Summary: scored some early hoops and raised hopes of impact, but then disappeared, bad defensively throughout.
Casspi ( ) --

Stats: 15min 6pts (1-2, 0-0, 4-4) 1reb 1ast 0stl 1blk 0TO
Summary: for the first time since returning, a big part of a loss. Had no clue how to guard Anderson, burned badly.
Cauley Stein ( ) --

Stats: 41min 26pts (11-24, 0-1, 4-6) 10reb 6ast 1stl 5blk 6TO
Summary:not dialed in and too casual on both ends early, eventually battled into big numbers, but not enough to carry
Cousins ( ) --

Stats: 31min 26pts (9-17, 5-10, 3-4) 4reb 2ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Summary: got burned on defense early, but aggressive on offense and had one of his nights of the season
McLemore ( ) --

Stats: 38min 17pts (7-10, 1-2, 2-4) 6reb 15ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Summary: huge statline again as one of our few offensive weapons, but defensive sucked, and not huge impact
Rondo ( ) --


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[Bricklayer]

Bench

Stats: 20min 6pts (2-8, 0-3, 2-2) 1reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Belinelli ( ) --

Stats: 15min 5pts (2-4, 1-3, 0-0) 1reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Anderson ( ) --

Stats: 19min 5pts (1-3, 1-2, 0-0) 9reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Acy ( ) --

Stats: 26min 8pts (4-10, 0-2, 0-0) 1reb 3ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Collison ( ) --

Stats: 7min 0pts (0-2, 0-0, 0-0) 1reb 1ast 0stl 2blk 0TO
Koufos ( ) --



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[kingsboi]

three and counting....the ship was landed back on mother Earth folks.

 

[SacTownGrantFan]

Belinelli needs to go or stop getting minutes.

To me he's like the epitome of bad/embarassing defense. Lacks physicality, sluggish...

He's our anchor of a crippling-ly bad defense.

 

[SacTownGrantFan]

The silver lining to this game is that Ben was pretty stellar.

 

[nebs]

Belinelli couldn't even hold on to the ball tonight. Pump fake for no reason (like usual) get burned on defense (like usual) brick almost everything (like usual). I'm over this dude for a while.

 

[ovrush]

Embarrassing effort that makes no sense, just as this team never does. This team would fart at your black tie dinner party, and spout 19th century French poetry in a mosh pit. They respond to everything completely inappropriately. Its difficult to understand how that malaise can be so teamwide universal.
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In general if someone farts loudly at a black tie dinner my assumption is that they weren't taught that it wasn't appropriate. If they don't understand how to grasp moments properly, to me that says someone didn't give them the proper guidance on how to carry themselves.

The more I watch this team, the more I'm convinced that we have the wrong coach for the personnel. I think our defense would be better with the game at a slower pace (more energy for guards to fight through screens, more energy for the bigs to flash at the P&R and recover) and we have the dominant low post big that should make our slow down, half court offense efficient without relying on pace as a crutch.

Pace is exactly the wrong message for this team. Unfortunately, you can't swap coaches mid season, and I'm not sure you even can in the off-season. (If Thibs is available he might be the only guy you could make the swap for because of his name and connections to Boogie and Rudy)

 

[Kings_of_California]

Everyone is angry over Beli and his shooting (he sucked, I agree) but in the end, both teams shot a similar %.

We were out rebounded. They pulled in 12 offensive boards to our 4. We NEED to board with this Swiss cheese D.

I love WCS, but when you're 7 ft tall with his athleticism, you gotta pull in more than 1 rebound over 15 minutes.


Ben had a nice game. So that's cool...I guess.

 

[lwc]

Don't burn me at the stake just yet but I'll take losing the game tonight if it means that we get THIS Ben McLemore from now on. He was efficient, unafraid, and confident. If this Ben McLemore shows up every night (whether he scores 20+ or not), we will be the 6th seed, not just a playoff team.

 

[nebs]

Everyone is angry over Beli and his shooting (he sucked, I agree) but in the end, both teams shot a similar %.

We were out rebounded. They pulled in 12 offensive boards to our 4. We NEED to board with this Swiss cheese D.

I love WCS, but when you're 7 ft tall with his athleticism, you gotta pull in more than 1 rebound over 15 minutes.


Ben had a nice game. So that's cool...I guess.

Hard to get that board when your rebounder has to go guard the dude that just beat Belinelli.

 

[kupman]

How does Seth not get any minutes? He is one of the few that plays hard D. The rest are Matadors and make me drop f bombs all night long.

 

[steelevt]

Games like these last 2 show why we need rudy. Yes he isn't durant or lebron, but he helps take the load off dmc. This team is building chemistry and I want to see it through instead of wanting to trade everyone after a year.

 

[206Fan]

Don't burn me at the stake just yet but I'll take losing the game tonight if it means that we get THIS Ben McLemore from now on. He was efficient, unafraid, and confident. If this Ben McLemore shows up every night (whether he scores 20+ or not), we will be the 6th seed, not just a playoff team.

This is one of those games where the team never thought they'd be able to win.. attitude seemed like "Let's give Ben the ball, we're down 20, so why the hell not?" His teammates were actively looking for him. Maybe this is the push he needs in order to build confidence.

I feel like I'm kidding myself after every good Ben game. I think he's finally turning the corner, only to regress again.

I think Ben has a hard time grasping Karl's offense. He's such a hard worker, but he doesn't have a great feel for the game. He doesn't have the offensive IQ of Belinelli nor Collison. I think this is probably the main reason why he's been in Karls' doghouse a lot.
It also doesn't help that his teammates have always silently ignored him whenever he's on the floor. There's been a lot of times this season where he's wide open for a 3 clapping his hands, but his teammates defer to someone else. I've also realized a bunch of times in transition where he has a good open look for a 3, or he's up the field, and his teammates decide to take it themselves, or pass it to the other transition player.

He started off 1-4. Usually, that means his night is done under Karl. Struggling to hit his early shots while playing OK defense.

I've said this in the Ben thread. Ben isn't a player who you give 8 random shots to in a game and expect him to make 1/2 of them while not involving him much at all in the overall offense. He's not on the Kyle Korver level yet.

I think Karl would be more lenient on Ben if this wasn't a playoff or bust year. Seems like Vlade should be working his telephone to solve our SG problems. Huge fan of Ben, but I don't think he's going to be able to reach his potential here, and Belinelli sucks.

 

[Livinthedream]

Don't burn me at the stake just yet but I'll take losing the game tonight if it means that we get THIS Ben McLemore from now on. He was efficient, unafraid, and confident. If this Ben McLemore shows up every night (whether he scores 20+ or not), we will be the 6th seed, not just a playoff team.

He got minutes and probably didn't have the threat of being yanked out of the game if he misses a shot or defensive assignment hanging over his head.

 

[Bricklayer]

He got minutes and probably didn't have the threat of being yanked out of the game if he misses a shot or defensive assignment hanging over his head.

Alternately, he didn't play like crap, and hence earned those minutes and the confidence of teammates.

 

[hrdboild]

Just to illustrate how few shots Ben is taking this season, his 3 pt shooting % just jumped up from 36% to 37% on the season after one game. DeMarcus Cousins has shot more threes this season than Ben has and he's making 34% of them -- which is very impressive for a center who only shot 69 threes in the previous 5 seasons combined, but also suggests that our offensive game plan could use some tweaking.

Here's the overall distribution on three point attempts and what percentage each player has made:

Belinelli (65/209) 31%
Casspi (80/179) 45%
Cousins (44/130) 34%
Gay (41/125) 33%
Collison (44/119) 37%
McLemore (42/113) 37%
Rondo (31/93) 33%
Anderson (10/31) 32%
Curry (12/29) 41%
Acy (5/10) 50%
Butler (1/8) 12%

What needs to happen here to balance out our three point shooting is Marco needs to catch fire like crazy or start steadily moving down this list and Collison and McLemore need to leapfrog Cousins and Gay. Belinelli is just shooting too much in general (10 for 40 from the field, 2 for 18 from three in last 5 games). I'd like to see Rondo look for Ben and Darren a little more for spot-up threes and DeMarcus and Rudy a little bit less.

If Gay comes back and stays healthy and a big chunk of Marco's minutes go to Omri and Ben, we've got a pretty solid 7 man rotation: Rondo, McLemore, Gay, Cauley-Stein, Cousins, Collison, Casspi. Those are the 7 players who should be getting the majority of the minutes and shots right now. Curry and Acy have both made cases for increased minutes as well as deeper reserves. I've been a little disappointed with Koufos so far this season, but he's passable as size off the bench. I'm not seeing enough out of Anderson or Belinelli though to justify the amount of minutes they're currently playing.

 

[Livinthedream]

Alternately, he didn't play like poopoo, and hence earned those minutes and the confidence of teammates.

No, not alternatively. Coincidently.

 

[John Galt]

I just pretty much stayed off twitter and the boards for this one because I wanted to smash a vase.

But I was thinking... based on where we've been this season it has got to pretty much be "playoffs or you're fired" for Karl. So at least there is that. No way they bring him back if the team does not get those two home playoff games for the owners.

I'm happy either way. Make the playoffs - shove it in the detractors faces - and bring back Karl and his staff... or... whiff and fire the whole soft sorry lot of coaches in the off-season (for Thibs, Brooks, Calipari, whoever). Either way - I think this coaching staff is a dung pile but I'd love to win in spite of it.

 

[biltalent]

Shoutout to Chad Iske for somehow making our defensive and offensive game plan even worse than before.

 

[Kingston Jamaica]

That was the strangest game I've seen so far this season. It was like they had decided to lose from the very beginning. The effort level was non-existing. Then, like they forgot for a while that they are not supposed to win, they suddenly came back close - just to give it up immediately. I hope I wont be seeing this display any time soon or even thereafter.

 

[Siranthony]

Ok, let's long story short this:

We Didn't Come Out to Play.

There, about sums this up. This team is a mystery. They never do the right thing, are unbearably sloppy with their mental preparation I guess. I have no idea what their pregame rituals, game day practices or whatever look like, but whatever they are, they probably need to be changed. Bang-bang-bang, we drop three straight against easy opponents, although Portland was going to be tough after we quit defending the Hornets and went to double OT.

Ben played one of his best this season. Early on he was joining everybody else in just bending over and picking up the soap on defense for a half strength Pels team, but he kept scoring and kept scoring, and became the third player to have a productive game. Boogie was not on and helped create the early problem by not being ready or focused early. But he wanted to win, got upset, forced himself into an effort, found ways to contribute protecting the rim and passing, and in the end if you can't win with your center going for 26-10-6ast and 5 blocks saving hoops as your guards got blown by, you have an issue.

Meanwhile Willie had his kryptonite game. I have been mentioning in grades threads that Willie has a hole on defense -- he doesn't seem to get how to keep contact with and challenge 3pt shooters. And then along comes Ryan Anderson, and Willie was so bad he got benched over it. Omri fired off a couple of early shots, then entirely went away, and played poor defense. Collison remains asleep and getting his butt handed to him by every other backup PG in the league, and Belinelli was every bit as bad as recent legend has made him out to be. We lost Bels' 20 minutes by 24 points. We won his 28 minutes off the floor by 15.

Embarrassing effort that makes no sense, just as this team never does. This team would fart at your black tie dinner party, and spout 19th century French poetry in a mosh pit. They respond to everything completely inappropriately. Its difficult to understand how that malaise can be so teamwide universal.


Boxscore

Stats: 29min 8pts (3-9, 2-5, 0-0) 6reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Summary: scored some early hoops and raised hopes of impact, but then disappeared, bad defensively throughout.
Casspi ( ) --

Stats: 15min 6pts (1-2, 0-0, 4-4) 1reb 1ast 0stl 1blk 0TO
Summary: for the first time since returning, a big part of a loss. Had no clue how to guard Anderson, burned badly.
Cauley Stein ( ) --

Stats: 41min 26pts (11-24, 0-1, 4-6) 10reb 6ast 1stl 5blk 6TO
Summary:not dialed in and too casual on both ends early, eventually battled into big numbers, but not enough to carry
Cousins ( ) --

Stats: 31min 26pts (9-17, 5-10, 3-4) 4reb 2ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Summary: got burned on defense early, but aggressive on offense and had one of his nights of the season
McLemore ( ) --

Stats: 38min 17pts (7-10, 1-2, 2-4) 6reb 15ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Summary: huge statline again as one of our few offensive weapons, but defensive sucked, and not huge impact
Rondo ( ) --


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I have to agree. What is going on with this team? Are they on vacation this week? What is it with the mental weakness of this team? Sometimes they just don't seem to think that they have to care. What, did Cousins make the all star team or something? what happened? I could have predicted this would happen though. It's what has happened all year. But no one on the team seems to be able to work these things out. An all out fail by the entire organization IMO!

 

[ESP47]

The slightest bit of adversity is basically a knock out punch for this team.

This team is full of mentally weak front runners.

 

[HndsmCelt]

The only constant with the team is that there is no consistency. This lose is just so frustrating! I have reservations about the the coaching but we just cant fire another coach, and we need the team to gel so I fear that trading any of our rotation guys before they have that chance to truly connect my shake the foundation for the rest. Each of our rotation players has shown signs of "getting it" but short of DMC and maybe Omri none of them has been dependable night after night. I keep waiting for the team to come together and the 5 game streak really looked like it might have finally clicked for the guys... then this, I just want to scream.

 

[SacKings384]

Unfortunately Marco isn't panning out so far. His defense is HORRIFIC. Like Stauskas style defense. His defense was not this bad with the Spurs. But overall we need Marco to be a spot-up shooter. He keeps putting the ball on the ground and taking step-backs. I wish Karl would tell him if it's not a catch and shoot or a layup then DON'T SHOOT.

Koufos looks just as lost out there as well.

 

[jcassio]

When you have a record like ours, and a team full of underachievers, it's just stupid to give players minutes when they're playing poorly. Example: Bels.
Yes, you have to give a player playing time to give them a chance to be productive. But it's a balancing act. Rick Adelman used to get criticized by Kings fans all the time because if you weren't one of his rotation guys, you only got to play in practice (or in the last 2 min of a blowout). But those were winning teams and the rotation players were not underachievers. But we've had other coaches who saw their roster as a buffet and couldn't decide who to play and when to play them. That was equally stupid.
What we need is some sensible balance in which underachieving players get fewer minutes, and other players get increased opportunities to help the team. Is that such a difficult concept?

 

[IfAt1st]

Maybe I'm just not creative enough, but I just don't see any way forward for this helpless team and franchise.

They have sucked for so long, and made such spectacular mistakes, they have painted themselves into a corner.
Basically, if this team with this personnel and coaching staff (God help us) can't make the playoffs, there really aren't many alternatives going forward.

Oh, and how many games straight is it that I have stated BENCH MARCO.
Play Ben more.

Seriously - I can't comprehend how bad Marco would have to play to get benched.
He's 12 for 50 the past 6 games, and his defense has been such an abomination the entire team becomes destabilized as a result. You can see it, and call it out, as soon as he is subbed in.

 

[thingfish]

This team would fart at your black tie dinner party, and spout 19th century French poetry in a mosh pit.

Thanks Brick. I spit my coffee out and lol'd this morning.

 

[pshn80]

Ugly. Disheartening. Unbelievable. But take heart, there may be a spark or two before season's end. Please.

 

[Bricklayer]

The slightest bit of adversity is basically a knock out punch for this team.

This team is full of mentally weak front runners.

Quite the opposite actually.

This team thrives on adversity. It responds to it. And it creates it in droves.

What it can't handle is prosperity. We actually are establishing some consistency in a bizarre way. Every single time we are handed a gift, an easy game, whatever, we don't show up. We have an inexcusable mental sloppiness there. A lack of killer instinct, or perhaps in some bizarre way an arrogance? not sure. But its as far from adversity phobia as you can get. We lose the easy ones, win the hard ones. When the season is over and we miss the playoffs there will be absolutely nobody and nothing to blame but ourselves. We're at least half a dozen games back in the standings now from where we should be with simple mental attention to detail.

 

[Sac.Kings]

Games like these make me wonder how we ever won five in a row. Seems like a distant memory already. Sheesh.