We're rolling now.
Somehow we lost this one despite dominating every aspect of play except offense, defense, rebounding, assist/turnover ratio, and hustle. We was robbed I tell ya. Have fun tommorrow Pete.
Boxscore
Stats: 36min 12pts (5-16, 0-3, 3-3) 5reb 3ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Gay ( D ) -- played 36 minutes on the night, and maybe all of 6 of them where it felt like he might get something going. Started off the game missing shots after getting in the lane, and the misses rarely let up afterwards. Had one nice pass to Ben inside, and it wasn't until the final seconds of the half when Cuz beat a double with a crosscourt pass that Rudy finally drove right, pulled up, and got his second bucket of the entire half. Started off the 3rd missing and missing, but finally had his one "burst", if you want to call it that, of semi-glory in the latter stages of the third after Cuz went to get a rest. Got a pindown and layup, knocked down two midrange jumpers, and for a few moments it was like we had a second weapon out there again. That guy never returned after resting for the early minutes of the 4th quarter though. When he came back in he forced a bad shot, then missed a three, and was not able to get it over Drummond with 2:30 to go and us dying. Just a real struggle, and while thankfully the Pistons have no SF to cause real problems back the other way, Rudy wasn't doing the other things very well either. Just every once in a while he'd pull up for a very professional shot, which he would often miss. So drab it wasn't even an F. D is for drab. --Brick
Stats: 23min 9pts (4-6, 0-0, 1-1) 7reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
Thompson ( B- ) -- with JT back this was a matchup of two of the biggest frontlines in the game and JT got off to a hot start to this one using his relative mobility as actually the smallest of the 4 starting bigs on the floor. But in an old storyline with Jason we forgot about him, and he forgot about his own success, and soon he was back to invisble and finally just out of the game. Some of his early successes actually came on shaky defensive plays where he let Monroe beat him to the rim, and then came over his back to smother him on tow separate occasions. Was very active, by Jason standards, on the other end. Blew an early chippee, but a minute later got a dunk +1, and after Cuz left hit a nice turnaround on the baseline, and ran the floor and took a Stauskas pass for another dunk. Finished the first quarter with 7pts 5reb, which is only a problem when you realize he finished the game with 9pts 7reb. Forgotten about for much of the 2nd quarter, and by the time he came back out to start the 3rd, Monroe was ready to turn the battle the other way. Kinda pulled the chair from under Monroe early in the 3rd, but the refs seemed to miss the resulting travel and called JT for the foul instead. Would be a sign of things to come, as aside from one long facing jumper Jason was blanked after half, and Monroe surged up toward his normal numbers (the two Detroit bigs combined for 29pts 25reb. JT left for the final time with 3min to go in the 3rd and the Pistons with a 6pt advantage. From that point on we would play smallball, or smallish ball with Williams and Landry next to Cuz. And from that point on we got outscored 40-27 in the final 15 minutes of the game. Good strategy.--Brick
Stats: 40min 18pts (5-17, 0-1, 8-11) 15reb 4ast 2stl 1blk 6TO
Cousins ( C- ) -- looked better in this one, and don't let the whiners convince you otherwise. That said, still did not look great, and of course the double whammy tonight was 1) he was going against Drummond/Monroe, the beefiest pair of frontcourt guys in the league (and BTW the weight he lost from the meningitis bout was never more obvious, those guys are flat thicker than him right now), and 2) only one of the two counters he uses to escape from big beefy interior guys was working. What buckets he did get on the night came from squaring guys up and using that unprecedented big man handle to blow by them to the hoop, but his jumper was completely off. Some of that was him still looking unsettled, there were rushed looking shots for no reason. But even when his feet were set he missed everything beyond 5 feet of the hoop, and they were maybe half his shots. When he did get inside it was a struggle to get it up over/through not only Drummond, but collapsing defenses and double teams. That got him to the line, in the early going in particular, but he was basically just throwing himself into packs of Pistons defenders to get there. What looked better was spurts and splashes of competitiveness and energetic rebounding and defense on Drummond. It wasn't always there, but on 2 or 3 occasions lasting several minutes apiece he would get very active and feisty, smother guys and aggressively get after the boards. He came out in the third, made a nice tip of an offensive board out to...forget who, but anyway, we scored on the play. Went back the other way and got a block, was very active...but just could not sustain. And at a certain point there may just be garden variety fatigue playing in. Was sick all last month, is down in weight, last game of a 4 game road trip, and played 40 minutes against the most physical frontline in the game. Continued piling up the boards, but I think only had 2 points in the 4th and with the Pistons swarming him inside began to settle for jumpers that just were not going to fall. Turnover up top at a critical time with 5min to go when he tried to pass it to Ben I think it was, it got deflected, he dove to try to save it, and Drummond scooped it up and raced the other way for a +1. Was hardly the turning point play it was made out to be. We were behind the whole game and poised to lose from the beginning. But everytime we cut it to 6points or so, the Pistons would score back, and that one hurt. Anyway, we got something for a while here. He led us in points, led the game in rebounds, had fits and spurts of energy. But the jumper was flat broke, and no matter the team's current situation against the Pistons a big guy isn't going to be able to do it alone against that frontline. You need to beat them at their weak PG/SG/SF positions, and we did not. --Brick
Stats: 40min 11pts (2-11, 0-6, 7-7) 0reb 4ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( D ) -- this was just flat poor. He played 40 minutes tonight, and 36min of them were completely empty. The largest problme of course was that he could not throw the ball int he ocean. He was 0-6 from three point land. 2-11 overall, and his first hit did not come until the final 4 minutes of the first half when Rudy found him underneath the hoop for a layup. That started him on a little spurt of his only effective play on the night. Well, effective offensive play. He got fouled two more times, once on a three, and hit FTs to give him 7 points int he final minutes. But he also did not cover Caldwell Pope in the corner for a wide open three, and then a few seconds later went the other way, got too aggressive, and fouled the 3pt shooter. So I'm not even sure during his lone little hot streak he won the minutes. Had a lot of fumbly ballhandling misadventures on the night, even when they didn't go into his own turnover column. Dropped it twice on one possession, leading to a forced shot by Collison against the clock. Fumbled a Cuz pass for a To that was credited to Cuz. Couldn't get into a shooting rhythm several times because he kept leaving the ball behind. Looked closer to last year's Ben handle than the new and improved version this year. Down the stretcfh got a few more FTs, but also got lit up by Meeks as well. In 40 minutes managed to add 0 rebounds as well. Who knows, Cuz looked tired, maybe Ben was too. Playing a lot of long minutes, and Nik not giving us many reasons to shorten them. Anyway, he scored some points at the line.--Brick
Stats: 28min 17pts (5-7, 2-2, 5-7) 6reb 3ast 3stl 0blk 3TO
Collison ( D+ ) -- I come home from work (Yes, on a weekend. I know, right?), have a nice early dinner out with the family, and then get subjected to this Kings performance. On the plus side, Collison was very efficient scoring the basketball. 17 points on 7 shots is pretty darn amazing. He got the rim whenever he wanted, and played his usual Collison game of being deferential on offense until he had an open look. The trouble was on defense. I can't really say that Brandon Jennings lit him up, because that would imply that Collison was even in Jennings' vicinity on any of these shots. Monroe and Drummond were just picking Collison to death all game long, and Collison kept going under the pick and leaving Jennings wide, wide open for shots. Now, Jennings will have nights where he hits everything, whether contested or not, but this was just him getting practice gym jumpers and knocking them down. So a performance that would have gotten Collison a B+ or A with some semblance of defense gets a D+ instead.--Hadlowe
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