Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Way to try to bleed out the very last of the optimism from the season guys,.
Boxscore
Stats: 36min 20pts (6-22, 4-7, 4-4) 8reb 8ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Gay ( C ) -- this was a curious game for Rudy in some ways, a typical one since he's been left alone out there in others. He displayed erratic shot/pass decisionmaking early, but part of that was caused by a gamelong problem -- Rudy is primarily an inside scorer, and the Pistons have an enormous frontline which heavily disrupted that all game long. So instead what we got was Rudy as Kyle Korver -- he hit 3 threes in the first half, and unfortunately that kept him looking at that shot all game long. Or maybe fortunately given that he was 4-7 from three point land, but only 2-13 from inside the arc. In any case however Rudy gay being chased out to the three point line to bomb away is more concession than conquest. The thing of it was, more than anybody else on the floor rudy seemed to be the guy trying to rally the troops and will them to a win. He's just not good enough to do it on his own, and he had virtually no help After 10 straight Kings misses to begin the 3rd quarter, Rudy finally ended a long scramble sequence with a little flip, one of only two shots he hit inside the arc on the night as despite hard work inside balls just continued to roll out around the rim. Deserves credit for AGAIN leading the Kings in assists, and AGAIN threatening a triple double -- one of the most dispiriting things about our Cuzless collapse is that Rudy has been doing everything you would ask of a 2nd guy in this situation, except he's not quite good enough, and neither are we. Set up several guys for assists down the stretch, bhut his own offense had been pretty much reduced to the occasional ill conceived missed three, and with nobody else scoring either, we were sunk. Gonnas give him the + here for at least trying to lead. If we ever get our real leader back, I think we will have pretty good leadership, even if we obviously haave soem dangerous talent issues. --Brick
Stats: 19min 8pts (4-6, 0-0, 0-0) 7reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Thompson ( B- ) -- maybe just maybe...but no, I don't really beleive what Iw as going to say, so why say it. Suffice it to say JT started this game off very hot. He had 8pts 7reb in the game, and he had 8pts 5reb of those in the first qarter alone as he faced down both Monroe and Drummond. Made faceup jumpers, attacked inside, made a nice dropoff pass to Hollins which Ryan blew, but was still a nice pass. In the early going, we won the interior battle because of him. But that was basically it for his entire evening as the spectre of his early career foul troubles ate him up, and hsi inspired play became distracted and empty for the few remianing minutes he stayed on the floor. Particularly gruesome was the sequence with 2min to go in the half where JT just handed the ball to the Pacers up top, then went back and committed a clear path foul trying to stop the resulting break, said foul being his 3rd of the game. A true F--- sequence. Started the second half trying to ineffectually attack inside, it was scruffy, then he got his 4th foul and was repalced by Derrick Williams. Ouch. Landry's strong/solid play off the bench rendered JT superflorous after that point, althoguh Landry's play perhaps also made the argument that such are our issues as a team that it would not have mattered if JT had kept playing well or not. Anyway, this is hard to grade because for most of his minutes he was very good. But a big minus has to come into play for therafter not finding ways to even be ont eh floor, let alone contribute anything more. --Brick
Stats: 26min 6pts (2-3, 0-0, 2-4) 8reb 1ast 0stl 2blk 1TO
Hollins ( C- ) -- Hollins had the dubious task of checking Drummond and Monroe in this one and not surprisingly he didn’t exceed expectations. Drummond out-ran and out-muscled him to start the game and was killing him with his superior athleticism. On the other end, Hollins was just irrelevant on the offensive end as Drummond just sat in the paint and ignored Hollins whenever he left the post…which gave Drummond the ability to play goalie and rim protector. Hollins first stint ended with no points and a single rebound and he didn’t see the floor again until the start of the 2nd half. Maybe he was just embarrassed with his performance in the 1st, so he came out a bit stronger in the 2nd half. He did a better job keeping up with Drummond in transition and keeping Drummond off the boards and wound up giving us 3 whole rebounds including an offensive rebound and dunk put-back. He then left after 6 minutes and had Malone stayed with his normal rotation that might have been the end of his night. But the best thing to happen to Ryan in this one was the 5th foul that JT picked up early in the 4th quarter which forced Malone to go back to him with 9 minutes left in the game…and he would play out the string. (His grade would probably have been a full grade lower had that been the end of his night) And it was in the 4th quarter that Hollins had his best play and the most impact. Though you shouldn’t read too much into the word ‘impact’ because he was still going up against Drummond and Monroe and he was never going to be in a position to dominate that match-up. In any case, he had more of an impact getting another dunk and a bit later going to the line and making a huge pair of FTs (unlike earlier in the game where he bricked his first two) to keep the game close. He added a block and was crashing the boards trying to keep all the shots that the Kings kept bricking in play. Sadly, there was only so much that he could do. He was outmatched by both Drummond and Monroe all night long, but there wasn’t much hope that he’d be able to keep up with them. So an invisible first half, bit better 3rd, and saved his best for last, not going to get a great grade, but you can’t punish him too much for being who we thought he was. --Uncia
Stats: 31min 14pts* (5-14, 4-8, 0-0) 6reb 1ast 2stl 0blk 0TO
McLemore ( D ) -- * as in asterisk, asterisk, asterisk on that statline above. Because the situation encountered by the Kings all night was not Ben McLemore 14pt scorer on an inefficeint night. It was Ben McLemore, 5pt scorer to go alongside Darren Collison 3pt scorer. In other words, Rudy was left out there all alone as his backcourt completely disappeared. It had actually started out fairly promisingly for Ben, with a corner three off a drive and kick, and, if you ignored the likely travel to begin it, a nice quick strong drive and pullup jumper. But that was literally it. Poof. Goodbye. He never hit another shot, started the third with 4 straight misses, and you don't have to look any further than our backcourt real shooting numbers (Ben was 2-11, Collison 1-10) to explain our offense death this game. Ben actually made a few good little plays despite the offensive disaster, had a real nice defensive play getting back to stop big ole Greg Monroe on the break, had a nice drive and dish of his own to a wide open Collison in the corner...but Ben's mistake was passing it to a fellow guard on this night. You wanted somebody to hit a shot, had to be a big. Anyway, there were some moments of all around game that were better than the offensive offense. So what is this nonsense I am spouting about Ben only hitting 2 shots and scoring 5 pts? After all the boxscore clearly says he had 14 on 5 shots, and a nice 4-8 from 3pt land. Well...the boxscore is lies. All lies. What happened was Ben made a lot of fantasy owners happy wiht one of the all time great statpadding efforts, suddenly after being dead offensively all night, including BTW maybe finishing us with an attempt to dribble at the 1:15 mark that resulted in a TO, in the last 30 secopnds all fo a sudden Ben decided hey, game is over anyway, let's chuck some threes! And he hit 1, 2, and the true statpadder 3rd one right at the buzzer. Which in other words means he scored 5pts for us. The little practice shots at the end of the game were worthless to us and played no factor in the outcome. --Brick
Stats: 32min 3pts (1-10, 1-6, 0-0) 3reb 7ast 1stl 2blk 2TO
Collison ( D- ) -- On a night when the Kings desperately needed some outside scoring to counter the Pistons' inside presence, Collison took the night off. Collison's sole field goal came early in the first quarter on a wide open three, and was followed by nine consecutive misses. He had a few good plays in transition, including a very nice pass to a streaking Derrick Williams for a dunk to bring the game back to even before the half. His 7 assists might lead you to believe he was doing a serviceable job leading the team, but most of those came early when the Kings were still making outside jumpers. After the half, he was just taking up space on the floor.--Hadlowe
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