Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
A nice roadtrip saving closing win that could be one of those important little moments in a season as we return home with several winnable games upcoming. If you come on home, beat the Pelicans and the Lakers, and suddenly you are 5-5 as you face another murderous early stretch of games (@POR, SAN, LAC, TOR) , and trying rapidly to forget what all the fuss was about out on that road trip.
Link to Boxscore
Starters
Featured Grade
Gay ( A- ) -- It was sort of the tale of two halves for Rudy. He started the game by forgetting where DeRozan was, who luckily missed a corner three. To keep things even, Gay then missed his own wide open corner three. He then got caught in a screen and this time DeRozan didn't miss. After missing a little 10 footer, getting his own miss and then a putback, he proceeded to miss his next four shots. He did close out the 2nd quarter by splitting a double and finishing with a vicious dunk. After missing a little floater to start the 3rd, he was off to the races. He made two three's down the stretch when we needed them, and played much tougher defense on DeRozan in the second half. All in all, a nice game by Rudy. --Baja
Cousins ( B ) -- would really like to give him more than a B: clearly tired, was often doubled even before he caught it, but he made smart passes and down the stretch he began to square up and blow by his overmatched opponent, and made big defensive plays and boards too to key the victory. But whether it was the legs or just an off night, he was just missing everything, and so have to keep the grade reasonable.
Koufos ( B+ ) -- did a nice solid job both playing along side Cuz, and providing some rebounding and rim defense behind him, and in place of him, where he ran the floor and slipped screen while rolling in his little flip hooks.
Afflalo ( B ) -- quietly played an important role for us, not only showing up on offense this time, but also having primary responsibility on Demar DeRozan, and harassing him into looking like Demar DeRozan rather than this Kobe wannabe form the opening weeks.
Lawson ( C+ ) -- toughie. I thought was pretty much actively hurting us in the first half as the non-shooting thing is just messing up the whole offense. Some size related defensive issues on switches too. But Joerger kept going back to him, and down the stretch ran the team well enough, + while it wasn't Ty, Lowry didn't do much better
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Bench
Barnes ( B- ) -- after an initial burst of hustle and defense, I was worried Matt was playing himself to a 2nd half benching again with back to back bad pass TOs and an inability to hit shots. But Joerger kept the rotation short, went back to him for big 2nd half minutes at PF, and he responded with very solid under the radar work, one damaging foul of a 3pt shooter aside.
Casspi ( C- ) -- did so little in his first half stint that I am not sure we weren;t down to an 8-man rotation in the second half.
Farmar ( B- ) -- thought his game exceeded his numbers tonight. Hit an important long three, and continued to move well and function smoothly like he'd been running the offense for years (which, if its Joerger's offense from last year, Farmar kinda has).
Temple ( B- ) -- had himself a strong enough first stint that I was annoyed at Joerger's rotations that he took him out. Think virtually all of his numbers were in that stretch. Had a bad shaky moment as we were dogfighting with the Raps, and Temple turned it over up top and compounded it by racing back to foul the man on the break for a 3pt play. But overall impression was he and Barnes adding D and ballahndling for major minutes.
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