Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Sigh. Ok, lost my longer writeup so let's make this brief.
Everybody sucked.
BUT, our one hope in this one, our game plane just HAD to be feed it inside and beat them up with Cuz, and it was exactly the gameplan we could not execute after Cuz did not look focused early, picked up 2 bad fouls, then got a bit screwed on a third, played only 8 first half minutes, then had to play with his hands in his pocket in the third quarter. By the time he got around to dominating the game was almost over. Meanwhile just as feared Rudy has a Toronto flashback and unfortunately just helped heap further dirt on his rep by trying to do too much, and most everybody else joined him in struggling.
Unfortunate for Rudy -- instead of getting to rewrite the Rudy as Toronto loser script, he added another chapter.
Theme will be...
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Bajaden
Capt. Factorial
Boxscore
Stats: 33min 15pts (5-13, 2-3, 3-4) 5reb 1ast 3stl 0blk 2TO
Gay ( C- ) -- Well I figured it out. Gay's bad shooting percentages while with Toronto had nothing to do with him. It had to do with the arena. And apparently whatever decease he caught there is catching, because most of his teammates came down with it. It wasn't as though Gay played badly. It wasn't for lack of trying. It was just one of those nights where the shot wasn't going in. Rudy only had one assist, but he should have had more. As I said, most of his teammates suffered from the same decease. He made some very nice passes. He started the game by driving to the top of the key, drawing the defense and then passing to a wide open McLemore in the corner, who of course missed. He did make his first shot of the night, a little flip shot in the lane. I thought at the time, well, he's off to a good start. After missing a pull up from 15 feet, on the next possession he weaved his way through traffic and laid it in. He liked the result so much, that the next time he repeated the play, this time getting fouled, and going one for two from the line. At this point, Gay started being doubled everytime he touched the ball. Although Gay went 5 for 13 on the night, one of those shots was the last shot of the first half from just across half court, and it almost went in. Defensively, it was a typical night for Gay. Not great, but no terrible either. In the first half he mostly guarded Ross. He didn't get off to the best start when he got caught in a screen and allowed Ross to hit a three. After that, he did a reasonable job on Ross. In the second half, he spent most of the time guarding DeRozen, and except for a couple of mistakes, did a decent job. Twice he got caught cheating off DeRozen and both times it cost the Kings a basket. He did have three steals on the night and 5 boards. The results wern't what we've come to expect from Gay, but everyone can have a bad night now and then. I do think that returning to Toronto for the first time since the trade, might have had something to do with it. --Baja
Stats: 26min 2pts (1-3, 0-0, 0-0) 6reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Thompson ( D+ ) -- this is going to be a short grade because there is very little to talk about. I'm pretty sure Jason Thompson was on the court, or at least a Jason Thompson shaped simalcrum, but damn if it wasn't easy to ignore. Lack of productivity from the very beginning of the game, and unlike in recent games it could hardly be blamed on some great defensive focus. Was making body contact with guys, but winning basically none of those battles. Not on the boards not stopping his man and not scoring. Other than that it was spectacular. After the invisible first quarter I think we were all set to just "rest" him the rest of the way until half ("rest" implying he could have somehow been tired despite doing nothing), but Cuz's quick 3rd foul brought him back out on the court to do more nothing. he did finally get his only hoop of the game just before half. otherwise all attempts to use him/feed him inside resulted in nothing as he was stonewalled by both Valanciunas and Johnson. Began the third with a travel as again he was worthless on offense, but grabbed a few more boards at least, and with Cuz on the court more we quit bothering to go inside to Jason. How do you grade nothingness? In a fairly bad loss I'm going to call it a D+. --Brick
Stats: 27min 24pts (8-12, 0-0, 8-10) 7reb 2ast 1stl 0blk 5TO
Cousins ( C+ ) -- sigh. I watched this game with someone, and I told them before it got underway that our one advantage, the one thing we absolutely needed to do to win, was to go inside to Cousins and let him beat up their frontline. And then the whole team comes out looking ragged and out of rhythm, Cousins does not look focused, commits one dumb foul blatantly pushing Valanciunas right in the chest on an open shot right in front of the ref, commits a second dumb foul with a casual swipe while his real focus was in arguing with a ref that he had been fouled on the other end, and just like that our advantage is gone to the bench, having barely showed up. Notably despite the quick exit he had already been showing he was the guy for us, but somehow I knew that, I would think the coaches did, the Raptors probably did, but Cuz did not. Or did not act like it. So much for the emerging professionalism I mentioned in the Bucks game. Anyway, returned to the game briefly in the second quarter, and got a little screwed over on a 3rd foul call by the refs, and right back out, and with some of his bad Cuz ref interaction starting to boil. Played only 8 first half minutes, 6pts 1 whole rebound. After half in the third a few things were notable: 1) once again Cuz was basically THE one hope/weapon, and he started doing nifty things inside to the Raps. But 2) he was so exaggerated in avoiding any hint of picking up a 4th foul that he was throwing his hands back on all contact, consciously avoiding scrums, stopping drives whenever he saw opponents in front of him and delicately dancing around them etc. He was the best/only thing we had and to whatever degree we were holding in it, it was his presence. But he had little presence. He wasn't even willing to bang on the glass for fear of another foul, and so the effect was muted and the Raps got things they would not normally have because of it. Then to close his 3rd quarter minutes the Raps did a saavy, suddenly inserted Chuck Hayes into the game, and on back to back offensive possessions Hayes did the only thing that has kept him employed in the NBA and slapped the ball away form Cuz for two turnovers, and two scores the other way for the Raptors. And that kind of ended that Cuz run, we brought him to the bench for some rest, and by the time he got back in the game we were down 23. In fact I was not sure we even were going to return him/everybody, and if it had ended at that time Cuz's grade would have been D-ish. But we brought him back and boom, all of a sudden there he was. 40 minutes too late unfortunately. But what should have been happening from the beginning suddenly happened. We got inspired Cuz, still only carrying 3 fouls we got physical Cuz, and the *pop* to the lineup was immediate and unmistakeable. Over the course of the next 4-5 minutes we would cut that 23 point lead in half almost entirely on the back of Big Cuz as he beat them up inside, and in the final 2 minutes, longshot though it was, we actually almost made things slightly interesting. But we had just come back from too far, it had come too late. To add insult to injury it was a little Valanciunas run that stopped our momentum in the final minutes. Some of that on Cuz, some of that on stuff he too often gets blamed for, like having to constantly step up to stop our guards' men because our guards don't stay in front of them, then having his guy left open at the rim because of it. And so in the end Cuz DID turn out to be our best/only hope in this one. And the lack of Cuz, his focus, his availability, for 3/4 of the game was exactly why we could not make a game of this. You can't blame him for his teammates teamwide incompetence -- even if he had come to play it would have been Cuz vs the Raps pretty much all by himself. But I would have paid to see that game. Instead our only hope did not take responsibility for that hope until very late, and just as it has been all year long, without Cuz the rest of our rabble collapsed like a cheap suit. Calling this a C. Dominated when he gave himself a chance, excellent numbers put up despite everything. But he screwed himself and us by not being ready to go early, and that's still the day to day franchise guy responsibility he needs to work on. --Brick
Stats: 30min 14pts (4-11, 2-7, 4-4) 2reb 1ast 1stl 1blk 3TO
McLemore ( D ) -- At some point I might have to start grading Ben as if he’s on a 10 day contract trying to find some team which will let him make the roster rather than a player who was projected on draft day as the prospect with the best potential to be a multiple time all-star due to his shooting and athleticism. But I’m still grading him as if he is still a player who can make a positive contribution on the court, and therefore, once again, a low grade. It’s funny because at the start of the 2nd half Grant and Jerry did a highlight on Ben talking about his good 1st half and I’m thinking…what are they watching. They must have been thrilled that he wasn’t downright awful and mistook that for really good play. But Ben showed them by having an absolutely dreadful 2nd half of basketball accomplishing pretty much nothing while being out there. Maybe it’s a halftime highlight jinx…is there such a thing? So Ben’s ‘Good’ half consisted of 11 points on 3-8 (37.5%) shooting, and making only 1 of his 5 3pt attempts. (20% 3pt shooting). He did get to the line 4 times making all four, except one of his trips to the line was when he barreled into the lane and got what I thought was a lucky break being sent to the line rather than just having a really poor miss. Ben’s ‘Bad’ half consisted of taking and missing 2 shots, having 0 rebounds, and 2 turn-overs in about 14 minutes of play. His only positive play of the 2nd half was a great block on Ross on a fast-break lay-up attempt. Good hustle by Ben there. He also got re-inserted into the line-up with 1:30 left in the game in absolute garbage time and did knock down an open 3, but he was sitting on 1-6 prior to that, so I don’t know if hitting that last one does much for the confidence. On defense, Ben started the game on DeRozan and DeRozan didn’t have a very good shooting night. Some of it was good defense by Ben which DeRozan tried to beat by taking a bad shot, but DeRozan was able to get a lot of good looks or rim drives on Ben, they just didn’t fall. DeRozan did get to the line 10 times to help his point total, but the thing that DeRozan did do was help his team out by dishing the ball. He had 6 assists and only 2 turn-overs, so while his shot wasn’t falling, he was getting into good spots and able to get his teammates open looks. Ben on the other hand only had 1 assist and compounded it with 3 turn-overs, though he did have a couple of nice entry passes to both Reggie and Acy, and they both failed to convert. Ben also guarded Vasquez and did a good job in the 1st half, but in the second half he lost sight of him a couple of times which gave Vasquez some good scoring looks. So another 30 minute game with poor offensive production, and it really hurts to see him come off the screen, get the ball and miss the open shot. He needs to make that shot. He also just doesn’t have the handle necessary to take that ball to the rim on a consistent basis. I think he’s getting better at attacking the rim, but he still needs a long ways to go. On defense, he played well at times, and his main responsibility struggled, but I don’t know how much Ben’s D played a part. We’ll see what the next game holds. --Uncia
Stats: 35min 15pts (5-13, 1-6, 3-4) 2reb 5ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Thomas ( D ) -- Isaiah's offense simply was not on tonight. The ultimate measure of that was the fact that he was 0-5 from three until he finally hit one late in the fourth quarter when things were pretty much decided. He started out the game playing four straight possessions off the ball while we let the offense run through other players (mostly Rudy) to little effect, but even once he started running the team things didn't pick up much. Now, I don't know if IT was secretly slipping the official scorer some poutine during timeouts or whether the exchange rate is vastly different in Canada but I counted two assists for Thomas and the official scorer gave him five. Several of those were probably on plays where I noted he set a teammate up for two steps, a dribble, and two steps to get to the rim (Cuz mostly) but you just aren't usually going to stats for that stateside. To be fair, he did set up six baskets that weren't converted (five jumpers and an easy oop to Cuz that he just muffed) so in Canada that's like 15 blown opportunities. Defensively, IT had a bizarre night. He only allowed 6 points on 12 shots, which would normally get praised by me as a fantastic effort. But it seemed that almost every miss wasn't from his good D, it was because his opponent missed a gimme. Even stranger, on the absolute best defensive play IT had on the night, he completely frustrated every move DeRozan had in his book of tricks until he exasperatedly threw up a nearly blind turnaround jumper. Yeah, that garbage went in. But the time DeRozan drove around IT for an easy look at the basket, he missed the layup. Go figure. But with almost no D and almost no offense, there aren't any mitigating factors to get IT out of the "terrible game" range.--Capt.
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