Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Hey, remember way back when two or three weeks ago this season was actually fun for the first time in eight years?
Boxscore
Stats: 40min 13pts (4-18, 1-4, 4-4) 8reb 8ast 3stl 0blk 4TO
Gay ( D ) -- okay, the Rudy Gay saga here ended up being much of the saga for the game, and Houston's strategy against him (the McHale can't coach chants seem markedly muted nowadays) largely responsible for not only his numbers, but Ben's and DC's as well. Basically McHale took a look at our roster , said "hey, will you look at that, they are trying to win with no shooters and only one guy who's ever averaged more than 15ppg in a season" andnthey came out and very obviously snd very distinctly set about taking away that one player and making just anybody else beat them on offense. What that looked like was Rudy being heavily trapped almsot every time he touched the ball and a possession by posession questin of whether he was going to respond to that by passing out of the doubles and getting assists to the relatively open Ben, or DC or JT or whoever, or whether he was going to instead force the issue right into the teeth of doubles, or settle for long threes that he at least knew weren't going to be heavily challenged becuase its precisely the shot McHale would love to see him take. And the thign was, on this night, he basically hit almost none fo the far too many attempts that he did force. Wasn't like that was sometimes working. It basically never did. When he finally got a clean little look on a broken open court play, he hit that. When he got a steal up top in the 3rd and went down the other way he finished with a dunk. But those lonely hits were smothered in bad forces, and a little scuffle with Patrick Beverly, whio might be the most unpopular player in the NBA methinks, but the sort of guy who makes you win. The reason this grade is no F is because there is more to a stat line than just FG%, and when Rudy did pass he racked up another remarkable statline as a point forward (he's now averaging 5.8ast per game since Cuz went down), and he used his length to be a factor on both the boards and defense, where he got his hands on a lot of balls. and down the stretch wasn't quite the unmitigated disaster the traditional narrative would say it was. It was a disaster, full of turnovers and forced shots, but there was a point there when it looked like Rudy might actually have made enough plays to win it. After a turnver trying to drive and dish to JT with us up 2, Rudy came down and hit a falling down pullup jumper to put up 2pts with 2:10 to go. He got beat the other way by Ariza for the tie, but then kicked a pass to DWill for a wide open three at the 1:40 mark, I think it was his 7th assist, that put us up 3 and seemed to have us in prime positon to win one again. Alas, if that storm Sacto was having could just have caved in the roof of the old barn this grade would have been at least a degree or two higher. Instead we got a bad bad, asinine really, not gonna pass it, settle for a long 3 at the 40 second mark, missed it, wasting our possesion and leaving it open for Harden to tie the game on a long three the other way with 20 seconds to go. Rudy still had a chance to be the hero onn the final play of regulation, when you know, I wasn't as upset with the shot we got as some. It was simple iso ball, but the shot Rudy got from it was one he can make, he got a little room, drove right, pulled up fairly open for an 18 footer...that's kind of one of his bread nad butters. And he's hit clutch shots before. But he was having a miserable nightk was out of rhythm, had just forced the terrible three, and now missed this one to leave us going to OT. So...not so amusing. In the Ot he did get one nice pass to JT for a bucket on a called play out of atimeout, but when left to his own he continued trying to win it with too much 1 on 1 stuff, and had one fo those epcially bad shooting nights he can have because he just won't stop shooting when its going bad. Not that we have many other options, but still.
--Brick
Stats: 35min13pts (2-4, 0-0, 9-11) 15reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Thompson ( A ) -- JT played a great game. If this JT came out every game for the rest of the season then we’d be in very good shape. The Rockets were missing Howard and Terrance Jones and JT played fantastic post defense against Motiejunas and just feasted on the boards.He played mostly against Montiejunas and obliterated him on the boards 15-3. In addition to the recorded rebounds he continued to keep balls alive or kept possessions for the Kings and was just Big out there for the Kings. Not only was he big, he was clutch. In a remarkable turn of events he went to the free-throw line 11 times and made 9 of them. We haven’t seen that sort of FT shooting in quite a while, and no free-throws were bigger than the 2 he knocked down with just over a minute left in what should have been enough points to put the game away.Oh, did I forget to mention that he was the only starter not to have a turn-over?Yeah, only King with double digit rebounds and only starter with zero turn-overs…while going 9-11 from the FT line, killing his main opposition on the boards and playing stellar man defense…pretty much as good as you can hope for from JT.The only knock that you can even think about when looking at JT’s game was his rim defense against Harden…but you know what, Harden’s monster night does not come at JT’s expense. I’m sure JT could have been a bit better, but I think you’d be asking for a lot more than JT can give you if you had high expectations of JT stopping Harden.So yeah, we should have won this game, and JT should have been hailed as the only starter to not do something to cost us the win.--Uncia
Stats: 18min 5pts (2-2, 0-0, 1-6) 4reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Evans ( C ) -- no sort of factor in the game's outcome and gets a no sort of factor grade. Aside from missed FTs, which of course he will do, but we could have used, there wasn't much to quibble about with Reggie. His lack of minutes in this one was really because he was a victim of our very success at getting the Rockets depleted frontline into major foul trouble, causing McHale to respond by going smallball, and Reggie to lose his minutes to DWill as Malone responded, There was some good rebounding work early, both in bards grabbed and in bodies banged so that other Kings could grab boards. But he never got into one of his dominant boarding rhythms against a Rockets frontline that features two poor man's versions of himself in Black and Dorsey, trying to do the same thing he is doing in filing in for a missing star center. In the early 3rd the Rockets were forcing us to use Reggie as a high poost decisionmaker, which other than one B.S. offensive foul clal on a dribbel handoff attempt wasn;t going as badly as you might think, but its obviously not his preferred role, and kept him away from the offensive glass. In any case, if he was a better FT shooter this would have been fine but unexceptional. The great center batle that TNT no doubt envisiioned when they scheduled this game, between Reggie Evans and tariq Blakc/Joey Dorsey ended up largely a draw. --Brick
Stats: 46min 21pts (9-16, 2-4, 1-3) 2reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
McLemore ( A ) -- Ben had a tough assignment tonight guarding Hardin, and he did a pretty darned good job. Yeah, I know, Hardin had 44 points, but he didn't get all of them against Ben, and Hardin shot 43% overall, and 33% from the three. Make no mistake, Hardin is a tough cover, and Ben made him work for every basket. On the other hand, Ben shot over 50% from the floor overall, and exactly 50% from the three. He played 46 minutes and scored 21 points. He might have scored more if his teammates would have fed him the ball more often. He started the game by missing an 18 footer, but Gay got the rebound, fed the ball right back to Ben who hit a three. After missing a three on a late pass with the clock running down, he came off an Evans screen and hit a 16 footer. He also showed good recognition by passing the ball to JT who had Hardin guarding him on a switch. Ben scored again hitting a 20 footer off the dribble., which he followed by hitting an 18 footer coming off a screen. Malone left him in to start the secoond quarter, but he hardly touched the ball, and got his first rest at 7:23 of the second quarter. He started the second half by getting the ball stolen, and followed that with a terrible pass that had no chance at all of getting to Gay for a turnover. He finally scored in the third quarter on a long pass from Gay on a breakaway. After playing great D on Hardin on the right baseline for a stop, he scored on a spectacular one handed alleyoop from Collison. The rest of the half was more of the same. Why the team decided from the about the 6 minute point of the fourth quarter, and the overtime, to go to Gay over and over again, and ally ignore Ben is beyond me. There are times when you just have to go with the hot hand, and Ben was consistent all night long. Another tough loss. We can't get Cuz back soon enough.--Baja
Stats: 42min 24pts (10-20, 2-4, 2-2) 3reb 7ast 3stl 0blk 6TO
Collison ( B+ ) -- I feel like I need to go and rewtach thsi one because I don't have nearly enough notes on a player as important in this one as Collison. He was the beneficiary of several advantages out there. From the beginning of the game the Rockets decided to take away Gay, which left DC relatively free against single coverage. then to make things a little easier still, when foul trouble to Houston's frontline caused McHale to insert Jason Terry and play smallball, Collison received fruther benefit (and lack of respect) when he started being guarded by Jason Terry, while Ben merited Patrick Beverly. The result fo all the lack fo respect wasn't a dominant game, and oddly he had turnover probelms for one of the few tiems this season. But he was able to consistetly get out on the break, and notched mutiple steals up tiop using his quickness. In the final seconds of the first quarter he raced out ont he break and dropped an assist to Reggie undr the hoop to put us up 10 and looking good. he added a few lighting darts blowing by everybody to the rim (which was fairly undefedned by size with the Rockets bigs all gone). In the 4th with Ben again gone silent, and Rudy forcign far too much, DC was our best player/hope of pulling this off. Had an alley oop to DWill who suddenly showed up again in regular smalball rotation minutes, Added a strong drive down the right side, snd then followed it with a little pullup into that dead space to get our lead back to 6 with 5min to go. But it wasn't enough to hold on. He would add a desperation three in a semi-intersting little run we made right at the end of OT, when Nik and DC hit back to back threes to suddenyl cut the lead to 2 in the final 10 seconds and raise an eyebrow , but that didn't work either. Despite the big numbers here, this felt like a support game to me. He picked his spots and took advantage of what Houston gave him, but the Rockets essential gamble that if they took away Rudy we wouldn't have that goto guy closer turned out to be right. --Brick
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