Maybe there is a Curse of Jimmer? (back in the early 2000s there was a Curse of Chucky Brown that we unfortunately joined -- if you traded or released the guy, disaster inevitably ensued. For us it was the injury plagued 02-03 season culminating in Webb's knee).
Ok, well look peeps, this was a debacle. I don't understand what just happened or why. Maybe the coach does, but if he does how can he not be fixing it? Maybe the Jimmer thing isn't as big of a joke as I made it out to be. Too much turnover? Could there be tension with tanking/playing our terrible rooks? I have no idea. But we didn't come to play, almost got completely humiliated early, came back largely on the backs of Cousins and some Reggie Evans hustle to at least make it a more standard beatdown. Then Cousins comes out in the third and embarrasses himself and the franchise one more time just to cap things. Rips the scab off those old wounds. For nothing. I suppose the "good" thing from here on out is that he's going to get suspended for every new technical he adds from this point forward. So he'll shut up or be shut up. And we can lose some more for all those who think this tanking isn't eating our soul.
So anyway, who cares about all that. Ben is terrible. IT was miserable. Cousins embarrassed himself. Jason may have just gotten himself benched. Malone may not have control and now has an interesting sitdown with Boogie coming. But on the other hand, we have Pretty Girls. So life could be worse.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Rainmaker
Capt. Factorial
Henkel
Boxscore
Stats: 34min 25pts (10-16, 2-3, 3-3) 3reb 6ast 2stl 1blk 3TO
Gay ( B ) -- The numbers definitely don't tell whole story in this one. Had a disastrous start as a major contributor to that embarrassing first quarter. And although he turned things around with a solid game from that point forward he did some of his damage as Houston coasted to the finish line. Ice cold to start and not for a lack of good looks as Houston was content to play him straight up all night long. Started things off by missing a little hook down low followed by a mid range jumper that rimmed out. Forced it on a post up as Howard came over and challenged the shot, which resulted in a ugly miss. Kept on shooting as he missed another good look from mid range. Managed to get up five shots in just over seven minutes with nothing to show for it before being pulled. It's hard to even start rationing out blame for the transition defense. Not the worse offender we have out there, but not a asset to what has to be the worse transition defense in the league. Came back in at the start of the second and was a part of the Kings most competitive stretch. Was doing a much better job moving the ball as we slowly started to find some rhythm. With his shot not falling did the smart thing and tried to get himself going around the basket. Not sure he would of done that back in Toronto where he was more content to stick to the perimeter regardless of the situation. Managed to get in low and draw a goaltend from Howard followed by a nice post up on Harden. Did get stripped by Harden on his next post up attempt but redeemed himself as Isaiah fond him cutting to the basket. Back on track after the rough start he decided to wave Isaiah off and take Harden on for the final possession of the half. Drove right down the lane and finished with the pretty little finger roll as he picked up the foul. Went 4 for 4 in the second with all his shots coming within 10 feet of the basket. The third quarter quickly devolved into garbage time as Cousins melted down and the offense became stagnant again. Didn't do anything of note during this period. Became involved again as the quarter dragged on, but it was full out garbage time at this point. Still he went 9 for 10 after starting out 0 for 5 while taking a well though out approach to getting his offense back on track. --Henkel
Michelle Monaghan -- that whole quiet girl next door thing she has going for her turns out to be more than an act. She's a small town heartland girl who grew up in an Iowa town of 700 people, was studying journalism at a small college, but ran out of money and caught a job as a fashion model. The rest just grew from there.
Stats: 5min 3pts (1-2, 0-0, 1-2) 0reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Thompson ( INC ) -- Thompson started the game, and only a few possessions in, hustled his butt down the floor, beating both Terrence Jones and Dwight Howard for an easy dunk. While Howard got one basket back on a DMC goaltending when going up over JT, Howard didn't actually get an opportunity to get off against JT. Why not? Thompson collected his second technical foul only five minutes into the game, and that was it. Hold on, what's that? It was his second *personal* foul? *Personal* foul? So why didn't he get back in the game? The answer is "I have no idea". Sure, Evans was playing well but there are two post slots in most lineups and it's not like Aaron Gray was anchoring things out there. I can't grade a guy on five minutes, but it wasn't like he didn't belong on the floor out there. --Capt.
Alona Tal -- Israeli actress.
Stats: 20min 16pts (6-13, 0-0, 4-5) 6reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Cousins ( F ) -- I'm sure most have one thing and one thing only on their mind right now regarding Boogie, but as a grader it's my job to go over how he actually played/produced from the jump. I don't blame anyone for skimming through this part. Started this one off immediately getting a reverse layup to drop as he was fouled for the 3pt play. Followed that with a bad forced jumper against Dwight. Then had a monster dunk coming down the lane, followed by fouling Harden while trying to receive a pass from Isaiah, picking up his 2nd foul early on. It was a mixture of good and bad. Returned in the 2nd and had by far his best stretch of the evening, going 4-4 from the field leading into halftime. Included in those four FG's were two power dunks, one after attacking off the dribble from the wing and throwing it down with two hands, the other off a great feed from Rudy. We were still getting blown off the floor but at last heading into half we could point to one positive. Boogie had his inside game going and Houston could not stop him. Then it all went downhill from there faster than a slalom medalist in Sochi. This is basically how it went. Came out and missed a little flip shot to open the 3rd. Then while rotating to cover Dwight on a lob attempt, stuck his arm out, pushed Dwight in the mid-section and got called for the foul, his 4th. Argued, got T'd up. Rudy tried to calm him as they walked to mid-court, mouthed off some more. Malone kept him in. Next possession was iso'd on the wing, drove and missed everything on a layup attempt where there was contact. Following possession, posted, turned into the lane and missed a layup. Next trip back on defense, fouled Jones for his 5th foul(9 min mark of 3rd, Malone still has him in). Stares down ref as ball is brought up-court. Attacks paint, misses another layup. Then we went to a timeout and he completely blew his top. Malone went and argued with the ref on his behalf, he decided to come off the bench and give the ref a piece of his mind, or you could say more of his mind, got his second tech, exploded some more at the ref and had to be restrained by coaches/players. Just not good. Not good at all. Whether the refs missed some calls or not and whether he was frustrated or not, he needs to keep his composure and needs to stay on the floor. After all, he calls this his team. Can't let your teammates down in that fashion and his teammates will be let down again as his next tech on the season will result in a suspension the following game. DeMarcus has made considerable strides this year with his maturity but this was a huge step back and he'll have to deal with both the local and national response to it. No one to blame but himself. --Rain
Irina Shayk -- Russian supermodels always perk up the list.
Stats: 38min 15pts (4-16, 1-7, 6-6) 1reb 0ast 4stl 0blk 0TO
McLemore ( F ) -- With the Thornton trade and Jimmer soon to be released, Ben got a career high in minutes played tonight. He was matched up against Harden, and to tell you the truth, I graded him against the Rockets in one of the earlier games and he actually did a decent defensive job in that game. (Better than I was expecting) This game was a whole other animal. Harden obliterated him. Obliterated him to the tune of 22 points in the 1st quarter. Now not all of those points were against Ben as Harden was abusing everyone, but enough of them were against Ben to make no difference. Now if a guy is going off against you then the best thing you can do is to make him work on the defensive end, and Harden is known to let players score the other way. So Ben, knowing that, decided to go to work. And he coolly took 12 shots in the first 3 and a half quarters to bring pressure against Harden, and you could tell that those shots were worrying Harden a bit. And by worry I mean that Harden might have felt as if he could lose an eye as shots clanked hard off the rim and backboard to the tune of one made shot in 12 attempts. One. Made. Shot. On. Twelve. Attempts. This while Harden is sitting on 40 points on 17 shots. Did I mention that Ben got obliterated? Now you might look at those nifty 4 steals of his and think that at least he was being disrupted, but truth be told only 1 steal was a good steal where he anticipated a pass and stole it. The other three were more of a bad dribble by a rocket resulting in a loose ball that fell right into Ben’s lap. So the steals are deceptive, so you figure, how about the rebounding. He’s shown to be a decent rebounder at the guard spot. 1 rebound…1 rebound in 38 minutes.
Ok…well how about the assists. He can make a play every once in a while. I mean Harden had 8 assists in this one so maybe….Nope. Ben had 0 assists and only one assist opportunity in the entire game. So now that I’ve beaten down Ben, there are two positives and maybe one neutral take-away. The first is that he was much more aggressive in attacking the rim, which is what Malone has been calling for. He got to the FT line 6 times and made all 6 of them.
The second is that he didn’t have any turn-overs. I mean all his missed shots were essentially turn-overs, and he did have some bad ball-handling moments, but none of those bad ball-handling moments resulted in actual turn-overs, so that’s a positive, or maybe not a positive, but at least not too much of a negative... The neutral item is that I thought Malone was going to take him out of the game with 6 minutes left, when both Outlaw and Ray came into the game to close things out. Instead Malone stuck with him, and in those last 6 minutes, in a 1 minute and 10 second stretch, he made three shots in a row. So his shooting went from 1-12 to 4-15 to maybe salvage some confidence or something. But all in all you couldn’t ask for a bigger disaster from the SG spot against the Rockets.--Uncia
Morena Baccarin -- ah, one of the lovelies from my list in the old Hot Babes draft.
Stats: 34min 12pts (4-14, 2-6, 2-3) 3reb 5ast 3stl 0blk 3TO
Thomas ( D ) -- strange grade here just in that with all the meltdowns and random subs that burst into flame all over the roster, IT, who flat out had a lousy night, actually felt like he was more "solid" in his badness, rather than catastrophic. He was boring bad, not blood pressure rising bad. Basically I'm not sure of his energy level on the night, and then the Rocket's PGs kicked his ass with their defense. He had one very brief "run" if it even qualifies where he sort of heated up, both his threes were on open feet planted setups from Cuz where Cuz called for the ball in particular to draw the double and kick it to IT, and from Evans, who was batting a ball around inside off the offensive glass and finally grabbed it and kicked it to a wide open IT. Maybe his best potential play of the night for us is when we used him as the world's tiniest backscreener on Dwight Howard, and his screen caused Howard and Cuz to bang knees and briefly sent Dwight to the lockerroom. Otherwise, almost completely ineffective. Had 1 or 2 good dropoff passes to Cuz and Gay, but generally unable to run the offense against the defensive pressure, to get any real penetration, or to shoot straight. Airballed a three, I think he fouled a three point shooter...when he did try to turn it on late, everything rolled off. Just a flat bad and very drab night. No Pizza Guy. Not even the selfish gunner. Just got locked up, couldn't get anything going, and was largely invisible. --Brick
Dylan Penn -- when these pics popped up last month I sag "whoa!". As the name might indicate, Dylan Penn is the daughter of Sean Penn and Robin Wright, and the genes worked out for her in a big way. She's a spitting image of her mom...except with a chest to boot. If they ever make a sequel to The Princess Bride, the casting is obvious.
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