Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Now is the winter of our discontent...
Bad loss. Completely unnecessary loss. Did not help we were playing 8-5 as I rarely complain about refs, but these guys were carrying white canes, and mostly in one direction. Hey ****heads! The Maloofs are gone, no need to keep screwing us over!
But we gave the refs plenty of help sinking our boat by throwing the ball all over the court, getting out of rhythm. IT was godawful. Brooks tried to be worse. Cousins seemed to regress to Bad Boogiehood. Half our guys were very good, for a bit. Half very bad. But the bad seemed to pull the good dowin into their morass ratehr than the other way around. Meanwhile the coach still can't manage rotations. Just all self inflicted wounds. A lack of discipline and eventually focus. And if that sounds like I'm not giving the Suns credit, I'm not. They just took what we gave them on a platter. They weren't good so much as we were just totally unnecessarily bad. Pfft.
Well, we try to keep the light on around here and entertain. So we'll theme it with soomething suggested yesterday and go with Whales as a theme.
The Grading Consortium is back. We've swapped some duties around for this one. As usual,
The Grading Consortium is:
Bricklayer
Bajaden
Capt. Factorial
Boxscore
Stats: 31min 6pts (2-2, 0-0, 2-6) 2reb 0ast 0stl 2blk 0TO
Salmons ( D+ ) -- well, at least the didn't turn it over. Of course he didn't do anything else either, but on a night when the team was playing dodgeball with fans in the 5th row all night, at least John managed to hold onto the ball. The few times he got it. With IT, Reke and Cousins all needing it, John was largely uninvolved. He got both his hoops in the later stages of the first, played 20 minutes afterwards and did nothing except brick a bunch of FTs as he was inexplicably off at the line. His defense was on and off, but there was nobody to guard anyway. One play he'd stay right in fornt, the next he'd get scaprd on a screen and the guy would be into the paint. And there was no depth or roundedness ot his game at all. Without the ball you aren't going to make much of an impact as a passer, and I am so completley over John's nightly 2 rebound in 30+min games. He looks like a seal out there, standing flat ont he ground flippers wide waitng for the fish to come to him rather than going after it. We are one of the league's worst rebounding teams, losing the nightly board battle by 3-4 a night. And we lose the nightly SF board battle by 3-4 a night. You do the math. Without the passing/defense intangibles I'm not inclined to buoy this grade up. Some advanced stat geek will try to convince you 2-2 is an efficient night. I just call it invisible. --Brick
Dwarf Sperm Whale -- the world's smallest species of whale, these were once mistaken for baby sperm whales, but are in fact their own subsepecies with only grows to about 9 feet long.
Stats: 10min 4pts (2-6, 0-0, 0-0) 3reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( D ) -- I retained JT as one of my grades figuring that he would be a major participant. He was not. After a quick little layup from IT to beging things on offense, from the start on the other side of the ball was being outsaavied by Scola, which if memory serves has been a constant in their matchups over the years. And he quickly got himself into major foul trouble, and was out of the game with 3 fouls by the mid quarter. With TRob having the best game of his career, JT never returned before half. He got the starting call after the break, quickly hit a jumper, but missed 2 more, redisappeared, and while Scola wasn't killing him out there in the 3rd, our lead was dwindling, and TRob had finally had a game where he made a case for himself. So Jason was gone by the middle of the quarter, and he never returned, playing only 10min on the night. To the degree he was ever missed it would only be because our coach's rotations remain idiotic. --Brick
Blue whale -- and of course if you go the other way, its well known that the Blue Whale is the largest whale, largest mammal, and indeed likely largest creature to ever swim the earth. Some fun stats: the biggest ones can reach over 100 fee long. A basketball court is only 94 feet long. They can weigh up to 200 tons, which is to say more than 2500 average sized humans. Their hearts are roughly the size and weight of a mini-cooper, but beat only 5-6 times a minute. They can eat up to 8000lbs of food (krill --small shrimplike creatures) a day, with a daily caloric requirement of 1.5million calores a day. Million. Which BTW is why there aren't more giant species running about.
Stats: 37min 15pts (7-18, 1-1, 0-0) 15reb 5ast 2stl 1blk 6TO
Cousins ( C- ) -- I hate to give a grade this low when he was dominating on the boards, but the problem is that rebounding was about the only thing he did up to par tonight. He was always looking to box out, and if the ball was in the air you knew where to find him - between the basket and either Gortat or Scola. Early in the third he set himself up in perfect position in the paint right as JT took a long jumper and not only got an offensive rebound you could see coming three full seconds before it happened, but also drew the fourth foul on Scola, sitting him down for a while. Boogie had a decent quarter offensively in the first, passing the ball well both from the low and high post and outside of a missed jumper that was a bit deep, generally made good decisions on offense even though he spent a lot of time looking for his own shot and nearly half of his seven points came on a buzzer 3. In the second quarter, things started going a bit downhill as Cousins committed a turnover playing point-center and then nearly threw the ball away on a break shortly thereafter. In the third quarter, had a highlight dunk taking Gortat to the rim that led to a Phoenix timeout, but it was mostly downhill from there. He got blocked by Morris, he committed a foul trying to back Gortat down, and he let IT's pass at the end of the third go right through the five-hole for a 24-second violation. He did find T-Rob for a dunk while tightroping the baseline early in the fourth, but had the ball stolen twice in the high post and managed nothing more than two missed jumpers in the quarter that lost the game for us. Defensively, DMC was pretty bad tonight. Though it's a lot harder to assign shots against with crowds in the paint, by my count Cousins allowed a total of 22 points on 14 shots. The interesting thing is that the Suns only tried to score on him once with their back to the basket, when he forced Gortat under the rim into Tyreke's shot block. Everything else was either jumpers (Scola's was absolutely wet tonight) or face-up attacks on the basket. It was noticeable that Cuz did a pretty good job on helping on the perimeter, but generally seemed to have a problem correctly reacting to situations when he was needed to help in the paint. On a lighter note, his Headband Foul Indicator was in full effect tonight with Cousins pointing at his headband twice (once when it was on the floor) to indicate to the refs that he was hit in the head. Didn't help. Also, since when is immediately passing a ball that came through the rim to the baseline ref a delay of game? Seriously, refs? --Capt.
Oldest Whale -- of course its hard to get a clean read on how old whales can get because they are plagued by some pathetic species of barbaric primate that has butchered the hell out of them. The oldest are thought though to be the bowhead whales of the artic ocean, which might reach 200yrs of age if we would just leave them the **** alone. The 130yr old harpoon above was found embedded in the shoulder of one that was killed in a "traditional hunt" by eskimos in 2007. Gotta love human traditions that kill 130+yr old animals. Maybe we can have a traditional giant sequioia chopping next week.
Stats: 33min 16pts (6-14, 1-1, 3-4) 6reb 4ast 2stl 1blk 3TO
Evans ( B ) -- After the first half, I though Tyreke was on his way to an A. He had a very good first quarter, which he started off making a nice cut to the basket off a give and go where he missed a reverse layup, but then stole the ball back and layed it in. a few minutes later he drove to the basket, was tripped and earned a trip to the line where he made both freethrows. He made a bad pass on an outlet, but made up for it on the other end by knocking the ball out of Scola's hands and off his body for a turnover. One of his best plays of the night was catching a long outlet pass from JT that was behind him and kissing the ball high off the glass for a basket. Add in a beautiful bounce pass to Cuz for an assist, and a drive to the basket against one defender for a score. He went to the bench with 1:31 left in the first, and re-entered with 4:17 left in the half. He played excellent defense on Telfair who missed his shot, and then is fouled by Telfair at the other end where he made 1 of 2 freethrows. He did blemish the half by driving into heavy traffic and throwing up a wild shot and missing, and also losing the ball out of bounds for a turnover. He started the second half by stealing the ball, and was fouled by Dudley in the open floor. He also had a spectualar finish at the basket off a pass from Cuz. Unfortunately he made a few bonehead plays. He overdribbled a few times, and drove into heavy traffic with nowhere to go. He did hit his only three of the night with 2:22 left in the game, but it was nothing more than the last gasp of air for the team. All in all, he played very well except for his shooting percentage. Hard to complain with 16 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, and 1 blocked shot from the SG position. Had he and Cousins been brought back sooner, who knows, we might have won the game. --Baja
Whale ancestors -- whales can be traced back to an ancient class of small dog like creatures (actually a very distant relative of pigs) that prowled the riverbanks in what is now modern day Pakistan (the pic is of one called Ambulocetus). Over time they developed webbed feet as they increasingly hunted in the water, grew larger and more water specialized (eventually resembling seals at one stage), and eventually moved on down the rivers and into the open sea. 50 million years later you have a 200ton blue whale.
Bad loss. Completely unnecessary loss. Did not help we were playing 8-5 as I rarely complain about refs, but these guys were carrying white canes, and mostly in one direction. Hey ****heads! The Maloofs are gone, no need to keep screwing us over!
But we gave the refs plenty of help sinking our boat by throwing the ball all over the court, getting out of rhythm. IT was godawful. Brooks tried to be worse. Cousins seemed to regress to Bad Boogiehood. Half our guys were very good, for a bit. Half very bad. But the bad seemed to pull the good dowin into their morass ratehr than the other way around. Meanwhile the coach still can't manage rotations. Just all self inflicted wounds. A lack of discipline and eventually focus. And if that sounds like I'm not giving the Suns credit, I'm not. They just took what we gave them on a platter. They weren't good so much as we were just totally unnecessarily bad. Pfft.
Well, we try to keep the light on around here and entertain. So we'll theme it with soomething suggested yesterday and go with Whales as a theme.
The Grading Consortium is back. We've swapped some duties around for this one. As usual,
The Grading Consortium is:
Bricklayer
Bajaden
Capt. Factorial
Boxscore
Stats: 31min 6pts (2-2, 0-0, 2-6) 2reb 0ast 0stl 2blk 0TO
Salmons ( D+ ) -- well, at least the didn't turn it over. Of course he didn't do anything else either, but on a night when the team was playing dodgeball with fans in the 5th row all night, at least John managed to hold onto the ball. The few times he got it. With IT, Reke and Cousins all needing it, John was largely uninvolved. He got both his hoops in the later stages of the first, played 20 minutes afterwards and did nothing except brick a bunch of FTs as he was inexplicably off at the line. His defense was on and off, but there was nobody to guard anyway. One play he'd stay right in fornt, the next he'd get scaprd on a screen and the guy would be into the paint. And there was no depth or roundedness ot his game at all. Without the ball you aren't going to make much of an impact as a passer, and I am so completley over John's nightly 2 rebound in 30+min games. He looks like a seal out there, standing flat ont he ground flippers wide waitng for the fish to come to him rather than going after it. We are one of the league's worst rebounding teams, losing the nightly board battle by 3-4 a night. And we lose the nightly SF board battle by 3-4 a night. You do the math. Without the passing/defense intangibles I'm not inclined to buoy this grade up. Some advanced stat geek will try to convince you 2-2 is an efficient night. I just call it invisible. --Brick
Dwarf Sperm Whale -- the world's smallest species of whale, these were once mistaken for baby sperm whales, but are in fact their own subsepecies with only grows to about 9 feet long.
Stats: 10min 4pts (2-6, 0-0, 0-0) 3reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( D ) -- I retained JT as one of my grades figuring that he would be a major participant. He was not. After a quick little layup from IT to beging things on offense, from the start on the other side of the ball was being outsaavied by Scola, which if memory serves has been a constant in their matchups over the years. And he quickly got himself into major foul trouble, and was out of the game with 3 fouls by the mid quarter. With TRob having the best game of his career, JT never returned before half. He got the starting call after the break, quickly hit a jumper, but missed 2 more, redisappeared, and while Scola wasn't killing him out there in the 3rd, our lead was dwindling, and TRob had finally had a game where he made a case for himself. So Jason was gone by the middle of the quarter, and he never returned, playing only 10min on the night. To the degree he was ever missed it would only be because our coach's rotations remain idiotic. --Brick
Blue whale -- and of course if you go the other way, its well known that the Blue Whale is the largest whale, largest mammal, and indeed likely largest creature to ever swim the earth. Some fun stats: the biggest ones can reach over 100 fee long. A basketball court is only 94 feet long. They can weigh up to 200 tons, which is to say more than 2500 average sized humans. Their hearts are roughly the size and weight of a mini-cooper, but beat only 5-6 times a minute. They can eat up to 8000lbs of food (krill --small shrimplike creatures) a day, with a daily caloric requirement of 1.5million calores a day. Million. Which BTW is why there aren't more giant species running about.
Stats: 37min 15pts (7-18, 1-1, 0-0) 15reb 5ast 2stl 1blk 6TO
Cousins ( C- ) -- I hate to give a grade this low when he was dominating on the boards, but the problem is that rebounding was about the only thing he did up to par tonight. He was always looking to box out, and if the ball was in the air you knew where to find him - between the basket and either Gortat or Scola. Early in the third he set himself up in perfect position in the paint right as JT took a long jumper and not only got an offensive rebound you could see coming three full seconds before it happened, but also drew the fourth foul on Scola, sitting him down for a while. Boogie had a decent quarter offensively in the first, passing the ball well both from the low and high post and outside of a missed jumper that was a bit deep, generally made good decisions on offense even though he spent a lot of time looking for his own shot and nearly half of his seven points came on a buzzer 3. In the second quarter, things started going a bit downhill as Cousins committed a turnover playing point-center and then nearly threw the ball away on a break shortly thereafter. In the third quarter, had a highlight dunk taking Gortat to the rim that led to a Phoenix timeout, but it was mostly downhill from there. He got blocked by Morris, he committed a foul trying to back Gortat down, and he let IT's pass at the end of the third go right through the five-hole for a 24-second violation. He did find T-Rob for a dunk while tightroping the baseline early in the fourth, but had the ball stolen twice in the high post and managed nothing more than two missed jumpers in the quarter that lost the game for us. Defensively, DMC was pretty bad tonight. Though it's a lot harder to assign shots against with crowds in the paint, by my count Cousins allowed a total of 22 points on 14 shots. The interesting thing is that the Suns only tried to score on him once with their back to the basket, when he forced Gortat under the rim into Tyreke's shot block. Everything else was either jumpers (Scola's was absolutely wet tonight) or face-up attacks on the basket. It was noticeable that Cuz did a pretty good job on helping on the perimeter, but generally seemed to have a problem correctly reacting to situations when he was needed to help in the paint. On a lighter note, his Headband Foul Indicator was in full effect tonight with Cousins pointing at his headband twice (once when it was on the floor) to indicate to the refs that he was hit in the head. Didn't help. Also, since when is immediately passing a ball that came through the rim to the baseline ref a delay of game? Seriously, refs? --Capt.
Oldest Whale -- of course its hard to get a clean read on how old whales can get because they are plagued by some pathetic species of barbaric primate that has butchered the hell out of them. The oldest are thought though to be the bowhead whales of the artic ocean, which might reach 200yrs of age if we would just leave them the **** alone. The 130yr old harpoon above was found embedded in the shoulder of one that was killed in a "traditional hunt" by eskimos in 2007. Gotta love human traditions that kill 130+yr old animals. Maybe we can have a traditional giant sequioia chopping next week.
Stats: 33min 16pts (6-14, 1-1, 3-4) 6reb 4ast 2stl 1blk 3TO
Evans ( B ) -- After the first half, I though Tyreke was on his way to an A. He had a very good first quarter, which he started off making a nice cut to the basket off a give and go where he missed a reverse layup, but then stole the ball back and layed it in. a few minutes later he drove to the basket, was tripped and earned a trip to the line where he made both freethrows. He made a bad pass on an outlet, but made up for it on the other end by knocking the ball out of Scola's hands and off his body for a turnover. One of his best plays of the night was catching a long outlet pass from JT that was behind him and kissing the ball high off the glass for a basket. Add in a beautiful bounce pass to Cuz for an assist, and a drive to the basket against one defender for a score. He went to the bench with 1:31 left in the first, and re-entered with 4:17 left in the half. He played excellent defense on Telfair who missed his shot, and then is fouled by Telfair at the other end where he made 1 of 2 freethrows. He did blemish the half by driving into heavy traffic and throwing up a wild shot and missing, and also losing the ball out of bounds for a turnover. He started the second half by stealing the ball, and was fouled by Dudley in the open floor. He also had a spectualar finish at the basket off a pass from Cuz. Unfortunately he made a few bonehead plays. He overdribbled a few times, and drove into heavy traffic with nowhere to go. He did hit his only three of the night with 2:22 left in the game, but it was nothing more than the last gasp of air for the team. All in all, he played very well except for his shooting percentage. Hard to complain with 16 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, and 1 blocked shot from the SG position. Had he and Cousins been brought back sooner, who knows, we might have won the game. --Baja
Whale ancestors -- whales can be traced back to an ancient class of small dog like creatures (actually a very distant relative of pigs) that prowled the riverbanks in what is now modern day Pakistan (the pic is of one called Ambulocetus). Over time they developed webbed feet as they increasingly hunted in the water, grew larger and more water specialized (eventually resembling seals at one stage), and eventually moved on down the rivers and into the open sea. 50 million years later you have a 200ton blue whale.
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