Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Well...interesting game that I am sure the crack team of Consortium graders will have a fun time sorting out. Ended per usual of course. It was a game in which our starting forwards did not rebound (combined for 1 rebound. One.). Our starting backcourt neither passed (combined for 3 assists) nor defended (Suns starting guards scored 28 and 29pts on a combined 21-30), and Boogie was completely swarmed inside into inefficiency. Our so called "shooting" guards shot 2-13. Luckily we had a 5'9" SG in the lineup too who scored nearly as many points as he gave up. Of course that left our 6'11" center as our main passer (in a bad sign, we got a total of 12 assists on the night, 5 of them were by Cuz while the rest of the starters combined for 4).... And yet despite all that we were right there in the late going. Part of that was the 2/3 of the new guys who played looking very good. Rudy Gay looked very much the smooth professional scorer. Aaron Gray was a fun relief for a franchise haunted by 3 years of 6'6" backup centers. We aren't going to win without more passing, without a guard who could defend me, without any SG taller than 5'9", but there were a lot of flashes of talent and potential.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Rainmaker
Bajaden
Spudfan
MassachusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 36min 24pts (8-12, 0-3, 8-9) 1reb 1ast 1stl 2blk 2TO
Gay ( B+ ) -- It would be pretty hard to call Rudy Gay’s Kings debut anything other than a success. He scored above his season average, and despite all the talk about his inefficiency as a scorer he accomplished this in just 12 shots. He’s clearly not familiar with whatever offense the Kings are running these days, which is understandable considering he’s only had one practice with the team. In the first half he spent a lot of time standing in the corner or passing the ball off immediately after it was passed to him. He scored a lot of his points off of contested fadeaway jumpers from the not-so-deep post. I wouldn’t consider them good shots necessarily, but they went in tonight. In the second half he started to show off his ability to get the basket, scoring and getting to the line with ease. As a scorer, Gay showed you a little bit of everything. He didn’t score any easy baskets, which is a testament to his obvious talent. Almost all of his points were contested, or opportunities he created for himself. Gay had the luxury of guarding PJ Tucker tonight, and he went 3-13. It’s hard to say if Tucker’s poor shooting night was because of Gay’s defense or just because he’s PJ Tucker, but his defense was fine. Added in two blocks, and was actively looking for more which was nice to see. If there was any major area of weakness for Gay tonight it was on the glass where he failed to make any real impact. With JT in foul trouble (and playing terrible), the Kings could have used him there. The one potentially alarming early development was that the Kings started to look for his scoring late in the fourth instead of going inside to Cousins. It turned into a mini Thomas and Gay show for the last few minutes. It’s early, and Cousins was struggling so I don’t want to jump to any major conclusions. Still, something to keep an eye on.--Mass
Stats: 14min 4pts (2-2, 0-0, 0-0) 0reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( ) -- --Spud
Stats: 34min 15pts (5-16, 0-0, 5-6) 16reb 5ast 5stl 1blk 3TO
Cousins ( C ) -- well this was...colorful. On his first day on the job with the new IT/Gay lineup, Cuz found himself playing PG with IT showing little interest, playing inefficiently often catching the ball out where Smart had him stationed rather than inside, and getting banged around something fierce inside as the Suns were well aware of what happened last time and Hornacek has shown himself very much from the Jerry Sloan school of hack 'em til it hurts coaching. The combination of everything began to damage his effectiveness and his calm as the game wore on, despite him racking up 15pts 16rebs 5ast 5stls 1blk and a partridge in a pear tree. I wish I had the game on tape, because the Suns defense tonight was often a marvel, seemingly finding ways to double both Cuz and Gay without leaving anybody wide open. Or if they did, it was just one of our SGs, which is kind of a who cares moment for other teams right now. In the early going I thought Cuz handled it pretty well. They were doubling, he was beating the doubles. He hustled, picked up steals, hit Gay with the assist for his first hoop as a King, threw a fullcourt pass to a cherry picking Isaiah for another etc. He (and Gray after him) were huge on the boards, and they needed to be since no other King seemed to feel they had any other responsibility than throwing the ball at the hoop. But the chaos seemed to envelop him, the new offensive arrangement seemed to make him uncomfortable and eventually irritated, defensively the backcourt was a disaster and Cuz's attempts to cover for the guards constantly left the rim open, and the Suns were doing everything possible to bang him hack him and hit him whenever he got the ball. He began to miss chippees, to see the offense flow away form him and toward Gay (appropriately I might add given all the attention the Suns were giving him) and new DeMarcus Cousins or not, this is still Boogie we are talking about. After a dramatic swing play where Cuz scooped up a ball up top and went rumbling the other way for a big throwdown dunk on the break...that never happened as Plumlee chased him down from behind for a tremendous block, Cuz got into it with the Suns bench and got a technical. After returning late was lacking composure as he couldn't get the ball where he wanted it, and when he did he ended up forcing tough shots into stacked defenses (that again somehow seemed to still be guarding everybody -- really do want to see what the hell the Suns were doing), and the forces and unsettled play actively hurt our attempts to steal one at that point. So...even scruffy Cuz still leads the team in most categories. He carries us on the glass, notches more assists and steals than the entire starting lineup. Still matters. But this was an effort lacking composure, and really worth a slight raised eyebrow to whatever degree the shifting offensive balance in the wake of the trade contributed to it. --Brick
Stats: 27min 4pts (1-6, 0-1, 2-2) 2reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
McLemore ( D- ) -- I guess the word that springs to mind, is awful. Without getting into what we got from the SG position in total tonight, its clear we didn't have a player on the floor that fit that description. At least for this game. But back to Ben. There have been other games where he didn't shoot the ball well, but at least he made contributions in other areas. Tonight was not one of those nights. In 27 minutes he had 4 points on 1 of 6 shooting. Two whole rebounds, and one assist. He actually did a decent job on Bledsoe in the first quarter, except for on play where he just lost him and he drove and scored. However, later in the game he got overpowered by Green who took him in the paint. There is a point where effort has to show some results. And if you watch McLemore, you can see he definitely gives you the effort. Truth is, had he hit a few of those shots, my opinion might be different. But he didn't! There's only so much you can say about a 4 pt game. I hope this is a learning experience for the young man. --Baja
Stats: 42min 29pts (11-20, 3-6, 4-4) 6reb 2ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Thomas ( C ) -- Generally, when a player goes off for 29 points on 11-20 FGA's, the expectation would be that he had quite a good night. Yet when you give back every one of those points, and some, on the opposite end of the court it starts to negate what you've accomplished on the offensive end. Then we have to consider the role. It is not IT's job to go out and score 29 points nor is it his job to take more shots than anyone on the team, specifically Cuz and Gay. That being said, I thought IT played pretty well on the offensive end in the first half and did make an effort to get guys involved. Could he have made more of an effort to get Cuz and Gay going? Yes, Gay didn't have a touch in a threatening position until we were under the 6 minute mark of the 1st. At the same time, Isaiah was cooking and on his way to a 19 point first half on 7-10 shooting. There were two problems though. The first, he gave up all those points and more on the other end as Dragic scored 21 first half points on an even more efficient 7/8 shooting. The second problem is that as a PG, if you decide to ride your own hot hand for most of the first half instead of doing your best to get your top scorers going, then you darn well need to keep that going in the second half as to a certain extent you've prevented them from getting into a rhythm and you can't count on, as a PG, for your top scorers to simply flip the switch and turn it on when your shots stop falling at some point in the second half. It's why many of the top scoring PG's actually do the reverse, which is play the setup role in the first half and later on in the game when needed, go into attack mode. The reason is that you've hopefully allowed your other scorers to get going and get a rhythm, and as the guy with the ball in your hands you'll always have an easier time getting it going when and if you decide to do so as you're not dependent on someone else to get you the ball. In the second half it appeared Isaiah made a serious attempt to get others involved as he cut down his FGA's and tried filling the facilitator role. Unfortunately, the results weren't all that good and I thought he did a pretty poor job of running the offense. It sure wasn't what I'd call steady. I took a few notes during the game and the first six minutes of the 3rd were quite a rocky stretch for IT. Forced a bad pass on the wing which ended in 2 points in the other direction. Came down two possessions later, dribbled straight into traffic, made a bad pass to JT, a turnover. Two possessions later, broke off a play, tried going 1v1, picked up his dribble and got into trouble, then made a cross court pass to Gay with only 2 seconds on the shot clock. Came down a few possessions later, dribbled into a triple team, got tied up, jump ball, which resulted in a Dragic 3 seconds later. Was struggling between balancing the facilitator role and when to look for his shot. After playing distributor didn't work out, went back to being aggressive looking for his shot. Ended up launching another 10 FGA's in the second half, yet hit only 4 of them after hitting 7/10 in the first half and those 20 FGA's were accompanied by only 2 assists, an extremely poor ratio for any PG. What was also an issue all second half, actually all night for that matter was his inability to even slow Dragic or Bledsoe. If it wasn't one scoring on him it was the other. They each got where they wanted on the floor and at one point early in the 4th IT was having so much trouble with Dragic that Malone called for jumping/trapping the pick & rolls. Our defense tonight was terrible across the board but as far as IT goes, he spent a lot of time on both Dragic(29 points) and Bledsoe(28 points) and had little effect on them. Constantly going under screens did not help. Isaiah did limp off to the locker room and we don't know how much his ankle/foot was bothering him and we'll have to wait and see if we hear anything further on that. So scored well in the first half but gave every point back in the other direction, then came out looking to set others up in the 3rd and made a number of terrible decisions with the ball, ended up taking just as many shots in the second half as the first, while I don't think Dragic/Bledsoe even noticed him guarding them. A pretty rough night for Isaiah and hopefully next time out he can do a better job settling into the PG role and setting up his teammates as we literally have no other options on the bench. I'd like to see him concentrate on getting both Cuz and Gay going immediately from the start. Get them rolling and later on when needed look for his own. But as a starting PG we need the opposite of what we needed when he was the 6th man. We need steady. As a 6th man we needed lightening in a bottle. Hopefully Isaiah can settle more into this role over the next couple weeks. --Rain
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