Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Are we having fun yet?
Santa appears to have entirely bypassed the ole 916 (Sacto area code) this year, and dropped a big lump of coal on everybody's head. At least you hope its coal -- you do have a sled being pulled around by a bunch of reindeer flying around overhead.
So...we tried to outrun the Suns. Worked kinda like trying to outrun the Warriors. You're supposed to be a smart guy Vivek -- figuring the pattern out yet? Kayte did me a solid and put together the post coup defensive stats I was going to put together myself -- and guess what ladies and gents? We are right back to the same nonsense we've practiced around here for the past 8 years: dead last in defense. Who the hell cares if you score 104, 106, 108 points, if the opponent is scoring 110+ every night. Morons.
We also of course continued one of the most remarkable stretches of complete dependence on a single player I can recall. I lost track of the exact count, but we have to be something like 2-21 or so without Cuz over the last two years? Its ludicrous. Basically it means we'd be on pace to challenge for the worst basketball team in NBA history over 82 games. Maybe 7 wins or so.
Boxscore
Stats: 34min 16pts (7-15, 0-1, 2-2) 4reb 5ast 2stl 0blk 2TO
Gay ( C ) -- well, we had 7 guys reach double figures in this one. Is this the basketball "jazz" of which Vivek speaks? No structure, no leaders...I am being serious when I ask why did these guys fire Keith Smart besides a reflexive and increasingly its looking childish desire to mark their territory and kill everything touched by a Maloof? Because that was exactly the nonsense Smart preached. And Rudy, our only star without Cuz out there, was just one voice amongst many, and he even made it look hard with a lot of challenged high degree of difficulty stuff. At no point could I discern any particular plan or struture to what he was doing, or what we were doing with him. He would freelance, sometimes force up a tough shot against any of the Suns midsized athletes covering him, sometimes create for a teammate, as virtually the only guy passing, sometimes doing neither. He started slow, did not get his 2nd hoop until 4 minutes were left in the half, but surged down the stretch, and kept it going into the 3rd when he got some breakouts off of sloppy Suns play and both finished themselves and set up Ben for some of his points. Unfortunately on the other end he seemed to master the art of being just out of position on basically everybody, his man, switches, bigs, little, did not matter. Just close enough he did not look lost. Rarely close enough to effect shots. And so he became one of many guys contributing to our defensive non-existence. --Brick
Stats: 12min 2pts (1-1, 0-0, 0-0) 1reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( F- ) -- If there was a lower score I could give him I would. I realize JT only played 12 minutes, and I suppose you could chalk up some of his results to lack of minutes. But two points and one rebound. JT looked like he just wasn't interested. At one point he stood at the foul line on defense, guarding no one, and merely pointed at Len as he was heading to the basket with no one between him and the basket. No effort on JT's part to defend the basket at all. On his one attempt to post up in the second half, he turned the ball over. Absolutely terrible! --Baja
Stats: 32min 11pts (5-13, 0-1, 1-2) 16reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Evans ( C+ ) -- Unlike JT, Evans pulled down 16 boards tonight. One might think that it would be enough to get a higher grade, but about 7 of those rebounds were putbacks off his own misses when he had his shot blocked. But non the less, you have to commend the effort. And you always get effort from Reggie. He also scored eleven points on five of thirteen shooting. A couple of his baskets coming by way of putbacks of misses by Casspi. He did have a very nice post move in the first quarter when he banged left and then spun right and kissed it off the glass. He also had a nice drop step move later in the game, but missed the shot. All in all he did a good job, considering that the pace of the game didn't suit his physical abilities. 32 minutes of up and down the floor basketball is not the style I want Reggie playing. Defensively I don't want him going one on one with Dragic either. Dragic has a killer cross over by the way. Oh, and by the way, a little side note to Stauskas. Don't turn your head when your guarding Dragic. --Baja
Stats: 35min 13pts (5-14, 2-7, 1-3) 2reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( C- ) -- if it were not for Derrick Williams out pointing him in this regard, I would say that Gentle Ben may have had the dubious honor of epitomizing NBA 3.0 tonight as he hit 5 shots, 2 alley oop dunks, 2 threes, and one we don't care about because it wasn't an alley opp or a three, and did little else. It was exciting. I was excited. I know you were too. Of course when your shooter is neither shooting (5-14FG, 2-7 from three) nor contributing anything else to the boxscore (2reb 1ast) chances are you are not dealing with a truly stellar grade, excitement or no. Had multiple near ballhandling issues in the early going against the quicker Suns guards, but managed to weeble and wobble his way around trouble and only finished the game with 1 credited turnover. He was playing some pretty good defense early, which was something in this game, and he hit a feet set corner three from Collison. But always with the good shots there was mixed in junk that he basically missed from the moment the neuron in his brain misfired and made him decide to take a bad shot. Followed the early three with a wild drive into heavy traffic that had no hope and triggered a Suns fastbreak. When he returned to the game all was forgiven as he took a long alley oop from Gay to cut the lead to 2, and while he didn't do anything thereafter for a full quarter, by the time he popped up again it was for another big alley oop from Rudy on the break to cut the lead to 81-80. So not only alley oops, in fact given that nothing happened we cared about in between we might even call them back to back alley oops, but also well timed back to back alley oops capping runs that got us right back even. Unfortunately then the 4th rolled around, and he did not get even one alley oop! It was like we were back in the 1950s. From a boring technical side he also started missing basically everything. Missed an open three, missed a technical FT after Omri got into it with IT, he did hit one solitary jumper (a boring one with no chance to be on Sportcenter) with us down 15 at the 4:30 mark, but we were gone by then, and it didn't ignite anything new for Ben as he went back, missed another corner three at the 3:30 mark, missed a layup at the 2:20 mark, and just generally had a bad shooting night. When we upgrade the Grading Consortium from 2.0 to 3.0 this will be an A for "Alley oop!". Still stuck in the hoary past though where things like substance matter, there wasn't much here.--Brick
Stats: 36min 19pts (5-12, 4-7, 5-6) 1reb 2ast 3stl 0blk 3TO
Collison ( C ) -- you know the great thing about the game last night? Our guards almost had the NBA 3.0 thing down pat, and 8 of the 10 shots they hit were either threes or alley oops. Progress! For Darren, a bit uncharacteristically that meant his contribution was as a three point shooter. In the first half he got two of the corner threes which he can hit, and in the third, he was one of the leaders of our comeback as he hit two more of the longer ones from up around the arc. Now, that meant he only hit 1 non three, but who cares. His 1reb and 2ast meant we got a total of 3reb and 3ast from our two starting 35+min guards on the night, combined, but who cares. He hit 4 threes! He also added in one nice defensive tie up of IT on the break in the first half, although strength against Bledsoe was an issue. There were some random seeming turnovers, as sans Cuz DC's limitations as a creater have been really exposed and his assists in the month of December are down to 4.8/per game. But again, he hit 4 threes, and that was exciting.--Brick
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