Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
See? SEE?? I tried to warn the Suns about our epicosity after our awesome Philly beatdown, but did they listen to us? NOOOOOOO. Came out flat as a fashion model, and while we weren't really at full epic level ourselves, we got enough team play and little contributions (becoming more common) to notch the first really semi-impressive victory on our 4 game streak. Lot of willing passing, lot of guys contributing something. Only Cuz was consistently good, but even for him it wasn't a tremendous individual game (24-11 = ho hum). Just a good team win, and the first one over a good team who needed a win (not that they played like it). The Philly win wasn't much to build on, but this one felt sustainable enough that there's no reason we can't play this way over the weekend.
Technical difficulties meant I could not get out the grades last time, so I'll be going back tonight/tommorrow and adding the Philly game grades in as well. Shorter for each I suppose, but something for both.
In order to counter the lingering grades issue, I'm also going to start a new one line summation tradition, and get those up the night of, and add the details later.
Boxscore
Stats: 29min 14pts (3-7, 0-3, 8-9) 4reb 5ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Gay ( C+ ) -- Rudy was nearly the only King who did not have himself a game this time. In fact in the first half he was barely part of the proceedings as all as he uncharacteristically got himself into foul trouble. But even when back he was rarely a focus. And with the ball moving well and the Suns barely interested in stopping it, we just didn't need him to be. He started the game off getting not 2, but 3 FTS on a bizarre early tech to Hornacek to go with being fouled, and FTs would be most of his scoring on the night. There was a surge in the late second before redisappearing with fouls. And then for the remainder of the game he largely contented himself as a passer helping grease the wheels of the offense for other guys. this was no star level performance, Rudy was not a big impact guy this time, certainly not at the level he's been playing at, but he was not a drain either.
Stats: 28min 10pts (4-10, 2-4, 0-0) 2reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Casspi ( C+ ) -- Omri had a quiet game in this one, but a contributing one in the open court where he leaked out for easy ones, and sometimes not so easy ones. His drives rarely resulted in hits in this one, but he knocked down several threes and kept it simple. Three, drive to the rim, pass. That was it. Now the problem was on the other end was that Omri wasn't really on the glass, and the Morris twins combined for over 40pts. But so many of them were in the open court or on switches, that it was hard to pin that productivty on any one King. And Omri had almost nothing to do with Markieff's game, who largely just pummeled DWill. So no defensive impact here, but not the spanking you might guess from the boxscore.
Stats: 37min 24pts (11-19, 0-0, 2-3) 11reb 3ast 2stl 1blk 5TO
Cousins ( B ) -- well for a long time to start this game you were worried this could turn out to be one of those tired Cuz games where a lesser opponent, and a BIG lesser opponent, was able to push and shove on his tired legs and force him into inefficiency. But after an unproductive first quarter, salvaged by the fact his jumper was on tonight, Cuz began to get into the game offensively late in the first half, working with the two Macs to hold our nearly gamelong lead at 5-8 points, and rapidly scoring 10 points inside and out, including the final jumper of the half with 5 seconds to go. It would not be until after when his full game really kicked in, and he was just flat better than anybody else on the floor. The rebounding picked up, his kicks out of the double team, a bit missing as he tried to force the as kick on Noel vs., Philly, were online and hitting guys in rhythm, and if he missed a few jumpers and made a few turnovers trying to set people up, they were coming from the right place. When the team forgot about him for a stretch in the late quarter when we began to fade a bit, out of the timeout Karl drew a play that got him a dunk from Rudy. Meanwhile Len disappeared due to foul trouble, and Brandon Wright had no chance to stop him physically. That left the Suns at times having to try to have burly PJ Tucker push and shove with Cuz. In the end that fear of inefficiency never materialized. There were too many turnovers of course, that still needs to be cleaned up. But Cuz turned what looked to be a competitive battle in the middle early into a second half of King King vs.a bunch of liliputians. He never did quite dominate, but on the second half of a back to back he just calmly dropped in his season averages of, ho hum, 24pts 11reb 3ast on an efficient 11-19. It was easy and more than enough against a Suns team that never played like their heart was in this whole playoff chase.
Stats: 29min 12pts (5-9, 2-5, 0-0) 2reb 3ast 2stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( C+ ) -- Ben was having another one of "those games" where it was just a mystery. There was nothing for 9 minutes, then he scored back to back hoops in the first on the break and on a nifty little cradled drive, then nothing again until Cuz set him up late in the half. And then nearly a full half of nothing as our starting SG was once again sitting on 6pts, he'd missed all his threes, and his backup was outplaying him. On defense he was actually overpowered at times BY Tucker -- a number of teams have gone at that this year, and maybe Ben needs to work on leg strength or some such -- but Tucker missed almost everytime so it was a wash and actually helped us. Then suddenly with the Suns finally making a little push, with 4 minutes to go it was the invisible man who stepped up and abruptly hit 2 big three pointers in the space of a minute and a half to hold them back. You just never know with Ben.
Stats: 31min 14pts (6-11, 0-1, 2-2) 5reb 5ast 1stl 1blk 2TO
McCallum ( A- ) -- Ray really was good throughout this one, one of his better games really, and it was only one of those Miller/DWill stretches in the late 3rd/early 4th that cut his minutes back some. Young legs, perhaps, but while Rudy and Cuz got off to sluggish starts, Ray was racing around from the beginnning, and generally outshining Bledsoe. There were relatively few mistakes or forces, and he was setting guys up, Ben and Omri in particular, for easy shots at the rim. In the third Bledsoe began to wake up a bit, and when Ray did not respect his jumper, Bledsoe drained back to back threes on us to close that lead right back down to 4. But we fended that little mini-push off as well, and Ray was still running things competently. The Miller/DWil connection (strong enough that I am not sure I would bother bringing back 1 without the other next year) did keep him on the bench for a long stretch of the late 3rd/early 4th, but he was still steady when he returned. This was no star turn, but it was one of his most solid run the team outings. Squinch your eyes and you could almost imagine this as a standard Collison game.
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