[Grades] Grades v. Thunder 2/12/11

Happy with the last shot?

  • Yes

    Votes: 20 76.9%
  • No

    Votes: 6 23.1%

  • Total voters
    26

Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Hey whaddya know! A nailbiting buzzerbeating tight loss to an elite team. Who would ever have expected that??

Well not really much else to say. People who don't watch these games will just see the record and assume we suck. This team does not suck right now. In fact I am going to make an outrageous statement and say the Kings, who haven't won in 5 games, are playing beter right now than half the teams in the league. We just can't close the deal. Makes us really prime candidates to break out however. Wihtout the talent you are jsut screwed. But when you prove night in and night out you have the talent to compete with the best, and jsut fail at the end, sooner or later you expect a breakthrough. Not tonight though.

Theme tonight: Bizarre/Disturbing "Body Art" . I put the term in quotes on purpose of course since I consider messing yourself to be sign of stupidity or being disturbed rather than a sign of artistic sensibilities. Change of plan: with all the Cousins stuff getting a late start, and the game is on in 8 hours or so, so going to skip the theme here and push it off until after tonight's game...unless of course we win it.

Official Boxscore

Casspi ( C- ) -- getting torched by Durant early, but got out on the break and was hit by JT in stride for the big finish. Working well with Reke out on the break again in a give and go. Began to get some little interior flips to go late in the game and has been real solid on the glass for weeks now. But he missed his own threes, and the overwhelming impression left by this one was on OMri getting absolutely punked by Kevin Durant shot after shot, quarter after quarter. Jsut showed no ability to slow him at all. Wasn't defensive mistakes per se, was in the area, but in the area isn't enoguh and Durant got whatever shot he wanted whenever he wanted it and knocked them down all night and not only was there nothing Omri could do about it, you could tell by his body language he knew there was nothing to do about. There is no way to avoid that being a huge markdown whatever other modest contributions he made during the game.

Thompson ( C- ) -- high high off the glass for his first and as it turns out only hit of the night, his 2nd attempt was wild and completely out of control and ugly, and that would be the story the rest of the way. Was getting all the shots he wanted from Reke early, but as usual not converting. Gave us a good honest day's battle on the boards though. Things did not improve much after half -- helped some on the glass and with his size on defense, but did not look comfortable at all on offense, had his shots blocked repeatedly, and when the specter of foul trouble loomed for him, it was pretty easy just to forget about him the rest of the way. Not an awful game because the thigs we need most from him -- defense and rebounding -- he provided to some degree. But all of his limitations on the other end were on full display.

Cousins ( C- ) -- even before the postgame nuttiness, was not having one of his better games. Of course that probably contributed to the frustration and the postgame nuttiness. Grabbed a good number of boards in the game, but was not doing agood job blocking out early. Wasn't seeing the doubles either as he got swarmed around the post. Had a couple of near great plays, and a couple of scruffy ones. One crazy possessioon where he got his dribble striopped twice, got it back, kept going and goign and finally got a cross the lane scoop for the finish. Tried the behind the back true Vlade pass to a slashing reke, but it was defelcted. So next time did the nice shovel pass to Landry. Came up with the good o-board and finish +1 with 30 seconds to go in the half and cut the lead back to 5. Just barreled right over Krstic to start the third, but unfortunately the quarter quickly disintegrated into fugliness, with him playing out of control on offense and picking up fouls on defense. Missed a pair of FTs we needed at the 9:45 mark of the 4th with us still trailing 9. Struggled down the stretch on his own moves, but some effectiveness on the offensive glass and dumpoffs to him right beneath the rim. Made a great play in the final seconds to help set up the game winning attemto which saw him go loco, grabbing the d-board at the 15 second mark, started to dribble up court and making the great halfocurt pass off the bounce to a streaking Reke for the layup to cut the lead to 2. Then of course came the nutty. This was a sloppy and ineficeint game from Boogie, but mixed in were some flashes of brilliance and enough boardwork to keep the grade up at least a bit.

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Despite the fact he pulled off another double double, I think DeMarcus is deserving of a D. I guess that just goes to show how good he is.
 
should have never given that shot though

I was SO frustrated at the end of the Dallas game because of Evans late game decision making. This game had the same end result, yet I thought the decisions were very solid.

5s left. We were down 2 and got a clean look at a 3pter and missed by 1". What more can you ask for?
 
should have never given that shot though

There was 5 seconds left. Westphal obviously drew the play up to have Evans take the shot there and there really wasn't time to move it anywhere else. It was a good shot and he only missed by a couple inches, it's basically as good as any shot we could have hoped for in the situation. Not even considering that he has made a ton of clutch shots/defensive plays in the last 2 seasons, he carried the team on his back the second half of the fourth quarter as he has done quite a number of times in the last 2 seasons. Yes, there's been games when he has also had troubles when teams go into zone or send 2-3 guys at him near the basket, but that is something he learns over time, how to attack the defense differently when he can't just do what he wants.
 
I am not sure there is improvement on the whole. The rotation finally settled down and that helped the team, and Cousins has begun adjusting to the NBA refs, but the original glaring issues are still the same glaring issues. I agree it is not a question of talent. It is a question of having a concept that you are aiming for with the talent. Right now its just a random bunch of players that do not fit together well.

There simply is no offensive identity. No clue on how to run a real NBA offense and the team has needed a PG for three straight years without the FO doing anything about it except some smokescreen PR. Many Kings fans probably watched this game and continually thought about how much a Maynor would help the Kings out. It's weird for a young team to be further along defensively than they are on offense, but thats the Kings. Glorified streetball plays and massive mental breakdowns.
 
What the hell happened?!?...again

If we make a small move forward instead of a giant leap back ... we're right there. I don't want us to tank ... just keep the right guys and add that missing piece.
 
Even though I know about this Cousins incident, I have to say that I'm fine with the last shot. Of course it makes missing it far more damaging than originally thought.
With that said, if Petrie/Westphal/Cousins/Tyreke were going to have to work through this issue sometime, I'd rather it be sooner in the team's development rather than later.
Hopefully once the dust all settles, we'll have everyone on the same page and can move forward to putting a winning basketball team together.
 
Even though I know about this Cousins incident, I have to say that I'm fine with the last shot. Of course it makes missing it far more damaging than originally thought.
With that said, if Petrie/Westphal/Cousins/Tyreke were going to have to work through this issue sometime, I'd rather it be sooner in the team's development rather than later.
Hopefully once the dust all settles, we'll have everyone on the same page and can move forward to putting a winning basketball team together.

The question is do they acknowledge the problem and work to fix it behind the scenes, or say Cousins is just a rookie completely acting out of line, punish him and move on.
 
The question is do they acknowledge the problem and work to fix it behind the scenes, or say Cousins is just a rookie completely acting out of line, punish him and move on.

I guess it comes down to what the problem is.

The reality of the situation is that winning cures a lot of ills. If Tyreke's shot goes down this incident doesn't even happen.

If we'd won all these games rather than closely losing them, then there wouldn't be a build-up of frustration by Cousins.

If we'd had a couple less TOs, a couple better shots, a couple better defensive efforts, we might not have to see the game go down to a last shot or Over-time.

We're right there, and the two players who are going to get us over the top are Evans and Cousins, and they are going to have to work together. And as they begin to start winning, it will make it easier to work together.

And this is precisely why I'm rooting for wins this year. These two guys have to learn to win, and the sooner they do that, the better it will be for both them and the team. Hopefully this issue can get resolved, we can start picking up some wins and roll into next season as a team built to make the play-offs.
 
Hey whaddya know! A nailbiting buzzerbeating tight loss to an elite team. Who would ever have expected that??

Well not really much else to say. People who don't watch these games will just see the record and assume we suck. This team does not suck right now. In fact I am going to make an outrageous statement and say the Kings, who haven't won in 5 games, are playing beter right now than half the teams in the league. We just can't close the deal. Makes us really prime candidates to break out however. Wihtout the talent you are jsut screwed. But when you prove night in and night out you have the talent to compete with the best, and jsut fail at the end, sooner or later you expect a breakthrough. Not tonight though.

Theme tonight: Bizarre/Disturbing "Body Art" . I put the term in quotes on purpose of course since I consider messing yourself to be sign of stupidity or being disturbed rather than a sign of artistic sensibilities.

Official Boxscore

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I hope there are some pretty girls in there! Like Angelina Jolie, talk about desecrating a piece of art.
 
alright, bumping this one up too as I have my puter back and most of the files copied back over. So this will be a rare do-two at once grades.
 
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