Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Kevin Durant 23pts 4reb 4ast
Travis Outlaw 24pts 5reb 4ast
When you have an Outlaw, who needs a Durant?
So...well, this was lost before the tip. But for about three quarters we put up a good fight, and you could see we really wanted to make this happen...somehow. Down three starters, and 2 of our 3 scorers though...
Boogie was brilliant for 3/4 and then faded badly at the end, got sloppy, or tired or something. Travis OUtlaw amusingly stepped forward with one of those Outlaw garbagetime of the season performances to be Cuz's wingman. Most, but not all (looking at you DWill, WTH?) of the other guys made plays here and there that we hung around. Got the lead down to 4 in the mid 3rd. And then Cuz and Outlaw went cold together, we had no other answers, and the lead rapidly ballooned out of control again. We gotta fix this this summer now, because you can see Cuz's frustration is not entirely aimed at the refs or opponents by this point.
4 to go now, and it will be almost a relief. Still the Consortium raises its tattered banner one more time here:
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Bajaden
Rainmaker
Capt. Factorial
Henkel
Boxscore
Stats: 37min 24pts (11-20, 1-6, 1-2) 5reb 4ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Outlaw ( A ) -- If Travis Outlaw doesn’t get an ‘A’ for this performance, what would he have to do to get one? Outlaw got the last minute start for Rudy Gay who didn’t play with some sort of back issue. With Thomas already out, this game could have gone much worse. Cousins was really good, but we know he’s really good. He’s usually really good. The Kings needed someone else to step up in Gay and Thomas’s absence, and Outlaw was really the only guy to do that. He was knocking down jumpers from all over the court early, including heavily contested fadeaway’s that Outlaw can and does hit more than he probably should because of his length. He would go on to actually do some uncharacteristic Travis Outlaw things. I’m pointing to the 4 assists, really, and he was able to rack some of those up with the drive and kick. As the game progressed his offensive game opened up, and in addition to the jumpers he started making a few plays at the rim, including some drives to the basket and two tip ins. His defense wasn’t as good, obviously, but it was OK considering the player he was tasked to defend. Durant is going to score. I mean, going into this game with the Kings he was on a 40 something game streak scoring 25 points or more and the Kings were able to hold him to 23. Of course, he didn’t play the fourth quarter, but he still played 31 minutes. When Outlaw was actually guarding Durant he did OK. The bigger issue was losing Durant (or Caron Butler) off the ball or in transition, which is something Outlaw always seems to struggle with. Considering the competition, the Kings lineup, the player he had to defend, and the load he had to carry, this was certainly one of Outlaws better games in a Kings uniform. He and Cousins kept the team in it as long as they could, but a loss here was inevitable. --Mass
Stats: 36min 11pts (3-8, 0-0, 5-7) 7reb 0ast 0stl 1blk 1TO
Thompson ( C+ ) -- Struggled early and had a tough time with Ibaka's quickness, but in typical JT fashion just kept plugging away and ended up with a productive effort. With our depleted roster JT had a few more opportunities on the offensive end and in the early going that wasn't a good thing. Lost the ball on his first attempt while trying to force his way across the lane. Ended the quarter with a air ball and then started the second quarter by getting his shot partially blocked on another forced attempt. His offensive highlight of the first half came on a nice drop off pass from McLemore as he rolled to the hoop for the basket and the foul. Outside of that play and a offesnive board just couldn't produce baskets for us against OKC inside or with his mid range jumper, which wasn't falling. On the defensive side after a pretty decent first quarter Jason began to struggle with Ibaka's quickness in the final minutes of his long first half run. Played better in the third as he managed to get himself to the line on a couple of driving layup attempts. Hit his only shot of the quarter, a mid range jumper, while doing a solid job of not allowing Ibaka the opportunity to drive on him. Added a couple of tough boards and some good rotation defense during this stretch as well. Didn't see much action in the fourth. He did have a nice block and recovery before heading to the bench for remainder of garbage time. Not surprisingly things didn't go well when he was trying to create for himself, but once he fell back into his normal role found ways to be productive as usual. --Henkel
Stats: 35min 24pts (10-24, 0-0, 4-6) 14reb 1ast 2stl 2blk 3TO
Cousins ( B+ ) -- For about the first 30 minutes of this one Cuz was the best player on the floor in this one, outshining the putative MVP, and heck, even outshining Travis Outlaw. After trying an early gallop down the lane for a power dunk that got swatted away in impressive fashion by Ibaka, first established the jumper from all angles and then began bulling his way back inside to get to the line -- no easy task on a night when the refs weren't calling much. But for a long spell thought he handled the physical play better than he normally does mentally -- when you're the bully on the block you have to relish that contact not complain about it, and while he wasn't happy, he wasn't letting it bother him either. Had 13pts 5reb by the end of the first quarter alone, and when he got back in the game he really turned up the physicality, jus muscling through Ibaka and Adams and doubles and anything else the Thunder were throwing at him. Also had a great hustle save of his own miss that got the ball back in and led to an OKC foul. Back to back bad pass turnovers in the late 2nd briefly helped take the shine off things, but he came back out in the third with some brilliant offensive stuff that finally forced OKC to call a timeout as we had cut the lead all the way down to 4 and both our star and our scrubs had that hop in their step like they believed they were going to make this happen. I don't think I would have A+'s him at that point, but you would have had a hard time chasing me off of a straight A. He was dominating one of the best teams in basketball, in a game they cared about, while surrounded by a terrible lineup of guys who couldn't keep the doubles off him. Unfortunately he was never the same after that timeout. Missed a shot, missed another. After hitting such spectacular shots earlier in the quarter, almost felt like he was getting too cute trying to make it happen again. Outlaw went cold at the same time, and so even though Cuz showed good awareness that he was cooling off and switched into passing mode, nobody he passed to hit anything. And all of a sudden our 4pt deficit ballooned up and within 6 minutes the game was entirely over. Cuz grabbed a few more rebounds, but never did hit another shot, and finally was pulled in the mid 4th with Malone whispering in his ear in what looked like an explanation because Cuz still wanted to fight. Probably telling him we needed him for tonight against the Blazers. One side note: in the last few games, and definitely in this one, I have started to see Cuz getting frustrated with his teammates' incompetence. A lot of grimaces and throwing his arms up when guys blow wide open kickout threes or can't catch passes at the rim, don't rotate on defense etc. I am reminded of why its always been said that great players struggle as coaches while roleplayers make good ones. The game comes easy to the greats, and its hard for them to understand why/how all the peons struggle with it. A subtle way this tanking and leaving him out there alone stuff can cause issues. Its probably time for this season to end now before the frustration builds too far. And we damn well better come back with a crew next year able to compete every night. --Brick
Stats: 39min 11pts (3-9, 1-4, 4-4) 8reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
McLemore ( C- ) -- Our own little Commando Cody had a really poor shooting night in the box score, but I think it really wasn't as bad as it looked - he missed a dunk where he didn't really try to hotdog it (it just rattled out somehow) and another layup where he drove right around Durant but then didn't take anything off of it at the rim, clanking it hard off the window. He hit a very good looking three and got two nice baskets at the rim, one on a coast-to-coast break and one big dunk off of a long offensive rebound, but in the early fourth we ran two plays to get him two wide open threes and he missed them both, putting his shooting percentage in the tank for the night. Ben had an interesting defensive night - there was a clear strategy to slump hard off of the corner shooter (which was, of course, never Durant). This was usually Ben's man, be it Sefolosha, Fisher, Lamb, or sometimes Butler. Ben's job was to drop all the way down into the paint and dare the Thunder to kick out to the shooter in the corner, which they NEVER did. EVER. That left Ben available for a bit of disruption in the paint, or to rush at a shooter up top whose man had left to double Durant. It worked OK, really, and it left Ben in position to have a great rebounding night with 8. But then, in the mid-fourth the Thunder changed their strategy and started running Lamb off of screens, the result being Lamb hitting 3 shots for 8 points in very short order to put the game out of reach. Ben's inability to get through the screens in the mid-fourth and his spotty shooting dropped his grade down a bit, but altogether he had a nice night - I was especially happy with his defense (and Malone's scheme) for 3+ quarters before it fell apart.--Capt.
Stats: 45min 7pts (3-14, 1-3, 0-0) 2reb 5ast 2stl 0blk 2TO
McCallum ( D+ ) -- I tried hard to make myself give Ray a C-, but I just in good conscious couldn't. So lets talk about the good things he did. Well, he made nice entry passes and he did have five assists. By my account, he should have had 12, maybe 13 assists. Unfortunately he kept passing the ball to people that couldn't shoot. Some that couldn't make wide open layups or dunks. I won't name any names. He also played pretty good defense, although he had his hands full trying to keep up with Jackson, who turned the corner on Ray a couple of times. It was probably a relief for him when Fisher came into the game. By the way, how about that pick Acy put on Fisher! Just seeing if your paying attention. Ray only had 2 turnovers, but for some reason, it felt like more. He balanced those with a couple of steals. Unfortunately, Ray's shot has left the building and took an early vacation. I've seen players go 3 for 14 before. Hell, I saw Tim Hardaway go something like 2 for 22 one night. Of course Timmy wasn't a rookie trying to make a lasting impression. Tonight's game isn't the lasting impression that Ray is looking for. I'll cut him a little slack because he's playing over 40 minutes a night, but he's definitely lost confidence in his shot. To the point where I thought he was reluctant to look for his shot. Remember how aggressive he was just a few games ago. He's young and he'll recover. Take heart Ray, only 4 more games left and then you can head to Hawaii or some other exotic place to forget about all this maddness. --Baja
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