Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
One last time, because if that crap ref isn't overruled, this was the last time we get to see Boogie this season. Hell of a season big guy, no matter what they say.
Ok, for those who did not get to watch...another one of our entertaining and eventful late season games. This featuring:
-- the return of Isaiah Thomas, magically
-- Boogie going off in huge and impressive 35pts 15reb 6ast fashion, and getting in a shootout with Kevin Love who only dropped 43-11 the other way.
-- both our rookies stepping forward late in the game as Boogie's primary help (as well as the primary beneficiaries of his excellent passes to beat doubles and, ahem, lead the break as a 6'11" PG
-- and then for the sucky capper, with 1:13 seconds to go, following a wild scrum under the hoop involving 5 players, and ending with a foul against OUtlaw, Boogie is slow to get up, goes to his position alongside the free throw lane, and waves his hand in disgust. Tweet! Technical foul of the most unnecessary fashion. Not unnecessary for Boogie to get. unnecessary for that ****ing ref to call. In that situation? Not only could he have given the game to the Wolves for a nothing, but in the process he blew Cousins for his first technical foul in two months, which, if it strands, and we WILL be challenging it, would mean automatic suspension for Cuz for his 16th of the year. And no Cuz in the final game of the season. Also one last little excuse to deny him as too immature yadda yadda to deserve post season honors. We'll see. But that ref wouldn't want to run into me in the airport right now.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Capt. Factorial
Boxscore
Stats: 40min 13pts (4-9, 1-2, 4-7) 4reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Williams ( B- ) -- So it was time to play the Timberwolves and therefore time for Williams to get aggressive and attack his old team. There wasn’t any single stretch where Williams looked great in this one, but he played a lot of minutes with Rudy being out, and he spent the majority of them picking his moments to cut hard to the rim. And his teammates kept their heads up and found him a number of times, giving him a chance to score close to the bucket. He didn’t finish a whole lot of his shots, but he went to the line more than any other King except Cousins, which is a testament to his aggressiveness. He took a couple of jumpers, and didn’t hit many of them, but he did hit the most important one which was set up by Cousins who took it down the court and found him open during the big run in the 3rd that the Kings put together to get back into the game. His rebounding was pretty poor with only 4 rebounds in his 40 minutes, but it is slightly mitigated due to the fact that he was guarding Brewer almost the entire time and Brewer spent most of his time running down the court whenever he could which pulled Williams away from any offensive rebounding opportunities. Brewer finished up with 0 rebounds which should indicate how far away he was from the ball for boarding opportunities, which did impact Williams’ rebounding as well. On defense he stayed with Brewer pretty well and Brewer obliged by poor shooting through-out the night. He did let Brewer get the angle to the basket a couple of times though. So not the sort of dynamic powerful game that we’ve seen him put up against his former team, but still a better game than we’ve seen of him lately. --Uncia
Stats: 27min 6pts (3-8, 0-0, 0-0) 11reb 1ast 2stl 0blk 2TO
Thompson ( B- ) -- now you never know who is going to be "hurt" next for us, and Reggie Evans grabbed 14 and 14 the night before and looked pretty damn fine. But even if healthy, a smart coach might have started Jason Thompson in this one because JT has done a real nice job on KLove this year. And for most of this one that was kinda true again. I say kinda only because there were relatively few plays where he came out and just smothered him, but his mere presence seemed to throw Love off. We even started the game trying to go at Love with JT on offense, but resuls were mixed and we soon found a far more prolific big guy to feed. JT would finish the game with only 6 points. But he was hustling and scrapping and very strong on the boards in the first half, grabbing 9 before the break and basically dominating Kevin Love on the glass while holding him to something like 5-13 shooting. Can't complain too much about that. But things fell off after half as Jason quit boarding, got into foul trouble that took him out until the late game, and when he came back after a good initial follow tip, not only did he not get the Love monster that the Acy/Outlaw "PF" combo had created back under control, he seemed unfocused "dumb JT" again, and committed two bad offensive fouls that hurt our late game chances and fouled him right out of the game in about 3min. So it was a tale of two halves here, and its too bad we could not have had first half JT in both halves or we might have won this one going away. The change was distinct when he went off the floor, and all of a sudden Love felt perfectly comfortable attacking the tweeners who took JT's place inside. --Brick
Stats: 37min 35pts (13-21, 0-0, 9-13) 15reb 6ast 1stl 3blk 6TO
Cousins ( A ) -- It's fairly rare that one play can overshadow an entire game's worth of work, but that was definitely the case with Cousins tonight. In the late fourth quarter, with the game hotly contested, Cousins got into a scrum on the floor for a loose ball. The Wolves ended up winning the scrum and Outlaw was called for a foul. Cousins, apparently upset about the physicality of the scrum stood up, waved him arm a tiny bit in what could be interpreted as the direction of one of the officials, and said the cowpatty word, to get immediately T'ed up. Cousins had previously been stuck on 15 Ts for well over a month, and had vowed to his team that he wouldn't receive the next technical - the one that would make him miss a game by league rule. Well, he didn't do much, but he did enough, and now his availability in our final game against Phoenix is in serious question. As a matter of course the Kings will be sending the tech footage to the league office and arguing that the T be rescinded, but I wouldn't be too optimistic about it. One the bright side, despite the fact that he was visibly distraught, Big Cuz pulled it together, and with the Kings only up two he dropped a ridiculous baseline drive on the Wolves that he finished with a dunk with 24.2 seconds left - putting the Kings up four and basically sealing the game. It was a moment where after making a bad mistake he manned up and put the team on his back and brought us to a win, and despite the fact that we'll likely lose him for Wednesday, it was very good to see. Outside of that, ho-hum, just a another 35/15 game from the best center in the league. He wasn't perfect - he had trouble containing Gorgui Dieng (Gorgui Dieng?!?) in the first half, his six turnovers (four off bad passes) were ugly and he relied a bit too heavily on his jumper considering that the Wolves had no answer for him in the paint, but overall he was fantastic. He recorded three blocks (though one was clearly a goaltend) and six assists, five of those in the third when he went on a passing tear. Where would we be without him? --Capt.
Stats: 39min 19pts (6-11, 3-6, 4-5) 3reb 2ast 0stl 2blk 1TO
McLemore ( A- ) -- hey hey! Ben finally won a matchup vs. Kevin Martin (who looked awful and scored 0pts in 18min before Adelman had seen enough). For Ben himself two things happened: first Big Cuz found him again and again as an outlet when Cuz was being doubled, and as the man standing open in the corner when Cuz was leading the break(!), and more critically than just being found, Ben hit a good percentage of those open kicks. Absolutely critical skill for anybody who's going to play that position across from Cuz. And then the other thing was sporadic aggression trying to score off the dribble or on the break. There were some misadventures there. Late in the first quarter got a favorable matchup against Hummel, tried to drive and threw a terrible crosscourt pass out of bounds to absolutely nobody. Then dropped too far off of Hummel and watched him drain a three on us the other way, a play that actualy caused Malone to call a timeout and bench him for Outlaw. But there were also some strong plays. Got one to go with a fugly +1 on the break through Kevin. Was right online with the halfcourt buzzer beater at halftime, but off the back rim. In the third while he was having problems with Mbah a Moute's strength, he got two threes on Cousins kicks, a hustle block back at the rim, and a legitimately nice power drive along the baseline (I say that because if you listen to Grant and Jerry everytime Ben dribbles twice in a row without it going off his shoelaces its a great drive, but this one truly was nice. Professional. Body and ball control and even used his body to shield the shot. best shot of the night for him). Rounded out his scoring when he was intentionally fouled with 12 seconds to go and rattled both of them in to put us up 4 and help us secure this one. So, this was a professional SG effort. it wasn't amazing by NBA standards, but it was certainly strong enough and professional enough by Ben standards to deserve a late season A of some sort I think (and hence forcing me to bump up the Cuz grade because let's not get confused here -- Ben owed Cuz half his paycheck tonight). --Brick
Stats: 30min 14pts (6-13, 1-5, 1-2) 3reb 4ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Thomas ( C ) -- suddenly, when it was safe to win, Isaiah was back. Odd.
And for the first few minutes of this one it looked like he might celebrate his return with an explosive night against the anti-matter version of him in Rubio. First shot back was an awkward off balance hook...a 5'9" PG hook. And it went in. And in the next couple of minutes he followed it with two quick darts down the lane. But while he was back, we remained invested in McCallum too, and even with the quick start IT was out by mid quarter so Ray could get more time. When he returned it was to play alongside McCallum in the early second, in a lineup that initially did not work at all before half. Then had an odd reaction to Cousins' return in the mid 2nd as he immediately took the ball away and bam bam bam forced up three classic IT me shots ignoring the big guy, and bricked two of them and got the third blocked. meanwhile Barea was lighting it up the other way. Actually caused Malone to call a timeout to straighten things out. And from that point on, really the entire rest of the game, IT was largely a non-factor either way. Was not creating many shots, and he proved to be a less reliable kickout option for Cuz than either of the rookies, missed several open threes , and was forcing a bit in the third and having some fumbles. Its impossible to read too much into a PGs defense when they are playing Rubio as Rubio scored 0pts...but dished out 11 assists, which is more what he wants to do anyway. The second IT/Ray pairing worked better than it had before half, but Ray seemed to be the one thriving in it more than OT. Down the stretch finally hit abig three at the 4:30 mark, the only one he hit on the night. But followed it with a bad pass turnover at the 3:30 mark, and then he fouled Love on the elbow on a three point attempt at the 2:00 mark. Call it rust, but tonight It was only dynamic for the few opening minutes of the night, but still helped anyway by giving us an extra ballhandler and NBA level guard that we haven't had for weeks.--Brick
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