Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Ok...anybody who hasn't been catching these games...you should. Its turned into an all out war in California, and while we continue to come up just short in the battles, its been close, competitive, and downright nasty. Of course a lot of the credit for that has to go to the big guy in the middle who plays with an old school pre-corporate NBA edge, and has been inspiring other teams to flat out get dirty in an attempt to stop it. Its 90s basketball, and the team is beginning to take on that flavor. Our guards can't defend a traffic cone, we threw the ball just all over the court tonight in ridiculous fashion, but we still turned it into a playoff intensity physical war, that unfortunately got the refs involved in the outcome. We even relied upon a mythical Marcus Thornton sighting to turn the tide. Still, these are fun losses that throw an open question mark on the front office's presumed tanking strategy. Simply put in order to tank, we need to quit playing so hard. Our spirit would need to be broken so we quit. Otherwise we're going to start breaking through. You can see Cousins taking very visible leadership of this team, gathering them all up like a flock of geese after the game to high five them and hustle them off the court in us against the world style. Do we really want to see that fade back into demoralized resignation? Tough call. We're not good enough yet. The big guy needs help. And yet...we seem ready to be a serious team, if only we could add a serious talent or two.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Bajaden
Capt. Factorial
MassachusettsKingsFan
Boxscore
Stats: 21min 4pts (1-3, 0-1, 2-2) 7reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Williams ( C+ ) -- Definitely not the follow-up performance that we might have all liked but played a decent game in what would be considered limited minutes. Picked up two quick fouls and then sat till mid-way through the second quarter. He played the majority of the 3rd quarter, but with 3 minutes left went to the bench and never saw the floor again as Salmons took up most of the SF minutes in this one. He only took 3 shot attempts in his 20 minutes of play and his only conversion was on a fast-break dunk. He had 2 misses, one of which was an attack from the baseline where he wasn’t able to finish and the other was a wide open corner 3pt shot which he missed badly. During the game Malone tried to get him the ball isolated on the left wing three different times with not the best of results. The first time the entry pass was picked off as Ben didn’t do a good job with the pass. The next time DWill got fouled, but prior to the shot. And the last time, DWill lost the handle as he spun off of Barnes which resulted in a TO. I think that the Kings can find success there, but it would probably be better to have someone other than Ben try those entry passes going forward. He showed that he can clearly play defense against both Barnes and Green. He didn’t allow any points scored against him while he was out there on the floor, though the Warriors didn’t really need offense from either of them as Thompson and Curry were killing us. He was also really strong on the boards, grabbing 7 rebounds in his 20 minutes of play. I don’t think the Kings allowed an offensive rebound while he was playing with Cousins and JT and that line-up should continue to perform really well on the boards due to their size and length. He didn’t hurt us in this game but he didn’t provide a ton of help, but he gets the + to his C in this one due to the good rebounding and the fact that he didn’t get scored on while he was out on the floor. --Uncia
Stats: 28min 10pts (4-8, 0-0, 2-2) 7reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Thompson ( B ) -- got off to the good start to this one and had his season averages by the end of the first quarter. Good aggressive post banging in the early going but lacking touch as usual. And this time the contributions weren't all on one side of the ball either as he was also playing some strong quickfooted defense against David Lee, who never was a factor in this one. Was our first starter brought back in to stabilize a bench crew throwing the ball all over the indian burial ground, but did not fully settle until the other starters joined him. Provided some important little minutes at both ends when Cousins was out of the game on the bench. Came out to start the third not as effective, and when PPat took over and simply refused to miss, JT's late minutes got scarce not because of anything he hadn't done himself, but because another guy was there to do it even better. --Brick
Stats: 21min 24pts (10-13, 0-0, 4-5) 6reb 2ast 2stl 0blk 3TO
Cousins ( A- ) -- What an incredibly eventful game for DeMarcus Cousins despite only playing 21 minutes on the night due to foul trouble. When he was on the court he was unstoppable. He started the game hitting jumper after jumper, electing to play his offense on the perimeter due to the size advantage Bogut has on him inside. This is the right strategy assuming Cousins is hitting his jump shots, and tonight he was. In fact, he didn’t score a single point in the paint until late in the first half. Things sort of spiraled out of control from there. I thought Cousins did a great job weathering the Dirty-Bogut storm until the refs missed a pretty blatant cheap shot from Bogut towards the end of the second quarter when he elbowed Cousins in the head area behind the play. I don’t totally blame the refs for missing it. I mean, that is kind of what Bogut was going for, and this is something Cousins is going to continue to deal with because it is the only way to stop him. This understandably set Cousins off, and it would contribute to the technical foul he received in the second half. Cousins spent a lot of time on the bench, picking up a plethora of fouls (some legit, some flops - the usual). He didn’t return till about 8 minutes were left in the 4th quarter and played a solid stretch of basketball until he was called for an offensive foul, sort of returning the favor to Bogut with a much less blatant elbow upstairs. This was actually called a flagrant foul, which got Cousins riled up again (it would be reviewed and changed to a regular foul) and Malone decided to give him a few minutes on the bench to cool down. It was a risky play by Malone because there were only about 3 minutes left in the game at the time, and I DO question whether or not Malone left him on the bench too long. When Malone finally put Cousins back into the game he came through in a big way, taking Bogut 1 on 1 in the post for two straight buckets, matching the scoring Curry was doing on the other end. This was a fairly tough game to grade because Cousins was so efficient, but his time on the court was so limited. He was a game-high +19 on the night (second highest King was Thomas with a +4) and well on his way to an A+ type game. He shot an incredible 10-13, he was clutch, he shut Bogut down on the other end, he did everything a superstar is supposed to do, he just couldn’t stay on the court. Having Cousins in this game for 35+ minutes could have easily been the difference between a win and a loss, and that is largely the reason for the ‘-‘ next to his A. He continues to lead this team, HIS team, and that has been fun to watch. --Mass
Stats: 18min 4pts (1-5, 0-2, 2-2) 0reb 0ast 2stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( D ) -- A lot of this game was "Almost" for Ben. He almost finished two alley oops, but didn't. Both would have been tough, since the pass wasn't perfect in either case. He started the game by missing a wide open corner three. He then turned the ball over with a terrible bounce pass that never go there. His one moment of glory, was when he blew past his defender on the left baseline and layed it in. His only other points came off two freethrows when he was fouled away from the ball and the Warriors were in the penalty. Defensively, he has some good moments, and several bad moments. On one occasion in the 3rd quarter he got held trying to fight through a screen (no call) and Klay Thompson hit one of his many three's of the night. In the 1st quarter, he left Thompson to double down, and got burned by another three. At this point, its a learning process, and I did see some progress defensively. But he has a long way to go. He didn't get a lot of looks offensively, and I counted three occasions where he was moving without the ball, exploded to the left baseline corner, got a look from Vasquez, and was ignored. Could be a result from the last game where he got the ball several times, passed up the shot, and dribbled into traffic to either pass the ball, or take a tougher shot. If your PG gets you the ball when your open, take the shot! Or maybe next time, well, you get the picture. --Baja
Stats: 14min 6pts (2-8, 0-0, 2-2) 1reb 3ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Vasquez ( D- ) -- Greivis shot 2-8 and sat for the final 18 minutes of the game. There's not much more to say. His passing was nearly non-existent in the first half (two assists, though one was a lob to Williams) and while Curry wasn't burning him left and right (scoring only 7 points off him) some of this was due to some easy shots that Steph missed. In the third quarter, Vasquez started to move the ball better, chalking up two assists (I think the box score cheated him one) and setting up three other missed shots before putting together two turnovers on an attempted lob and then another bad pass, which resulted in him getting yanked and IT's energy in the fourth simply did not afford Greivis a chance to get back in the game. Given his poor shooting tonight, there was little to approve of. We definitely need more from our starting PG.--Capt.
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