Ok, let's get the obligatory Isaiah Thomas stuff out of the way right off the bat: the Kings are now 0-12 this season when Isaiah guns up 18 or more shots.
Now with that said, in no rational fashion could you blame this outcome on Isaiah. Cuz and Rudy were AWFUL. As in worst games of the year awful. I assume Gay was still not feeling 100%, but Cuz was just out of sorts all night. it was physical, there were no calls, but he was simply not into the game. If he was distracted in Boston, tonight he didn't even show up. I have his grade tonight, and you can guess what its going to be.. Meanwhile JT didn't board until late in the game, Acy was too small to guard their bigs, Thornton hit both his shots in the 1st, then was reabducted and replaced by his pod person again, Ben had a few moments but still can't dribble and still stubbornly refuses to guard his man in the corner. So Isaiah took another 24 shots, and we predictably lost. But I don't even know who else would have taken them if not him. We simply did not show up tonight. So if we want to talk about IT tonight, that's fine. He's clearly not good enough to make an NBA team win with his gunning. But he didn't lose this for us tonight. He just wasn't good enough to win it for us. It was a dreadful performance for everybody else.
P.S. Tonight we welcome a guest grader who was originally going t be part of the regular crew. Padrino gets the SFs on the night. Lucky dog.
Your Consoritum Graders tonight:
Bricklayer
Uncia03
Bajden
MassachusettsKingsFan
Guest Grader: Padrino
Boxscore
Stats: 32min 5pts (2-11, 0-2, 1-2) 4reb 4ast 0stl 1blk 4TO
Gay ( D+ ) -- I was originally slated to become a regular contributor for the Grading Consortium this season, but I'm teaching evening classes at Yuba College a couple of days out of the week this semester, and I've got the occasional artistic commitment on other weeknights, so I regularly miss more Kings games than I would like, though I do my best to catch up via DVR. That said, I did offer myself up as a possible guest grader when the need arises and when my schedule permits, and on my first official grading assignment, I drew the SF's. Ordinarily, this would have been a nice opportunity to say some positive things about a position the Kings' front office has done well to bolster this season, but alas, tonight was not the night. Undeniably, Rudy Gay had one of his poorest performances as a King. He was reportedly still battling flu symptoms, and it was quite visible on the court. He looked incredibly lethargic early, as if he was moving in slow motion. He bricked his first jumper of the night, a contested baseline pop in isolation. He bricked his second jumper, as well, another contested shot. He moved the ball well in the first, though, and he made a nice athletic move to the basket to tip-in a missed shot by Demarcus Cousins. But he continued clanking long two's, a discouraging throwback to his inefficient Toronto days. All night long, both Gay and Demarcus Cousins were operating in iso, and it wasn't pretty. You'd certainly prefer to put those two in a position to score some easy baskets, but they're also strong one-on-one talents, and it was very disappointing to see them flailing about as if they'd never attempted to shoot under defensive pressure in their lives. Things certainly didn't improve for Gay in the second quarter. He set an illegal screen to start things off, and airballed a three-pointer a couple of possessions later. He continued passing the ball well, though, and hit Jason Thompson on a nice feed after breaking down the defense with his dribble. The very next play, he spotted JT in position down low, and fed it to him in a smooth post-up situation. In the third, Gay remained an ineffective presence on offense. He committed an offensive foul early in the quarter, and missed an opportunity for an and-1 on the fast break, going 1-2 at the free throw line. Elsewhere, Trevor Ariza and Martell Webster were made mostly invisible, and some of that is a credit to Gay's length on defense. My notes began to trail off as the game got away from the Kings in the fourth, but Rudy simply never rounded into form. Ultimately, this was a D+ effort for Gay, considering the bar he's set for himself since arriving in Sacramento. The Kings need him to score, particularly on a night when big Cuz is playing so poorly. Gay very effectively kept the ball moving when it was clear that his own offense wasn't going to cut it, he played solid if unspectacular defense against the Wizards' mediocre SF's, and he collected his usual handful of rebounds, but he also turned the ball over a few too many times, and he failed to get to the free throw line, where he might have had an opportunity to get himself going. It was good to see him on the court after missing the Kings' previous game, but one has to wonder if he should have just shut it down and worked towards getting himself back to 100% health. --Padrino
Stats: 30min 6pts (3-4, 0-0, 0-2) 9reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( C ) -- Jason Thompson might have been the Kings best big man tonight, and he didn’t even play particularly well. I was disappointed in both DeMarcus Cousins and Jason Thompson’s work defensively inside, and neither guy really had it going on the glass either. Thompson spent some time on both Nene and Gortat tonight, and at times his defense looked ok. He got burned on a couple pick and rolls where he was to late recovering back to his man, and was frequently late as a help defender. Nene also had him guessing in the post and off the dribble more than you’d like. It’s hard to pin that all on Jason, as the communication didn’t look very good tonight, and without knowing the Kings defensive schemes it’s hard to say how often he was out of position, but it sure felt like it happened quite a bit. He had one really nice full court lob pass over the defense to Isaiah Thomas in transition, which IT finished with an open layup. And there was one stretch in the second quarter where he put in back-to-back buckets, but his offense wasn’t really a factor tonight. I just have a tough time blaming a lot of tonight’s loss on Thompson because he is such a non-factor offensively, and this one was more about Gay and Cousins not contributing than anything else. If JT had this kind of game with these kind of numbers in a winning performance he’d likely earn a better grade, but he didn’t stand out or doing anything out of the ordinary to get this team on the right track. I still thought he was one of the few players who brought hustle and energy to the game tonight, and he had one really nice offensive rebound and dunk that looked like it came from some kind of anger with how the game was going. I thought he cared, and with his family in attendance I’m sure he was disappointed in tonight’s game, but he doesn’t really have the talent to make up for what the Kings were missing in this one.-- Mass
Stats: 39min 14pts (3-16, 0-0, 8-9) 12reb 2ast 2stl 2blk 4TO
Cousins ( F ) -- ok, let's get the good news out of the way: DeMarcus eventually worked his way into another double to continue his injury interrupted steak. Ok, end of good news. Now for the bad: just about everything else about how he played tonight. It wasn't just no energy. Was even beyond just no fire. he seriously looked like something was on his mind and he didn't wan tot be out there. Even when he got the ball in the early going half the time he'd just pass it over to Isaiah to gun up something else. When he did try to take the shot, it lacked conviction, and there were almost none of those great second and third effort plays he has almost every night. He made probably the very best play of his entire evening in the first couple of minutes when he came up with a tip slam follow of a missed JT FT. But other than that...it just wasn't there. And whether the as a cause or an effect he was badly out of sorts, really unloaded on Thornton for a bad defensive play late in the first half. I was trying oto interpret his digusted looks, seeing if they had a particular target, but could come to no conclusions. A few times in the second half there were little bursts of life for a play or two. He did grab a lot of boards per usual and we won the board battle, but not many of them were fought for. He's DeMarcus Cousins, he's going to make some plays, he's going to fill up the statsheet and double double even on bad nights. But tonight he in no sense led us, unless it be right to the grave. All that stuff you normally count on was not there. The Wizards played him physically, but I don't think he made a single tough finish on the night. Half the time when faced with the defense he threw up almost giveup shots. Saying he didn't look like he wanted to be out there was not hyperbole. Don't know what the issue was, but I don't think it started on the court here. He said he was distracted in Boston, he played worse than distracted here. Maybe something is going on. I could wildly speculate, but it would be nothing but just that. All I know is he played like crap, right up there in the running for his worst performance of the year, and it just did not even look like the same guy. So Fs away! Sigh. --Brick
Stats: 23min 6pts (2-7, 2-4, 0-0) 1reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Thornton ( D ) -- Not a good game for Marcus. To be honest, he didn't have many opportunities to score. He took 7 shots hitting only 2. And was 2 for 4 from downtown. He didn't touch the ball offensively until the 9 minute mark of the 1st quarter, when he hit a three. He also made a beautiful pass to Thomas right under the basket, but Thomas missed a point blank layup. Shortly thereafter, he came off a screen and hit another three. And that was about it for Marcus as far as scoring went. So I can't fault him too much offensively. He wasn't great, but he wasn't terrible either. But I can fault him for his defense on Beal, which was nonexistent at times. Beal was either beating him off the dribble, or he was leaving Beal wide open out at the three point line.. After a short stint in the 3rd quarter, when he left Beal wide open twice in a row, Malone had enough, and Thornton never saw the floor again the rest of the game. He did make a nice block on Ariza under the basket,which was his defensive highlight of the night. Marcus wan't the only one that played poor defense, but he was one of the worse. I'd like to think that perhaps he was still dealing with the after effects of his bruised hip. Hopefully he'll be better tuesday! --Baja
Stats: 43min 30pts (11-24, 0-1, 8-8) 3reb 8ast 3stl 0blk 4TO
Thomas ( B ) -- Chicken or the Egg, that seems to be a common theme with IT these days. When Cousins and Rudy were out IT took a look of shots with declining efficiency, and the question has been, does he need to take the shots because he’s the only person who can score or does he need to work harder to get other players better scoring opportunities. With Cousins and Rudy combined to shoot 5/27 for a miserable 18.5%, the question is what was IT and the rest of the team going to do to try and pick up the slack. IT took a lot of shots, 24 in this one, which were 8 more than the next King in Cousins. The good news is that he wasn’t horribly inefficient at 46.8%, the bad news is that he was only 4-12 in the 2nd half, which basically indicates what went on with IT in that as he tried to take over the game he forced more shots which hurt both his efficiency and his team’s ability to make a late run. Watching IT play against Wall was interesting because if you look at the stat-line it’s pretty clear that IT had the better individual game, but as sometimes the case (See Cousins 31-16 on 58% last game) the stat line can many times be deceiving. In this particular case, Wall played a great facilitating game even though he didn’t end up with a lot of assists. Anyone watching the game saw Wall make the PnR pass to hurt the Kings defense over and over again. On the same front, the very last play of the 2nd half IT got an assist finding Rudy for the shot, which gave IT his 3rd assist, and there were only 2 passes that he made that could have also been counted as an assist in the 1st half. So after 19 minutes of play in the 1st half he had only made 5 passes which might have resulted in an assist. The 2nd quarter was both better and worse for IT. He ended the game with 8 assists which means that he got 5 assists in the 2nd half as well as having 5 more passes that could have resulted in assists, so he doubled his play-making attempts in the 2nd half as opposed to the 1st half, which is much better. But there were some issues in the 4th quarter as he only had 1 assist or assist-making pass in the last 5 minutes of the game, and that one assist was one where he left his feet in traffic and managed to get the ball to Cousins before getting blocked, so it was more of a bail-out pass then something set up with-in the offense. And of course, as mentioned his shooting was very poor in the 2nd half as he went 4-12 and isn’t that much better than the entire shooting performances by Cousins (3-16) or Gay (2-11). Another thing that gets mentioned a lot is that IT seems to sometimes get the ball across the half-court then hold on to it, and finally put up a shot with-out anyone touching the ball. I decided to re-watch the entire game with the express purpose of watching both IT and Wall and see how many times they basically brought it up and then put up a shot, got to the FT line, or had a bad TO late in the shot-clock with-out any of their teammates touching it. For this purpose I did not include plays like when IT leaked out and JT found him for the fast-break lay-up. So any time they touched the ball and put it up, but it seemed as if it were in the flow of the offense, I did not include in my count. So here are the results.
In the game IT brought it up from the half court and then made a play for himself with-out involving his teammates 16 times, and what really hurt is that in the 4th quarter he did it 5 times where he went 0-4 and had a turn over. (Remember he only had 1 assist and 1 assist attempt (for a total of 2 passes) in the last 5 minutes of play) To compare Wall, who is known to be a bit more of a scoring PG and is the Wizard’s number one option, went 10 possessions where he didn’t include his teammates, including 4 times in the 4th quarter where he went 1-2, with a free-throw line attempt, and a turn-over. The next thing that needs to be looked at are the other players out on the court. IT put up 24 shots, making 11 of them. Cousins and Rudy put up 27 shots making 5 of them. (Yikes) The rest of the team put up 31 shots, making 11 of them, so slightly worse shooting than IT. (42% vs 46%) So it looks as if IT might have been better served getting some of the other players involved, especially towards the latter part of the game as he only made 1 FG in the entire 4th quarter, and he certainly could have found teammates for better scoring opportunities.
One final thought I should mention. Both Cousins and Gay really struggled in this one, and it should be part of the PGs duties to try and get them easy baskets if possible. As mentioned there were 7 passes that IT made which could have counted as assists if they had been converted. Four of those were to Cousins, but only one was for Rudy who ended up going to the FT line, which prevented IT from getting the assist. With Rudy obviously struggling, it would have been nice to IT set him up more for some cleaner looks. I gave Cousins a B+ for his 31 and 16 on 58% shooting in the last game, so I feel equally comfortable keeping IT out of an A grade for his 30 and 8 on 46% shooting mostly because he failed to run the team down the stretch (Don’t forget that with 7 minutes to go we were with-in 5 points and IT had a 2-on-1 with Cousins against Wall which he threw away) and instead decided to take-and-miss shots rather than getting teammates involved. It’s very clear that IT was tired by the end of the game, but if he’s tired out there and if Malone keeps running him heavy minutes, then he’s got to make plays for his teammates rather than taking the easy way out and pulling up for his own jumper. In no way did we lose this game because of IT, but if IT had been more of a facilitator in the 4th quarter perhaps we could have eeked out a win despite the horrific play of Cousins & Rudy. I don’t think it’s in his DNA to be that type of player, but we need someone out there to help others get easy baskets, especially when things aren’t falling for our two best scoring options.-- Uncia
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