Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Grading becomes tough around this time every year. At least for this franchise. If I'd chosen to take up this mantle for the Mavs a dozen years back this would have been the 12th straight year where I'd be slowly morphing the grades into a consideration of who was peaking for the playoffs, and who was going into them cold.
Well, we aren't peaking for much of anything. And I used this joke a week or two ago, but please, this is exactly the sort of thing they used as an excuse to can Malone, except the Malone collapses were against better teams and we fought harder to stop them right down to the wire. These losses though...besides Boogie who himself finally lost his cool over this crap, who on this roster can you feel good about right now? Its just been a scorched earth display of incompetence, softness, lack of heart and confidence. Our young SG doesn't show up 3 out of every 4 nights, our old PG seems spiraling out of control making more and more and more stupid errors, our scrappy hustling backup SF has quit producing at all, our #2 weapon won't play defense, our 2nd round pick starting by default PG can't run offense when squeezed, the undersized PF we signed for $25mil two years ago does almost nothing, gets no minutes, and may not have much left...hey, at least DWill has good offensive stretches under this system right? Oh, and Stauskas was our best SG.
There's no joy in this, but hey, when the going gets tough, the tough...hang in there and deliver them Fs. If I could hand out detention I would.
I also see no godly reason not to just do Girls. Oh, and a Girls theme? How about we find Sim a girlfriend? Or 3.0 a mascot for our Indian outreach? Accordingly: Bollywood Babes it is.
Boxscore
Stats: 15min 2pts (1-2, 0-0, 0-0) 1reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
Casspi ( D ) -- so no Rudy for this one, have to start Omri instead, and you're thinking ok maybe we gain in scrap and its a chance for Omri to get going. Maybe? Er...thanks Omri! Instead we got...well, virtually nothing. There were a few attempts to be a passer early. He jumped in the air along the baseline on one attempt for aturnover, but got another one threw to Cuz for a dunk. And...well, and nothing. And played some sloppy D I suppose. In the early 3rd during his second stint Cuz returned the passing favor and Omri got his only score on a layin. A couple of plays later blew by Pierce on the wing, was on his way for a layin, and then a darting guard came over and slapped the ball away to prevent him from doubling his night's point total. Meanwhile Pierce heated up in the 3rd while we collapsed, and while not all of it was against Omri, the parts of it that were left you shaking your head as Omri seemed to be trying, but just doing all the little things wrong. Taking the wrong angle, not anticipating, turning his head...Just wouldn't know where to start in cleaning that up. Karl started by removing him from the game.
Sherlyn Chopra
Stats: 19min 8pts (4-6, 0-0, 0-0) 1reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Landry ( C+ ) -- scored in a variety of ways, doing almost all his damage in the first quarter. Got a hook, ran the floor for a layup. His other score would come on the very first play of the 3rd with a little jumper. And that was pretty much the extent of his contributions. Our starting forwards tonight combined for 2 rebounds in 34 combined minutes. With DWill flying off the bench with another 1 rebound in 33 minutes, our forwards were completely bleeping worthless in helping the big guy in there. At least his particular one did a little scoring, although not really in the ways or at the times to draw much defensive attention to himself. Drew Gooden, his main opposition, didn't really pay much attention to him, and had exactly reverse types of numbers -- Gooden did not shoot or score, he just gobbled boards where Landry was barely competitive. Late in his stint Landry got caught guarding some Pierce, and just not quick enough anymore, despite Pierce aging in dog years.
Sameera Reddy
Stats: 30min 30pts (9-17, 0-0, 12-16) 6reb 5ast 0stl 1blk 3TO
Cousins ( B+ ) -- despite the big numbers, this was kind of the tired game you expected after the monster Philadelphia effort. What really keyed the game for Cuz was that his jumper was just flat on from the opening moments of the game. And as he splashed in one after another it really messed up the Wizards apparent plan of just throwing as many beefy bodies as they could out there underneath the hoop to bang with Cuz. But Cuz's legs weren't entirely shot, and while not rebounding until late ( a problem with Casspi and Landry giving us nothing, less of one with JT or Reggie out there with him) he still had enough oomph to come up with a posterizing block on his pal Wall, and once the Wizards started reacting to his jumpers to start rumbling inside for dunks and free throws, including a big alley oop on a nicely designed and run play to close the half. leaving him at 21pts, or 60 total in his last 6 quarters of action at that point. thing was it was 21pts....1reb, and something like 3 assists. The thing that plagued him all night long though was fouls, and maybe some of that was fatigue too. because I thought all but 1 of them probably were fouls, and Cuz arguing them so vociferously..it was like big guy...just stop doing what you are doing and there won't be a foul. But it was just a little sloppy, taking random risks, some that worked, some that didn't. Cuz was dominating the game, but it never really felt as dialed in as all that. And then in the 4th he picked up his 5th foul when Stauskas turned a great play into a terrible one, leaving Cuz back alone having to try to stop a Wizards break. I think he added a technical there too. And then picked up his 6th on what clearly was a foul Cuz, if you are listening, after he ran down a long rebound, led the break, and really should have, in a more controlled moment, dumped it off to Ben I think. Instead he tried to take it in himself, a charge, and he was gone. But not without really flipping out at the refs and having to be held back by his teammates, one of whom, I forget who, looked back at the ref and put up one hand with kind of an eyeroll and headshake, like, no need to T him, we'll take care of this. Anyway, I interpret a lot of the ref fighting after half as just terrible frustration not only with his foul trouble, but of course with another collapse he could not arrest when he just wanted to come out and thump his old college buddy. Is that really too much to ask? Still put in 30pts in 30min, but my lord does he need help. Sans Collison AND Gay you look around and are just blindly hoping for...you don;t even know what.
Ayesha Takia -- no that's not a photoshop
Stats: 28min 7pts (2-10, 1-7, 2-2) 4reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
McLemore ( D- ) -- this tease thing with Ben is getting old. He's like a dowdy nun who every week or two heads down to the beach, drops the habit, and shows off a supermodel's body as she lays out tanning in a string bikini, then gets dressed and goes back to the nunnery to hide out again. I think this one had to be better than the Philly game...kinda. I mean, in Philly you weren't even sure he was on the court. Here, he kinda tried, kinda, and just failed. On our very first possession he got out on the break, got fouled, and hit the FTs. It was all downhill after that. Forced a dumb three off his dribble . Lost Beal on defense repeatedly, fortunately Beal started the game trying to have a suck off with Ben. (hmm...that actually came out sounding wrong, but you know what I meant -- they were both terrible until Beal woke up). Missed another three. Had the ultimate indignity of going to the bench and watching Nik Stauskas come in and play his position better than he did. He hit his only three of the night in the early third, then these are my remaining notes, verbatim as I took them: Got a jam attempt blocked by Gortat. Blown by by Beal. Missed another three. Help! Sigh. There was no Rudy this game, Ben could have had absolutely as big of a role as he could handle. Unfortunately he couldn't handle anything as it turned out. Ben shot 4-16 in Atlanta. Came back with the big 10-16 night in Charlotte. And then finished the roadtrip 4-17 in these last two games. When they reboot the Sister Act franchise, which they will because Hollywood is out of ideas and reboots everything, Ben might be able to score a bit part.
Aarti Chabria
Stats: 29min 15pts (5-8, 2-2, 3-4) 6reb 6ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
McCallum ( B- ) -- may have been the best support player Cuz had, certainly in the starting lineup, and yet was sitting on all of 11pts 5ast at the point the big guy fouled out and the game was unofficially over. His first stint was actually largely empty. A couple of easy assists to Cuz for some of his jumpers, that was about it. But he came up with a nice surge late in the half, hit a long jumper, got a drive, then drained a three after a laser crosscourt pass from Cuz. And closed the half setting up Cuz on a nicely executed drive and oop to make the lead 18 going into the break. He was having sporadic problems staying in front of Wall, but overall it was forgiveable while we were winning. Unfortunately then we stopped winning. He set up Ben for his only three in the early 3rd, then got setup himself by Cuz for his 2nd three....and then got very quiet as Wall turned on the jets and blew us off the court, including atypically bombing corner threes. Ray got beat, went to the bench in favor of Miller, came back in but the game had turned and he wasn't going to turn it back himself. Then we lost Cuz, and the remainder of Ray's numbers were stacked up in the hopeless no Collison, no Gay, no Cousins semi-garbagetime minutes at the end. Most of this production came in that one one late 2nd quarter burst, but hey, at least he had a burst. And he worked well with Cuz.
Take II (Capt.):
McCallum ( D+ ) --Ray wasn't necessarily great tonight, but at the very least he wasn't the problem. Defensively he got burned by John Wall, over and over again, but at least he was putting in the effort. He TRIED to stay in front, he switched when he had to, he found SOMEBODY to guard even if it was Gortat in the post, which is more than I can say for our other PG tonight. That said, the results were not good. I have Ray's man going 6-6 from the floor and 7-8 from the free throw line in my notes. That effort makes him our BEST PG defender tonight (the faint of heart ought not to read my writeup on Miller below...OK, I'm trying to be nice, but the faint of heart definitely ought not read the game thread...or likely THIS thread). On the good side, Ray was crashing the boards, and he was doing a pretty good job of passing. He consistently fed Cousins (gee, that's a key) and ended up with 6 assists. He also shot well, hitting both of his threes and finishing with a nice 15 points. But there's no way that I'm moving up to the C line for a guy whose defensive results (not effort) were very poor and who played on a team that blew a 21-point lead in the second half and went on to lose by 16. --Capt.
Sonal Chauhan
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