Hey, a blowout even. Don't remember the last one of those, although I know we've had 1 or 2 this season. The Wizards are a sucky road team, and we jumped on them from the opening tip and really the game was never in doubt, Cuz on the court or not (and due to fouls, mostly he was not). Rudy continued his offensive prolific March, Omri excelled, DWill got to do his dunk thing a few more times, Ben remained a mystery (0pts first half, 17pt second half), Ray had moments. Most people did. It all went down pretty easily, and was defined by, gulp, run, gun, race up and down the court and get whatever you get in the open court. And of course the reason why this wasn't just another Karl era loss was because instead of losing the game 116-109, for the second game in a row we played some defense and won 109-86 instead.
Boxscore
Stats: 32min 26pts (10-19, 2-5, 4-4) 5reb 2ast 0stl 1blk 1TO
Gay ( A ) -- killed it again offensively as he has been all month. Of more importance perhaps, while I listed Casspi as the PF here, and the Wizards treated him that way and had Nene guard him, Gay himself is now referring to himself as a PF, which makes me throw up in my mouth a lot. And while the assignments seemed to switch around play to play on several early possessions there he was bodying up Nene, or later on even Gortat. And really it barely came back to bite us beyond not having any rebounding, which is something that will be much more of a problem in future games than it was in this one. The Wizards were flaccid on offense, even when their big guys did try to post up it was 15 feet from the hoop rather than doing the obvious walk the SF down under the hoop thing, and all in all we had few issues. It really wasn't terrbly responsible for Rudy's offensive effectiveness, as the Wizards used their power forward on Casspi (who did respond with a big run), and Rudy's offensive flow was more the result of him being in a great rhythm, and Paul Pierce makes Dre look like a spry young thang. And so Rudy bombed threes, and drove the lane at will, and crossed people over, and it all looked easy as could be as he cruised around out there.
Stats: 32min 14pts (4-6, 2-2, 4-4) 2reb 5ast 3stl 0blk 3TO
Casspi ( B+ ) -- this was a starters game for us, and for the first time since Paul Westphal was here that group is including Omri. And in the first half, the first quarter in particular, it was an Omri explosion early helped establish the tone for this one. He was very active and mobile right from the start which threw Nene off balance, and over the course of 1:10 he poured in 8 quick points on back to back threes, and then a little pullup. Now the run did not continue, and at that point the Wizards were still hanging right with us, but somehow it felt like a manifesto. He'd add 4 more points in the second quarter, and other than a couple of well intentioned but headslapping pass attempt turnovers, combined with DWill to turn the pow...other forward position into a an athletic pace pushing terror in the first half. While he'd only score 2 more points after half, Omri continued to grease the offense with unselfish passes. The boardwork wasn't there, and Nene eventually banged his way into roughly equivalent numbers, but most of that wasn't against Omri. For Omri himself it was one of he more dynamic games we've gotten out of the "other" forward position in some time.
Stats: 23min 20pts (6-11, 0-0, 8-8) 7reb 5ast 3stl 0blk 5TO
Cousins ( B- ) -- games like this are exceedingly hard to grade. It took Cuz all of 23 minutes to rack up 20pts 7reb 5ast 3stl...and 5TO. The dominance featured a 3-4 minute burst at the beginning of some of the worst Cuz play we have seen since the Keith Smart era, which was hardly a surprise as he was being used int he same manner, catching the ball out above the 3pt circle and trying to create, standing in the corner so as not to get in the way of all those other HOF teammates of his etc. So really he put up 20pts 7reb 5ast in about 20min of action. And once he made his first appearance inside, he was off and running. The problem was once again fouls, and legit fouls. Just as he was out of control early, he had regressed into over gambling on defense. It stopped his early run, it took him away again in the 2nd quarter when he was half a second late trying to take a charge on Wall, and when he resumed HOF level play in the third, it was one more time fouls that ended another dominant run, which included a highlight reel crossover on Nene, and another halfcourt running bounce pass to Ben for a racing layup. When he got back on the floor the rout was in full effect, and he contented himself with racking up assists as everybody got involved. So you have 2/3 of a great game here, with an ugly beginning. And the short night was largely his own fault. Gradewise that's...probably just an average night for Cuz. For some guys a night like this would be the best they ever do. For Cuz, he's had 30 better games this year. Still a big help while he was there to help.
Stats: 31min 17pts (7-11, 3-5, 0-0) 3reb 1ast 4stl 0blk 2TO
McLemore ( B- ) -- and this remains a mystery. Ben came into this one off of 4 clunkers in a row, and he started right off clunking again. He missed all his early shots, again lost minutes to Stauskas, and in this one Beal showed up for a while. On defense Ben was still going under screens, turning his head and being late on closeouts, and at halftime Ben was sitting on 0pts, he'd lost half his minutes again, and your're just shaking your head, do SOMETHING. And then the 3rd quarter opens up, and while these things came in the flow, including a brilliant half court bounce bass from Cuz to a streaking Ben on the break, I was reminded of nothing quite so much as that game 3 or 4 games into the season when Malone specifically had us run play after play for Ben in the early going and all of a sudden Ben woke up. His confidence is like a Hot Wheels car with a sticky axle. As long as you push it, it is neat to play with, as soon as you let go inertia takes over and soon its at a dead stop again. Well in the third quarter we pushed, we ran, Ben got out on the break, and boom, there came another one of his bursts of confidence. Suddenly he was hitting his threes, he got an oop out on the break from DWill long after DWill got his own, Beal and Wall completely disappeared, and we just ran them off the court. Some of Ben's 17 came in the late garbagetime, but it was still again another stark and mysterious tale of two halves. In one the guy's on the way out of the league. In the other the guy's a future star. Casino's must love Ben, gambling addiction is largely based on the brain's inability to accurately weigh the occasional high against the consistent lows. That's Ben. Next game he could score 20 or he could score 3, and neither would be a surprise. I'm splitting the difference between the halves.
Stats: 30min 13pts (5-9, 1-2, 2-2) 2reb 6ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
McCallum ( B ) -- there was no need of an old man to the rescue in this one, as Wall never really did come to play, and in the 2nd half in particular Ray flat outplayed him. He was efficient, rarely pressured, and when Wall did and Ray got around him, there was almost no rotation at all by the Wizards' bigs. Perhaps more important, Ray never let selfishness get in the way of the team here. Once or twice he did his tunnel vision thing, where you could just tell he was going to dribble around until he got his forced shot off, but there was no stretch of out of control play. In fact when he sat down for the first time he had all of 2pts 2ast and we were winning with him just directing the ball to Cuz or Gay and playing his role. At halftime he still had a 1 to 1 pts/ast ratio. And when he did turn it on offensively after half it was mostly efficient and with no answer from Wall it contributed to our blowing them out. Defensively there were still some issues not staying close to shooters on the perimeter, but their shooters weren't shooting, and Wall, who torched us last time, never did get on track from anywhere on the court. Ray might have been at most our #4 guy in this one, but it was an efficient #4 who's contributions came without an asterisk. Everything he did this time was in the flow and worked.
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