Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Tell me you predicted that game with those heroes, and I will tell you you are a liar. And not even a good one.
Mentioned a week or two ago when the roleplayers were just waking up what a difference having a bench would make for this team. Even so, you have to figure there was a bit of Golden State in reverse to this one from Minny's side. Haha, 2nd worst in the West, down some people, this is an easy one. Not so fast. No Reke, barely any Cuz. No JJ Hickson! No Whiteside? No problem.
Prettiest ball movement of the year:
Boxscore
Salmons ( B ) -- it was John Salmons night at the Y as he finally got to realize his career long goal of being a #1 option...for a half at least. And while he wasn't scorching hot he aquitted himself well and kept us in this thing during another first half in which our defense looked like it did against Detroit. It was a shootout, and John Salmons was our main gun. If that statement doesn't have you checking your body for bullet holes I don't know what would. Had 13 of his 15 points before the break. There was nobody for him to guard amongst Minny's swingman platoon of doom, and his rebounding was even worse than normal -- he grabbed his only board of the game just before half. But he came up with his second highest scorng night of the year and on a night when a lot of guys were noticeably passsing the ball, he wasn't noticeably NOT passing it. Which when it comes to John is about as much s you can ask. Not a factor after half, and not even on the floor as Minny collapsed in the 4th.
Thompson ( A- ) -- and the startling string of rock solid, and dare I say intelligent play from JT continues. Not another huge 20-15 type night, but another one where he did a lot of things right, and very few wrong. And making a statement like that about JT is just...odd. But it was on display from the very start of the game, when on our second or third possession Jason got the ball on the side angle and intended to pass it to Marcus. But Marcus hadn't cut yet, and normally Jason throws that ball anyway. Into the opponent's back, off somebody's knee, just never thinking. But here instead he visibly paused, and held it, held it, waiting for Marcus to catch on and suddenly cut to the hoop, at which time Jason hit him for the assist. Jason's minutes were limited in this one not by poor play, but again becvause his coach doesn't believe in size advantages, and with Minnesota being without Pekovic and effectively without Darko, they basically were running Love and a bunch of tweener 4/3s for much fo the night. But in Jason's 26min all he did was put up a mere 13pts 10rebs on 5-6 shooting (which is not far off his 21pt 15reb nights before this one if you stretch it to 40min). Can't A him for half a game, but it was another nice strong in control showing.
Cousins ( D ) -- well there's always one isn't there? Maybe it wasn't Pekovic who had his number last time, myabe its been Adelman all along. In any case, another poor showing vs. Minny, which should be of all teams the one he would most want to show up. But maybe he's aleady beyond that now in his second year. Or maybe he's just beginning to tire -- certainly he's rarely been the dominator of the first half of the season this month. This time after Darko lasted all of 6 minutes, Cousins was suddenly free, or you would have thought, to chew up a frontline of Kevin Love and a bunch of blown up SFs. But not what happened. He started the game missing a dunk, then he traveled, and it just didn't get much better. Aside from back to back assists setting up Jason for hoops -- nice to see the two bigs working well together again -- his early contributions were all in the negative side of the column. As the game got smaller his coach largely forgot about him until the second half. Came to semi-life in the early third, racking up points as the Wovles had nobody left to remotely guard him. And to hsi credit that was the key quarter for us as we started to pus and gained separation from the Wolves. But he never got on the glass at all -- always a marker of fatigue with him -- shot poorly (2-8) added a third turnover, and then picked up a 4th foul before the end of the quarter and sat the rest of this one out watching the Chuck Wagon turn in his best game in months. So yeah, not a banner night for Boogie.
Thornton ( B+ ) -- another big statistical night from Thornton yet oddly he wasn't the show until it came time to put this one away. Struggled his way to ok numbers in the early going, but the jumper, in particular the long bombs, was just not on and he was overshadowed by the brilliance that is John Salmons. Fortunately Minny is notoriously without any SGs capable of really punishing a team back the other way, and we could afford to wait for him to come online. Racked up another 4 assists, which remains a great sign after a selfish year. But on the fastbreak is making anythign Reke used to do look tame in comparison. Just blatantly ignoring wide open trailers to force layup attemtps looking for the foul. Not even sure its worth running with him at the moment, lest it be as a big man trailer to grab the missed layup and convert it. The irony is that last year it was exactly the opposite -- he wasn't going to pass very often in halfcourt but showed a real knack on the break. In any case was 5-15 at one point in his one, missing all his threes, and then started to heat up in the late 3rd , getting active on defense and aggresive on offense. And his push in the first half of the 4th was one of the major factors that opened the lead up for the comfortable win.
Thomas ( B+ ) -- this game was all about the threes for IT, as he continues to impress doing the thing that he really was not known for in college (he shot 29.1% 32.7% and 34.5% from three in college from the college distance, now in the NBA he's shooting 38.7% from several feet further out (his best year in college he was also a 73.2% FT shooter, and he shoots those at 85% this year too). In any case, all of his first half scoring was from three, where he knocked down 3-5 in the first quarter alone. Notched his only two assits in that quarter as well as we got off to the strong offensive start -- and while he only got the 2 assists the ball did not stick in his hands as it was just bouncing from player to player all night long, and other than getting a little three happy there never was that stretch where IT got selfish. Basically split time at the point this time with Jimmer taking the 2nd and 4th, but when IT was back in in the 3rd quickly reaquainted himself with the Wolves by dropping in his 4th three of the game. Helped open the lead when he finally began to get some to the basket stuff to go as he penetrated by the woeful defense of Luke Ridnour and ran into nothing more fearsome than the woeful defense of Kevin Love inside.
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Bench
Hayes ( A- ) -- got a ton of playing time tonight with DeMarcus ineffective, and you know what? For the first time in literally months he deserved it. Some of that may have been a near ideal matchup against a fellow verticaly challenged push shove type player in Kevin Love, and the offense was defintely helped by the superior ball movement tonight, with Chuck only forcing up one of those head scratching I Believe I Can Fly solo efforts that I recall, and otherwise getting easy layups off of nice setups and tip follows while not having to worry about length and shotblocking inside against him. He of course contributed to that ball movement by being a wiling passer himself, and after a first half spent chasing the Wolves smaller...or at least quicker 4/3s, his late defense on Love was finally something approaching what you spend $5mil on a guy for. Part of that defense was banging with Love well enough to basically neutralize him on the glass during those late minutes, which again is something that we haven't seen in a long while. So overall very effective performance making the lack of Cousins in this one less of a disaster than it normally is.
Fredette ( C ) -- not as bad as the numbers make it look. Its just too bad the kid can't shoot. Wolves really have nobody to pressure his dribble, and was able to funcion effectively as the backup PG this time with minimal adventures with the dribble. Part of several excellent passing sequences although continues to chuck up shots at a rate which would get him drawn and quartered if he were a 6'5" PG. And of course the problem tonight was he missed them (0-5 from downtown). Forced up several little let's dribble around runners, couple fowhich fell for him for his scores. Allowed to more or less run the team in the 2nd and 4th quarters, and we did not skip a beat. Going with a higher grade here than 3-11 would normally earn. Bad shooting night, but rest of play was steady.
Outlaw ( C ) -- one of only three Kings (Cousins, Fredette the others) to struggle with his shooting tonight as he wasn't able to build on his last game, and tok rather too many of our shots down the stretch fo the garbagetime in the late 4th. But he still made several nice plays, including a great pass rifling the ball underneath to Donte, and had several very athletic boards as well. Cosnisdering that passing and rebounding have never been considered strengths those might have just been aberrations, but nice to see anyway.
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