HereWeBoogie
Hall of Famer
i think we can all agree the refs have been absolutely awful tonight
[Game] Kings @ Lakers - 3/17/13
- Thread starter VF21
- Start date
There is no "at least." Evans has had a bad game, call it fair.
Hodges4Three
Prospect
Actually I follow the Rockets and am a Lin fan. I saw what Smart did to the guy in GS. He's doing the same thing to Fredette. As soon as Jimmer gets traded somewhere without an idiot coach he might just break out and be another Steph Curry.
Douglas is a poor defender. He looks like he's playing good D because he waves his hands around a lot and is "active."
Rockets fans are glad as hell he's gone...and yet this guy is playing over someone who can contribute points. Especially against the Lakers Jimmer should be playing because he can easily guard the likes of Nash or Blake.
Douglas is a poor defender. He looks like he's playing good D because he waves his hands around a lot and is "active."
Rockets fans are glad as hell he's gone...and yet this guy is playing over someone who can contribute points. Especially against the Lakers Jimmer should be playing because he can easily guard the likes of Nash or Blake.
MassachusettsKingsFan
All-Star
Our guards just need to do a better job getting the right guys the ball. It happens to Cousins all the time. They freeze out everyone else. This is just another reason why IT and Evans can't work long term.
Patterson was 9-12 tonight. He's barely touched the ball this half. That's on the guards.
Patterson was 9-12 tonight. He's barely touched the ball this half. That's on the guards.
Kingsnbucs1987
Bench
Or when your starting Salmons and Thompson combine to go 3 - 15 for 7 points
It's just more fun to blame it on IT though!
Kingsnbucs1987
Bench
We always seem to freeze out the hot shooter unless it's a guard.
twslam07
All-Star
You've just described Westbrook in a nutshell.
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
Wow.
Most people would compare Smart's handling of Steph to his handling of Reke.
Jimmer is not in the same class as Lin at all. And we don't need offense. That's not why we lost. We need defense, and Jimmer doesn't help there.
BTW, the idea Douglas is a poor defender shows how little you know. He's our best defensive guard outside of Reke hands down.
HereWeBoogie
Hall of Famer
nothing near as bad as a point guard taking 20 shots. and chucking 10 threes.
Don't get it ****ed up; there's plenty of blame to go around, in this one. Thomas is far from having his "hands clean," so to speak. I'm just not a big fan of trashing Player X in order to defend Player Y.
HereWeBoogie
Hall of Famer
ya im not the biggest fan of Westbrook at the Thunders PG. but he does average a solid amount of assists. a hell of a lot more than Isaiah Thomas. and id sure rather have Westbrook taking shots than Thomas
MassachusettsKingsFan
All-Star
This is the problem. This has always been the problem.
Westbrook can do that. He's 10x the player IT is. When IT thinks he's Westbrook .. that is when he falls off the rails. Thomas needs to be what Thomas is.
I can tell you he isn't a multiple time All-Star who's team has been a contender for the last 3 seasons, and went to the Finals last year.
HereWeBoogie
Hall of Famer
how about blaming the refs. how many offensive fouls did Howard get away with tonight? at least 5. oh and anyone wanna guess what the freethrow numbers looked like?
LAL - 19/29
SAC - 8/8
Lakers win by 11. hmmmmmm
LAL - 19/29
SAC - 8/8
Lakers win by 11. hmmmmmm
So you say. I say it's all equally bad. When we lose to the goddamned lakers, the last thing I'm interested in listening to is who is the least at fault.
Oh, agreed. IT's defense was atrocious for most of the game and we had an assortment of other major issues tonight. But it's amusing listening to people act like we would have rolled over the Lakers had IT not been on the floor.
Kingsnbucs1987
Bench
I know some people blame IT, but I wouldn't say he had a bad game, but an okay game. We just went cold in the second half. It seems like our players don't play within the offense once the game gets kinda out of hand, everybody goes into Batman mode, but nobody wants to be Robin. I'm more disappointed in JT and Salmons, they were completely invisible out there tonight, when Cousins comes back, move Salmons to the bench and have Patterson play Small Forward.
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
The other difference is Westbrook can carry you home to victory. We saw tonight what happens fairly regularly. IT gets hot, starts looking for his own and it dragged on just about the entire 3rd quarter. Westbrook does that too.
The difference is in the 4th. IT was nowhere to be seen. And when we needed others to step up no one was in a rhythm. Reke shot like s*** but MT and PP were taken out of their rhythm as well. So no one picked up the slack. Westbrook however pushes through until the end and doesn't need to wait for others to step up aside from Durant. If IT were good enough to keep it going and bring us home, I wouldn't have a problem, but he'd also be a much better player if that were the case. Instead, when he gets hot everyone else loses a rhythm, yet he's not carrying us home and disappears in 4th quarters. If you take others out of their rhythm as a PG, you have to carry us home.
Kingsnbucs1987
Bench
Yeah and that's what the team doesn't need. You don't want Reke to force up jumpers, but you want him to stay aggressive, it's a hard balance to make
twslam07
All-Star
I was just shooting down your argument about how it's horrible when your PG takes 18 shots and gets 5 assists. Westbrook does it all the time and they win all the time.
I agree that Thomas should not be taking that many shots because he is not a great player like Westbrook, but to generalize it to "you're going to struggle if your PG takes 18 shots and only gets 5 assists" is a false statement.
Hodges4Three
Prospect
I watched Dougie all season on the Rockets. He can't fight through picks and his 1v1 defense is average at best. Just because a guy flails his arms around alot and looks like he's "active" doesn't make him a good defender. Also, defense at the PG spot is not really crucial. Last I checked, Nash and Curry are equally as bad as Jimmer and their teams are in the playoffs. Is TD's slight upgrade in D at the PG spot really worth stifling Fredette's development?
Even tonight Lakers announcers were wondering why no Jimmer on the floor, when the spacing and movement would be perfect for his contributions with Cousins out.
I see fans of other teams laugh at how little he's utilized...the guy shoots well over 40% from beyond the arc and sees no playing time. Even early in the season when he had some of the highest PER in the league he was getting DNPs.
Funny thing is I think Fredette would fit in perfect next to Harden on the Rockets, maybe even better than Lin.
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HereWeBoogie
Hall of Famer
if thats what you were trying to do, then using Westbrook as an example doesnt really work. because if he has 18 shot attempts, he probably has more than 5 ast, and has also played defense a million times better than Thomas ever will.
twslam07
All-Star
You missed the point, but I'll try to explain it to you again.
I agree that Westbrook should be taking a lot more shots than Thomas does. He gets much better looks and can separate himself from his defender a lot easier than Thomas can. Westbrook is more athletic than Thomas. Westbrook plays better defense than Thomas. Westbrook is a better rebounder than Thomas. The only part of basketball that Thomas might be better than Westbrook in is 3pt shooting. Westbrook is a superior player...by far. Thus he can take many shots and still give his team a great chance to win. Thomas can't do that as well as Westbrook can.
Make sense? I think every single person on this board would/should agree with that. My argument was when you said "don't expect good things when your starting PG has taken 18 shots and only has 5 assists." Westbrook averaged 19 shots and 5.5 assists last year. Guess what? Their team made it to the NBA finals. That statement is not true. If you change it to "don't expect good things when Isaiah Thomas has taken 18 shots and only has 5 assists" then you might be on to something
You missed the point, but I'll try to explain it to you again.
I agree that Westbrook should be taking a lot more shots than Thomas does. He gets much better looks and can separate himself from his defender a lot easier than Thomas can. Westbrook is more athletic than Thomas. Westbrook plays better defense than Thomas. Westbrook is a better rebounder than Thomas. The only part of basketball that Thomas might be better than Westbrook in is 3pt shooting. Westbrook is a superior player...by far. Thus he can take many shots and still give his team a great chance to win. Thomas can't do that as well as Westbrook can.
Make sense? I think every single person on this board would/should agree with that. My argument was when you said "don't expect good things when your starting PG has taken 18 shots and only has 5 assists." Westbrook averaged 19 shots and 5.5 assists last year. Guess what? Their team made it to the NBA finals. That statement is not true. If you change it to "don't expect good things when Isaiah Thomas has taken 18 shots and only has 5 assists" then you might be on to something
I think there's sort of an understanding that when you're talking about starting PGs you mean facilitators, which is why one who takes 18 shots and gets you 5 assists isn't going to be a very valuable one. You are right in pointing out that it is an over-generalization because Westbrook averages similar numbers, but again that's besides the main point the OP was trying to make, because Westbrook is playing next to a SG who doesn't demand shots at all. So I suppose a better statement would have been "don't expect good things when your starting PG takes 18 shots and only has 5 assists, particularly if your SG is supposed to be a key part of the offense".
Also, I have realised why it is I can't stand IT. It's not that he sometimes goes into hero ball and doesn't pass the ball at all. It's that he does that and Grant & Jerry don't criticize it at all! If he misses a shot it's "a good look that he just missed", and if he makes it he's "a good shooter getting better". Not once, not a single frikin time, in the entire Laker game did they point out the lack of ball movement during that stretch where IT refused to pass the ball. Not once did they criticize him for a bad shot when he got smushed by Howard several times. Not once did they talk about how we should be going to PPat or Tyreke. Another thing I've noticed: Tyreke rarely ever gets a screens set for him straightaway, and most of the time he passes it into the post to JT or Cousins or Patterson. IT on the other hand, always gets screens set for him. If I were coach I'd have run Patterson-Evans pick and pops way way more.
So I'm sorry IT, but part of my dislike for you (when you're playing like you were) is that Grant and Jerry are idiots who somehow think you're the next coming of Michael Jordan.
But as far as this game goes ... ugh. Evans played poorly, I don't even want to talk about Salmons and JT, and our coach is just ... fail. IT didn't play badly on an individual note, but certainly could have done a better job of trying to keep guys in rhythm while still scoring when he was hot.
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Pisses me off even more that his team mates don't know how to come and set a screen for him. Evans is a good iso-player, but if the team clearly isolates him as part of the offense then you can't blame him for going 1 on 1. If by 7 seconds Evans hasn't made a move to the basket a big should automatically step up to set a screen. Tyreke has proven that he will kick it out to the open guy on a consistent basis. But if nobody moves to get open or to get him open then I'm not quite sure what you expect other than a 1 on 1 contested shot from someone.
Dude there's like one guy who is even remotely close to putting all the blame on IT. Stop your whining, there's been fair criticism of Evans, Thompson, Salmons and IT in this thread.
