[Game] Kings v. Grizzlies, 11/17/13

What's most disgusting?

  • Mayonnaise

    Votes: 8 17.8%
  • Brussel Sprouts

    Votes: 7 15.6%
  • Marcus Thornton's season

    Votes: 30 66.7%

  • Total voters
    45

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
#1
KingsFans.com Gameday 2013-2014 Edition
Game 9
Sacramento Kings v. Memphis Grizzlies

By Stephen Tetsu, Kingsfans.com Resident Purveyor of Sage-Like Wisdom

Gonna keep this short because (a) I spent most of my Saturday out with the family, leaving no time to really write and (b) I’ve also expended a lot of my writing time doing research for something else I’m trying to get together for a little later in the season but we’ll see how that works out.

Anyways, the atmosphere at Friday’s noisefest was incredible: one part basketball game, two parts laryngitis. Words really cannot describe how awesome Kings fans are when it comes to supporting their team. Not only did we crush the old world record for loudest arena, we beat it thrice, reaching 126 decibels. 126 decibels, might I add, is in fact 6 decibels louder than your run-of-the-mill thunderclap. In other words, Arco Thunder is louder than normal thunder. 126 decibels is one decibel short of the sound level commonly thought to denote the onset of tinnitus or permanent hearing loss. 126 decibels: 16 decibels above the average human’s auditory pain threshold. The NIOSH recommends zero exposure to sounds over 112 decibels in the workplace. In other words, OSHA should have shut Sleep Train Arena down because we were endangering its employees with the sheer power of our roar. Really. Words cannot describe how freaking impressive Sleep Train Arena was on Friday. I can only hope that those not fortunate enough to be at the game were able to experience some of the magic from the comfort of their own home.

Apparently, there was a game that also took place on Friday between the Detroit Pistons and some team supposedly called the Sacramento Kings. According to box scores, the Pistons, led by Andre Drummond’s best game of his career, bested the Kings by a score of 97 to 90 and notched their first victory of the season.

According to sources, there is some man named Demarcus Cousins on the Sacramento Kings who is apparently very good at the sport. He is, according to this source, a potential All Star candidate for the season. Kings fans are, investigations have confirmed, allowed to vote for this man to attend the All Star Game, supposedly being held in February, through various methods including the online ballots found on NBA.com, and crafting a tweet reading“Demarcus Cousins #NBABallot”. Fans are allowed to vote through each method once a day until the polls close in several months.

Aside from Cousins’s worthy performance, the Kings effort was fraught with turnovers and missed shots, errors that ultimately cost the team the victory.

Since I figure you all could you the distraction, here’s a little something that’s probably more entertaining than the game was on Friday:

Stat Watch 2013
8-
Turnovers committed by Greivis Vasquez over the course of Friday’s game. No bueno. No bueno at all.


Observations
  • Thank goodness for the earplugs handed out as you entered the arena. Without them, I’d probably still be having trouble forming full sentences but for the ringing in my ears. I’m not a betting man but I’m pretty sure the Maloofs would have been too cheap give Kings fans even that small convenience.

  • Demarcus rebounded from his off night with a strong showing against one of the better frontcourts in the NBA on national television, putting up 26 points, 13 rebounds, and 3 blocks. Putting on a performance like that with the nation watching certainly isn’t going to hurt his all-star chances

  • I may love Doris Burke more than she loves Demarcus and that’s saying a lot.

  • Kyle Singler kinda looks like Ralph Macchio’s rival from The Karate Kid according to my dad, who ruefully accompanied me to the game and somehow managed to fall asleep sometime during the third quarter.

  • Jimmer Watch, Game 8: Jimmer also put on one of the better showings of his season on national television as well, appearing in several shots of the team as they huddled around the coach during timeouts.

  • Ben McLemore had a relatively quiet night save for one missed highlight dunk that probably would have caused a tremor had it been successful. Sleep Train Arena was absolutely ready to explode at that time. Oh well, it’ll happen eventually.

  • That may have been the first time I’ve heard actual angry chants aimed at the refs during an NBA game and I loved it. I don’t know if they were measuring the loudness for Guinness or anything but the “Ref, you suck” chant got pretty darn loud there in the second quarter.

  • Who are you people who go to noise-record setting games and stand silent as everyone else screams their heads off? I’m looking at you, guy with his fingers stuffed in his ears on national television.

  • The part of cowbells that I forgot: Ringing them is hell on your hands. I seriously felt like I boxed for twelve rounds with nothing on my hands. Boy howdy, are my hands cut up.

  • Those Pistons fans who think Greg “Moose” Monroe is better than Demarcus Freaking Cousins can probably shut up now.

  • Moose is probably the dumbest nickname in the entire NBA.

The View From the Other Side
A selection of comments by Detroit Pistons fans at DetroitBadBoys.com (Considering their record, they’re awfully confident in their team. They also use a lot of language that I had to clean up to stick here.).

7:40 “UGH....A WOMAN?!?!?!?!Also Doris, **** you. Greg Monroe is more talented than Demarcus Cousins.”
7:42 “FEED THE MOOSE”
7:43 “How are the Kings the loudest arena so far”
7:46 “I think it might have something to do with having an owner who somehow thinks the Kings are marketable in India and the fact that since they still haven’t fully funded their new arena project, they need to try and save money on the tear down of Arco. Therefore, fans are yelling as loud as possible in hopes of literally shaking the foundations loose to reduce costs on demolition.”​
7:45 “Admittedly, I really want to shut those ****ing Kings fans up. Sure, I would have loved to have that team in my now hometown of Seattle, but mainly I will never forgive that franchise for the completely inexcusable bullcrap montage of burning homes and cars they showed as an introduction a few years back.”
7:54 “Mike Malone Looks like Flea”
8:00 “Refs liking us a bit more than the Kings, so far”
8:02 “It says something about the fans that they pack the stadium even though the kings have been awful for a while and the maloofs were a dumpster fire. Good on them.”
8:02 “and for my first contribution to this gamethread… I’ll mock the hype guy for their world record schtick. “WE’VE JUST SHOWN THE WORLD HOW LOUD WE ARE.” Wow. Pretty awesome there guy. I really wish I lived in Sacto now. :/”
8:26 “"how do you make Sacramento a destination" don’t draft guys like Cousins, get lucky and draft a true elite player. Same can be said for every struggling chise.”
8:31 “who is this lady announcer I like her work. this was a really good move on ESPN’s part, which is amazing because ESPN can’t into good moves.”
8:43 “We are a wet sack of turds.”
8:45 “i love how the refs are pissing off the crowd because nothing else in this gamepleases me”
8:45 “Just imagine how loud this crowd would be if the Kings were good. Scary.”
8:59 “We should be blowing out teams like the Kings...”
9:12 “ANGRY MOOSE IS AWESOME MOOSE. Give him the ball!”
9:17 “THIS JUST IN: Joe Dumars admits the acquisitions of Smith and Jennings were to pull of the greatest tank-job in the history of the NBA.”
9:25 “Are they breaking the NOISE RECORD every gotdamn timeout?!”
9:28 “Doris Burke should be our coach”
9:36 “Kings shooting percentage down to 42% and finally below ours Good D by us or crappy O by them? I’m going with a bit of both.”
9:38 “Meanwhile, Jabari Parker is 4-6 from three... I wish we had him.”
9:47 “Moose's footwork > Cousins' footwork”
9:48 “Moose's footwork is so good refs assume he must have traveled.”​
9:52 “Cousins has become unstoppable.. Give him a max contract and suddenly he’s 110% out there”
10:00 “I feel bad for moose tonight"
10:01 “Even the greats are allowed to have bad games every now and then.”​
10:06 “All we had to do was play one of the worst teams in the NBA To show what we could do.”
10:08 “We've set the Guinness World Record for airballs tonight.”


Today’s Game


The first matinee matchup comes against the Memphis Grizzlies, perhaps the second most puzzling team of the offseason aside from the Denver Nuggets. Finally stringing together several years of success in a row and fielding a good playoff team for the first time in franchise history, Memphis’s management responded by firing the best head coach in franchise history and replacing him with one of his assistant. Rather expectantly, the team hasn’t really started off the season all that great.

(Please note I haven’t actually watched the Grizzlies play all that much this season)


Part of the reason for this underperformance is, in my opinion, the fact that they aren’t really as great as everyone thought they were. Sure they have two all-stars but these are all-stars with a lower case A and S rather than bona fide All-Stars. While these guys are certainly good players, they aren’t great players.

While Zach Randolph may have, at one point in his life, been one of the best post scorers in the game, he’s now 32 years old and on the downward slope of his career, less athletic than he was before (not that he was Blake Griffin in his younger days). This season Z-Bo is posting a respectable statline of 14.3 ppg, 8.4 rpg, 1.7 apg, .6 spg, .1 bpg in 29.3 minutes per game. Sure those aren’t terrible numbers but, considering that the Kings just went up against what amounts to a younger version of him in Greg Monroe, they aren’t really indicative of a player who will wreak uncontrollable amounts of havoc across the frontline like the athletic scrapper Andre Drummond did. Also, his block and steal totals are bad and its not just because Marc Gasol is taking all of those away from him.

Marc Gasol, now often thought of as the better Gasol brother (my, how the times have changed), is commonly thought of as one of the better defensive big men in the league. Well, sorry to burst your bubble by Marc Gasol is no defensive star by any measure of the word in this young season. While his stats are certainly not bad (35.3 mpg, 16.2 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 3.6 apg, 1 spg, 1.1 bpg), they aren’t as good as they have been in the past (almost 1 entire block more and two more rebounds). But in the advanced NBA stats wheel house, Gasol’s defense has been outright awful compared to his past years. His defensive rating (estimated points allowed per 100 possessions) has risen from 99 in his All-Star year to 104 now. While not too large of a gulf, it’s still indicative of It will be interesting to see how the Kings choose to attack him today.

Now seemingly older than the sun, Tayshaun Prince is the Energizer Bunny of the NBA, still going strong while most of the other members of his championship team in Detroit have long since retired. Having stepped into the Shane Battier role of years past, his stats are down compared to past years but he seems to play like Kobe every single time we face him.

Tony Allen is probably the best individual perimeter defender in the league. I’m not sure what else needs to be said. Over the years, he’s developed a bit of an offensive game but he’s not exactly Jamal Crawford either. That said, if he magically showed up on our roster, I would probably suffer a heart palpitation out of sheer joy.

Mike Conley has gone from being a relative draft bust to solid, but unspectacular, game manager. Possessing great speed, he’s the best offensive threat on an offensively challenged team. Of course, our guards struggle against anyone faster than a baby stroller so he’s probably gonna drop 40 on us just to pee me off.

Mike Miller and Jerryd Bayless lead Memphis’s backups, providing a potent but not explosive scoring punch off the bench.

The numbers for the two teams couldn’t be closer. The Kings score 93.9 points a game, the Grizzlies score 94 points. On defense, the Grizzlies give up 97.9 while Sacramento gives up 98. Yeah. It may not be as much of a blowout as some would think.

Matchups
Slamson versus the Mythical Memphis Grizzly Bear: Are there even grizzlies in Tennessee?

Future All-Star versus Former All-Stars: Another game, another chance for Cuz to make a statement.
Low Scoring Game versus Excitement: Nellyball, this is not.

Predictions and Closure
Even though we’re playing a team that has been to the playoffs over the past several years, I’m not really as apprehensive about the contest as I was for the faceoff with the Pistons. I say the Kings win, 93-91.

But I’ve been wrong a lot this season.

Go Kings.
 

Glenn

Hall of Famer
#8
Before I get much older, I want to feel the incredible pride I felt for that team. The Christie blow goes down in history but Vlade going face to face with Shaq is pretty good also. And Shaq shoves Vlade! I know Shaq is big but when he dwarfs Vlade, it has to be a crime or at least a rule against it.
 
#10
Doug Christie...great memories. Fox had it coming to him for a long time and deserved every bit of that uppercut and whatever else he got afterwards in the tunnel. Priceless LOL

Maybe as the rivalry increases with the Clippers, etc...Matt Barnes ;)
 
#11
KINGS BENCH in the tunnel. lakers bench, spectators.

Thats why we had so much more heart than them and all real basketball enthusiasts know we were the better squad that infamouse year especially.

916
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#14
The View From the Other Side
A selection of comments by Detroit Pistons fans at DetroitBadBoys.com (Considering their record, they’re awfully confident in their team. They also use a lot of language that I had to clean up to stick here.).

7:40 “UGH....A WOMAN?!?!?!?!Also Doris, **** you. Greg Monroe is more talented than Demarcus Cousins.”
7:42 “FEED THE MOOSE”
7:43 “How are the Kings the loudest arena so far”
7:46 “I think it might have something to do with having an owner who somehow thinks the Kings are marketable in India and the fact that since they still haven’t fully funded their new arena project, they need to try and save money on the tear down of Arco. Therefore, fans are yelling as loud as possible in hopes of literally shaking the foundations loose to reduce costs on demolition.”​
7:45 “Admittedly, I really want to shut those ****ing Kings fans up. Sure, I would have loved to have that team in my now hometown of Seattle, but mainly I will never forgive that franchise for the completely inexcusable bullpoopoo montage of burning homes and cars they showed as an introduction a few years back.”
7:54 “Mike Malone Looks like Flea”
8:00 “Refs liking us a bit more than the Kings, so far”
8:02 “It says something about the fans that they pack the stadium even though the kings have been awful for a while and the maloofs were a dumpster fire. Good on them.”
8:02 “and for my first contribution to this gamethread… I’ll mock the hype guy for their world record schtick. “WE’VE JUST SHOWN THE WORLD HOW LOUD WE ARE.” Wow. Pretty awesome there guy. I really wish I lived in Sacto now. :/”
8:26 “"how do you make Sacramento a destination" don’t draft guys like Cousins, get lucky and draft a true elite player. Same can be said for every struggling chise.”
8:31 “who is this lady announcer I like her work. this was a really good move on ESPN’s part, which is amazing because ESPN can’t into good moves.”
8:43 “We are a wet sack of turds.”
8:45 “i love how the refs are pissing off the crowd because nothing else in this gamepleases me”
8:45 “Just imagine how loud this crowd would be if the Kings were good. Scary.”
8:59 “We should be blowing out teams like the Kings...”
9:12 “ANGRY MOOSE IS AWESOME MOOSE. Give him the ball!”
9:17 “THIS JUST IN: Joe Dumars admits the acquisitions of Smith and Jennings were to pull of the greatest tank-job in the history of the NBA.”
9:25 “Are they breaking the NOISE RECORD every gotdamn timeout?!”
9:28 “Doris Burke should be our coach”
9:36 “Kings shooting percentage down to 42% and finally below ours Good D by us or crappy O by them? I’m going with a bit of both.”
9:38 “Meanwhile, Jabari Parker is 4-6 from three... I wish we had him.”
9:47 “Moose's footwork > Cousins' footwork”
9:48 “Moose's footwork is so good refs assume he must have traveled.”​
9:52 “Cousins has become unstoppable.. Give him a max contract and suddenly he’s 110% out there”
10:00 “I feel bad for moose tonight"
10:01 “Even the greats are allowed to have bad games every now and then.”​
10:06 “All we had to do was play one of the worst teams in the NBA To show what we could do.”
10:08 “We've set the Guinness World Record for airballs tonight.”
Thank you. I have a new addition for my signature. ;)
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#20
Just announced - Luc is starting at the 3 in place of John Salmons! Whooot!
Eh. This just means that when we sit both Thompson and Mbah a Moute in the second quarter, Salmons will be playing PF.

Just imagine that IT-Thornton-Vasquez-Salmons-Hayes lineup!
 
#25
Greivis sounds like he's gonna cry. Anyway, I don't expect much improvement with Luc in there. Luc is way better than Salmons, but we need a shooter in there.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#29
Gotta watch for my girls (KG4 and the Little Princesses) at the game. They're in section 106... GO KINGS!