[Game] Kings v. Mavericks - March 27, 2018 - 7 PT
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To be fair, earlier attempts to tank wound up with the young kids plus one or two vets playing well enough to win against the varying levels of craptastic G-Leaguers and occasional young prospect or two most of the other bad teams are throwing out there.
The Kings and Bulls are stuck in the awkward position of being bad enough to aim to "tank" but having too much young talent to effectively blow up the season.
The Kings and Bulls are stuck in the awkward position of being bad enough to aim to "tank" but having too much young talent to effectively blow up the season.
Just have to laugh at this being the game that they decide to blatantly tank. Strategy is not a strong point for the Kings.
The anti DSJ sentiment that has bounced around from Kings fans since the draft has been pretty funny to me. Despite his stats not being the best, he actually shows many flashes of being a good player out there. Fox looks like Elfrid Payton and DSJ looks like a real high level basketball player in the making.
The anti DSJ sentiment that has bounced around from Kings fans since the draft has been pretty funny to me. Despite his stats not being the best, he actually shows many flashes of being a good player out there. Fox looks like Elfrid Payton and DSJ looks like a real high level basketball player in the making.
That's partially true. Phoenix has Devin Booker and Josh Jackson though and they've managed to effectively tank by reporting various vague injuries to keep one of them on the bench (like last year when Eric Bledsoe sat out the last 2 months). Memphis has almost the same team that made the playoffs last year. Conley has been out most of the year with legitimate injury but Tyreke Evans had been playing All-Star level basketball for them in his absence up until the break before mysteriously vanishing from the active roster and playing in only 4 games since. These teams put the lie to the "too much talent to effectively tank" argument while also making a mockery of Adam Silver's threat to punish obvious tankers.
We don't have just one or two good players so it's a little trickier for us but to follow the lead of Phoenix and Memphis we could have sat Bogie due to fatigue, given Buddy and De'Aaron time off to rest "nagging injuries" and called up some scrubs to replace them. Or just rolled with a Frank and Garrett backcourt and no backups. There's passive "sure wouldn't mind if we lost" tanking and then there's true commitment to the cause! We also could have gone full Orlando/Philadelphia and just traded every decent player over 25 on the team but these are strategies that desperate teams turn to and we're either too proud or too dumb to realize that we're in an equally desperate situation. No top 3 pick isn't the end of the world though. It's more important that we make good use of whatever pick we end up with. Even that has been a struggle for us in the past.
We don't have just one or two good players so it's a little trickier for us but to follow the lead of Phoenix and Memphis we could have sat Bogie due to fatigue, given Buddy and De'Aaron time off to rest "nagging injuries" and called up some scrubs to replace them. Or just rolled with a Frank and Garrett backcourt and no backups. There's passive "sure wouldn't mind if we lost" tanking and then there's true commitment to the cause! We also could have gone full Orlando/Philadelphia and just traded every decent player over 25 on the team but these are strategies that desperate teams turn to and we're either too proud or too dumb to realize that we're in an equally desperate situation. No top 3 pick isn't the end of the world though. It's more important that we make good use of whatever pick we end up with. Even that has been a struggle for us in the past.
The thing about Phoenix is that I almost feel like their awfulness is institutional at this point. Ryan McDonaugh has almost turn the concept of making his team suck into an art at this point, going back to that time where he randomly decided to bring in IT to an already crowded by effective Bledsoe/Dragic backcourt and then subsequently jettisoning all three for mixed returns. Booker, Jackson, and Warren are the three best players on the Suns team but all kinda sorta play the same position (Booker 2/3, Jackson 2/3, Warren 3/4) and the fact that all three look like legitimate players shouldn't distract from the fact that McDonaugh has pretty much struck out on every single other guy he's drafted (Len, Bender, Chriss all legitimately look worse than the Kings' combo of oft-maligned WCS and Skal). While that swingman rotation is legitimately good, the rest of the roster is possibly the worst in the NBA, so simply sitting Booker for a couple of minutes is enough to put the Suns in an insurmountable deficit. Since this is the Suns, they're probably going to wind up with the second pick, selected Doncic despite not really having a rotation spot to play him, forget to address their point guard situation again, and wind up trying to tank yet again next season.
Memphis returned a lot of their playoff team from last season but lost the heart of that squad in Z-Bo and Tony Allen. As much as we like to rag on Z-Bo on the Kings, he and Tony Allen set the tone for the down-and-dirty grit'n'grind style that allowed the Grizzlies to become the perennial playoff contenders that they were for the better part of a decade. JaMychal Green may be a more modern NBA player than Z-Bo and Dylan Brooks looks to be a good young wing on a team stuck paying Chandler Parsons huge money but aside from them, Gasol, and Reke, that roster is pretty darn bad. Also Marc Gasol isn't as good as he's been in the past (and the league has evolved around him to cut his effectiveness) and isn't getting any younger. Also, they fired their coach and their owner is somewhere between losing the team and having to overpay for the opportunity to buy out his minority investors (and he was also subpoenaed by the SEC). While in a way it's almost unbelievable that the Grizzlies got this bad this fast, I'd be reluctant to say that they're successfully mounting a good tanking campaign beyond resting Reke more than his agent would probably like them to in a contract year (also, if a full on tank is what they were aiming for, the Grizzlies ****ed up magnificently by not taking Reke at the deadline instead of just releasing him into the wild in free agency).
Memphis returned a lot of their playoff team from last season but lost the heart of that squad in Z-Bo and Tony Allen. As much as we like to rag on Z-Bo on the Kings, he and Tony Allen set the tone for the down-and-dirty grit'n'grind style that allowed the Grizzlies to become the perennial playoff contenders that they were for the better part of a decade. JaMychal Green may be a more modern NBA player than Z-Bo and Dylan Brooks looks to be a good young wing on a team stuck paying Chandler Parsons huge money but aside from them, Gasol, and Reke, that roster is pretty darn bad. Also Marc Gasol isn't as good as he's been in the past (and the league has evolved around him to cut his effectiveness) and isn't getting any younger. Also, they fired their coach and their owner is somewhere between losing the team and having to overpay for the opportunity to buy out his minority investors (and he was also subpoenaed by the SEC). While in a way it's almost unbelievable that the Grizzlies got this bad this fast, I'd be reluctant to say that they're successfully mounting a good tanking campaign beyond resting Reke more than his agent would probably like them to in a contract year (also, if a full on tank is what they were aiming for, the Grizzlies ****ed up magnificently by not taking Reke at the deadline instead of just releasing him into the wild in free agency).
I couldn't turn the game off last night. Just pure tanking comedy. Loved the look on Cuban's and Carlisle's faces - they couldn't believe they were winning with the lineup they had out there. Thank you Yogi Ferrell, but they even pulled him with 3-4 minutes left!
Favorite part was with under two minutes left, and the Mavs reeling a bit after the Kings scored. The whole Dallas bench was starting to stand-up for what they believed would be a sure TO from their coach but he just waved them on.
Har har har.
Favorite part was with under two minutes left, and the Mavs reeling a bit after the Kings scored. The whole Dallas bench was starting to stand-up for what they believed would be a sure TO from their coach but he just waved them on.
Har har har.
Z-Bo came off the bench for them last year. The hollowed out shell of Tony Allen is getting 12 minutes a game on the Pelicans right now. Neither player is worth 20 wins at this point in their career. They've also gone 2-22 since the end of January. That's not about Marc Gasol declining or losing their aging core, it's simple dedication to the art of losing. Tyreke has been their best player all year... is there a legitimate reason why he's not playing right now?
Fox looked horrible in this game. I'm a big Fox fan, but there is definitely something amiss when it comes to his defense, not just in this game, but over the past several games.
As for the game, I PROTEST THIS GAME. And I'm not letting anybody watch future games (I am bombarding the satellite and cable providers with infra-ray) until I get what I want! You guys and gals should pay me money for watching this game!
As for the game, I PROTEST THIS GAME. And I'm not letting anybody watch future games (I am bombarding the satellite and cable providers with infra-ray) until I get what I want! You guys and gals should pay me money for watching this game!