Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Love the Cousins vibe in this one. From the very beginning we rode him hard like a franchise center, and he responded by playing like one. The various other uninspiring position battles were moot once he started dominating the game.
Boxscore
Stats: 28min 10pts (4-10, 1-2, 1-1) 3reb 2ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Salmons ( C- ) -- the stat line says not much happened, and the actual game was somewhat less effective than that. Basically had his whole night's worth of numbers when he returned in the mid 4th garbagetime (ok, its preseason, even more garbageytime) and quickly got 2 three point plays, hitting a wide open three and then sneaking through on a long circling drive to the rim and getting fouled. Two entirely respectable play s in the course of a minute or so of action. Unfortunately he played 27 other largely empty minutes. The invisibility was particularly noticeable early, as he rarely shot, missed when he did, and did the old Smart era stupid passing on a three set up for him by Cousins to dribble into midrange and brick it. Also reminiscent of the Smart era, disturbingly, was an apparent effort coming out of the lockerroom in the 3rd to get him involved. Why anyone cares that much if a 33yr old John Salmons is involved or not I don't know. He must have a magic wampom stick he waves over coaches' heads during breaks or something. In any case, led to more opportunities, and notably to freezing Thornton out BTW, but no more productivity until the late bang bang plays in the 4th. I C- minused him rather than give him the grade I actually thought he deserved simply because he and Jared Dudley were having an old vet invisibility party together, so he didn't get whipped. Just didn't matter.
Stats: 22min 6pts (2-9, 0-0, 2-6) 11reb 3ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Thompson ( C- ) -- Jason's statline, decorated by that unattractive 2-9, is still probably more impressive than his actual play. In fact he too varied between invisible (early) to flat bad for the first three quarters, and didn't really assert himself in any way until taking over to play some garbagetime center in the 4th. He's our most proven roleplayer next to Cousins, but tonight he just didn't seem to know what to do as Cousins dominated the game, as Cousins ate the shots, ate the boards, and Jason was stuck kind of wandering in space half guarding BJ Muellens as he did his freak 7ft Kyle Korver thing, not getting on the glass, and clumsily blowing most of his offensive attempts. Like Salmons there seemed to be some attempt in the early third to get him more involved, and like Salmons the results were decidedly mixed. He hit his only two shots during that period, but also committed a charge and sank back into his FT woes. When he was on the interior though he seemed to be doing a good job of challenging shots, and when he returned in the 4th he was more physical, and while still fumbling everything, more aggressive on the glass for a short stint. And with Landry gone, still might have won our BBNNB (best big not named Boogie) award for the night.
Stats: 28min 31pts (11-18, 0-0, 9-11) 11reb 3ast 2stl 0blk 2TO
Cousins ( A+ ) -- really really REALLY impressive outing. Impressive not only for what DeMarcus did, but for what we allowed him to do. He was truly treated like a franchise center, touching the ball almost every possession for long stretches, and he responded by just pounding the Clippers inside. Even when he missed 4 of his first 6, the misses were good misses right at the rim that just rolled off, and there was no pout and no waver from our coaches/team about going right back to him the next time. We were running everything through him and he was notching assists as well as the whole skillset was on display, including a brilliant pass for a big man, driving into the lane and dishing the ball on the move in PGesque fashion to a cutting Outlaw for the dunk. Dominated the glass as well and just generally just made this game all about his dominance just as much as the great centers of yore once did -- he had 25pts 9rebs...by halftime! (In the third we went away from him a bit to concentrate on important things like IT chucking up shots off his dribble and getting John Salmons in rhythm.) And in another subtle development, he's been totally in control thus far, and only notched 2 fouls again, which means he could have kept on piling up numbers if this were a regular season game. Now the provisos are the predictable preseason ones, its preseason, he was matched against the Clippers scrubby reserves, etc. All true. But then again the last time he saw the Clippers starters he dropped 36 and 20 on them, so maybe they should count themselves lucky. In any case at this stage of the season/preseason you really can't do it any better than Boogie did tonight, and so there is a very early + to his A this time out.
Stats: 25min 20pts (3-4, 2-3, 2-2) 2reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Thornton ( C- ) -- I have resorted to C minuses three times in our starting lineup thus far (although Salmons was worse until late) because I wasn't sure any of them deserved D's, but they all struggled for different reasons. For Marcus Thornton this is what it was, and it has interesting implications: we ran a conspicuously Cousins centered offense, and Thornton, who is a volume scorer in love with his touches and shots, didn't know what to do with himself. And to be fair, we didn't know what to do with him. Watching this game the idea of him emerging as a big point total second scorer alongside Cousins would seem a joke, because he barely touched it and he did exactly what Coach Malone told him he couldn't do back during the summer, which was let his guy score more than he did. After half things got particularly acute, as IT, who played a selfish game, joined the starters, and we seemed to be particularly concerned to get Salmons and Thompson going. The result was that MT may actually have been the 5th option out there amazingly enough, a complete afterthought resulting in our gunner in chief taking 4 shots in 25 min of action. And in fact when in the mid third he scooped up a deflection steal and got out in the open court, anybody who has ever watched Thornton play instantly knew that there was simply no way in hell he was going to pass that ball because he wasn't getting his shots otherwise. Sure enough he went down, ignored two teammates running the lanes, and clumsily banged into a defender to get to the line rather than give up a suddenly precious scoring opportunity. Very interesting development, but its preseason, and you don't know what it means in the larger picture except that there certainly hasn't been any effort to feature MT thus far.
Stats: 11min 2pts (1-2, 0-0, 0-0) 2reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Vasquez ( B ) -- short night only playing the first quarter minutes, but whereas several of our guys tonight put up better boxscore numbers than the games they played, with Grevis it was exactly the opposite. Did a real nice job in several aspects, passing the ball up the court quickly to trigger transition opportunities, and then in the halfcourt controlling the action and keeping the focus on Cousins without ever feeling the need our other guards do to break off and get something of their own every other play. Quite encouraging and we were at our most fun to watch in the early going with Grevis controlling and Cousins dominating.
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Bench
Stats: 31min 9pts (4-11, 1-2, 1-1) 7reb 3ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Patterson ( C ) -- still not making much of a case for himself, and should probably count himself lucky Carl is out until the All Star break. Was not effective against Jamison (who looks totally washed up now) either as a scorer or a rebounder and just kept passively missing jumpers. Was a little more active after returning in the second half, and quickly notched a couple of assists after returning in the third at a time when our ball movement was dying. Grabbed a few offensive boards and padded/capped things at the end of garbagetime finally hitting a three just before the buzzer. I have no idea why I'm calling this a flat C except maybe a lack of esteem for PPat's abilities in general. He kind of sucked again as it was a funny blowout with Cousins killing them but a lot of guys struggling.
Stats: 24min 8pts (4-8, 0-1, 0-1) 3reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Outlaw ( C- ) -- ok, here is another one of those ok looking statlines that wasn't so ok on court. But this was an educational outing for all of you dedicated Travis Outlaw watchers. Pretty much here's what we had: Travis Outlaw sucked right up until the point when he quit trying to do anything. Explanation? For much of the game Outlaw looked like the old turd Outlaw of the last few seasons where we have had no system and so Travis has been left out there to completely ineffectually create for himself. So we again were treated to that ridiculously inefficient catch and take two dribbles to nowhere before bricking a midrange jumper game that has made his late career such a joke. But the statline doesn't fully reflect that inefficiency, and here is why: in stark contrast to the "create" off his own dribble stuff, from time to time he relaxed, realized he isn't actually very talented, and let other guys create for him. And for a second game in a row when he did that, did not think, just caught and shot, slashed to the hoop looking for a pass, he had effective moments in an otherwise fugly game. Best moment came in the 2nd quarter when he cut to the hoop and took a slick Cousins pass up for a big dunk. If somebody would just give Malone a ruler to slap Travis's hand with everytime he tries to dribble, he might actually be an effective catch and shoot guy.
Stats: 23min 7pts (3-9, 1-3, 0-1) 5reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
McClemore ( C ) -- well, here is grade where I wanted to go higher and probably should have gone lower. In the end what it came down to was this: Ben did not hit his shots, and he got just lit up on the other end by Jamal Crawford. And yet...outside of Grevis his game, or rather his playing style this game, felt perhaps better than any other Kings guard. In short he was doing the right things...just not doing them very well. Moreso than Marcus it appeared he was able to function in a Cousins-centric world. He hit an early three, and had an impressive finish along the baseline. He generally avoided dribbling it off his shoes this time, and he used his athleticism to help a bit on the boards, once even flying in to snatch one from Boogie, who seemed to pause as if to say what are you doing in my house little mouse. Now on the other hand, he kept missing. And late in the game he did nothing but miss. More problematically even in this comfortable win you could see the seeds of future trouble as our backup guards, really any of our guards, just cannot defend a traffic cone. The only reason we don't win this by 30 is because Ben got destroyed by Crawford, IT got destroyed by Collison, and we just had no backcourt answers. So realistically you get punked by your off the bench counterpart 25-7 that's not a C. But here in the preseason, with a rook...thought he had the right idea and played the game the right way, so going to give him a little pass.
Stats: 30min 16pts (4-8, 0-3, 8-8) 4reb 5ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Thomas ( B- ) -- wasn't sure how to grade this, but fact is I have been running around handing out Cs to everybody, and we largely blew this team out. That was hugely due to Cousins being overwhelming (we were +23 in the 28 minutes with him on the court, -12 during the 20min when he was not), but he didn't do it 100% alone. Which brings us to the problematic case of Isaiah Thomas, who took over the scoring when Cousins was out, but did so by largely making it impossible for anybody else to play that role. In short, he was back to the same selfish stuff that he has flashed repeatedly during his career, pulling up for shots off his dribble, running plays for his own attempts rather than teammates, once making me want to throw something at the TV as he pulled up 1 on 4 on the break and shot a jumper with no other King even in the picture let alone underneath to board (he made that shot BTW)...the difference between how Grevis was running the team and IT was running the...well, Isaiah offense was stark. So this becomes a bit of the anti-McClemore grade for me. IT scored effectively, and for stretches when there was no Cousins he was the only guy scoring consistently. He gave us a push in the second. But man if it wasn't about him again, and occasionally you could feel us reverting offensively to the sort of gun it if you got it philosophy of last year. Throw in him getting lit up by Darren Collison after halftime and no, I wasn't nearly as happy with this game as the numbers say I should be. But I didn't want to get too harsh with the grade. We only got 11 min out of Grevis tonight, so it tainted the PT balance, but in many ways ITs more me-centric take on PGing is kind of what you expect out of an off the bench pace changer, which he's probably going to be for us, and he was more productive than any King not named Boogie.
Stats: 11min 0pts (0-0, 0-0, 0-0) 5reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Hayes ( INC ) -- I hate grading Chuck Hayes -- he just doesn't do anything gradeable most nights -- and it being preseason and all I am going to beg off. there was obviously nobody for him to guard on the Clippers this time, aside from the 7ft Mullens who could chuck over Chuck at will with his 30 foot heaves. He grabbed some boards, and got his one highlight to start the fourth with a little behind the back pass to a cutting Outlaw before being replaced by a more gradeable JT for the late center minutes
Stats: 7min 0pts (0-0, 0-0, 0-0) 0reb 0ast 0stl 1blk 2TO
McCallum ( D) -- rookie. This was the first night where we really saw that. Brought in late in the third, maybe as a normal rotation/chance to get some experience with Grevis not playing after half, maybe in an attempt to cool Collison who was lighting IT up. Either way, did not work, as Collison abused him, harassed his handle, and rather than playing out the string as I had expected, IT was back in the game by the mid 4th to close things out. Just got schooled by a pretty good NBA PG this time out.
Boxscore
Stats: 28min 10pts (4-10, 1-2, 1-1) 3reb 2ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Salmons ( C- ) -- the stat line says not much happened, and the actual game was somewhat less effective than that. Basically had his whole night's worth of numbers when he returned in the mid 4th garbagetime (ok, its preseason, even more garbageytime) and quickly got 2 three point plays, hitting a wide open three and then sneaking through on a long circling drive to the rim and getting fouled. Two entirely respectable play s in the course of a minute or so of action. Unfortunately he played 27 other largely empty minutes. The invisibility was particularly noticeable early, as he rarely shot, missed when he did, and did the old Smart era stupid passing on a three set up for him by Cousins to dribble into midrange and brick it. Also reminiscent of the Smart era, disturbingly, was an apparent effort coming out of the lockerroom in the 3rd to get him involved. Why anyone cares that much if a 33yr old John Salmons is involved or not I don't know. He must have a magic wampom stick he waves over coaches' heads during breaks or something. In any case, led to more opportunities, and notably to freezing Thornton out BTW, but no more productivity until the late bang bang plays in the 4th. I C- minused him rather than give him the grade I actually thought he deserved simply because he and Jared Dudley were having an old vet invisibility party together, so he didn't get whipped. Just didn't matter.
Stats: 22min 6pts (2-9, 0-0, 2-6) 11reb 3ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Thompson ( C- ) -- Jason's statline, decorated by that unattractive 2-9, is still probably more impressive than his actual play. In fact he too varied between invisible (early) to flat bad for the first three quarters, and didn't really assert himself in any way until taking over to play some garbagetime center in the 4th. He's our most proven roleplayer next to Cousins, but tonight he just didn't seem to know what to do as Cousins dominated the game, as Cousins ate the shots, ate the boards, and Jason was stuck kind of wandering in space half guarding BJ Muellens as he did his freak 7ft Kyle Korver thing, not getting on the glass, and clumsily blowing most of his offensive attempts. Like Salmons there seemed to be some attempt in the early third to get him more involved, and like Salmons the results were decidedly mixed. He hit his only two shots during that period, but also committed a charge and sank back into his FT woes. When he was on the interior though he seemed to be doing a good job of challenging shots, and when he returned in the 4th he was more physical, and while still fumbling everything, more aggressive on the glass for a short stint. And with Landry gone, still might have won our BBNNB (best big not named Boogie) award for the night.
Stats: 28min 31pts (11-18, 0-0, 9-11) 11reb 3ast 2stl 0blk 2TO
Cousins ( A+ ) -- really really REALLY impressive outing. Impressive not only for what DeMarcus did, but for what we allowed him to do. He was truly treated like a franchise center, touching the ball almost every possession for long stretches, and he responded by just pounding the Clippers inside. Even when he missed 4 of his first 6, the misses were good misses right at the rim that just rolled off, and there was no pout and no waver from our coaches/team about going right back to him the next time. We were running everything through him and he was notching assists as well as the whole skillset was on display, including a brilliant pass for a big man, driving into the lane and dishing the ball on the move in PGesque fashion to a cutting Outlaw for the dunk. Dominated the glass as well and just generally just made this game all about his dominance just as much as the great centers of yore once did -- he had 25pts 9rebs...by halftime! (In the third we went away from him a bit to concentrate on important things like IT chucking up shots off his dribble and getting John Salmons in rhythm.) And in another subtle development, he's been totally in control thus far, and only notched 2 fouls again, which means he could have kept on piling up numbers if this were a regular season game. Now the provisos are the predictable preseason ones, its preseason, he was matched against the Clippers scrubby reserves, etc. All true. But then again the last time he saw the Clippers starters he dropped 36 and 20 on them, so maybe they should count themselves lucky. In any case at this stage of the season/preseason you really can't do it any better than Boogie did tonight, and so there is a very early + to his A this time out.
Stats: 25min 20pts (3-4, 2-3, 2-2) 2reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
Thornton ( C- ) -- I have resorted to C minuses three times in our starting lineup thus far (although Salmons was worse until late) because I wasn't sure any of them deserved D's, but they all struggled for different reasons. For Marcus Thornton this is what it was, and it has interesting implications: we ran a conspicuously Cousins centered offense, and Thornton, who is a volume scorer in love with his touches and shots, didn't know what to do with himself. And to be fair, we didn't know what to do with him. Watching this game the idea of him emerging as a big point total second scorer alongside Cousins would seem a joke, because he barely touched it and he did exactly what Coach Malone told him he couldn't do back during the summer, which was let his guy score more than he did. After half things got particularly acute, as IT, who played a selfish game, joined the starters, and we seemed to be particularly concerned to get Salmons and Thompson going. The result was that MT may actually have been the 5th option out there amazingly enough, a complete afterthought resulting in our gunner in chief taking 4 shots in 25 min of action. And in fact when in the mid third he scooped up a deflection steal and got out in the open court, anybody who has ever watched Thornton play instantly knew that there was simply no way in hell he was going to pass that ball because he wasn't getting his shots otherwise. Sure enough he went down, ignored two teammates running the lanes, and clumsily banged into a defender to get to the line rather than give up a suddenly precious scoring opportunity. Very interesting development, but its preseason, and you don't know what it means in the larger picture except that there certainly hasn't been any effort to feature MT thus far.
Stats: 11min 2pts (1-2, 0-0, 0-0) 2reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Vasquez ( B ) -- short night only playing the first quarter minutes, but whereas several of our guys tonight put up better boxscore numbers than the games they played, with Grevis it was exactly the opposite. Did a real nice job in several aspects, passing the ball up the court quickly to trigger transition opportunities, and then in the halfcourt controlling the action and keeping the focus on Cousins without ever feeling the need our other guards do to break off and get something of their own every other play. Quite encouraging and we were at our most fun to watch in the early going with Grevis controlling and Cousins dominating.
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Bench
Stats: 31min 9pts (4-11, 1-2, 1-1) 7reb 3ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Patterson ( C ) -- still not making much of a case for himself, and should probably count himself lucky Carl is out until the All Star break. Was not effective against Jamison (who looks totally washed up now) either as a scorer or a rebounder and just kept passively missing jumpers. Was a little more active after returning in the second half, and quickly notched a couple of assists after returning in the third at a time when our ball movement was dying. Grabbed a few offensive boards and padded/capped things at the end of garbagetime finally hitting a three just before the buzzer. I have no idea why I'm calling this a flat C except maybe a lack of esteem for PPat's abilities in general. He kind of sucked again as it was a funny blowout with Cousins killing them but a lot of guys struggling.
Stats: 24min 8pts (4-8, 0-1, 0-1) 3reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Outlaw ( C- ) -- ok, here is another one of those ok looking statlines that wasn't so ok on court. But this was an educational outing for all of you dedicated Travis Outlaw watchers. Pretty much here's what we had: Travis Outlaw sucked right up until the point when he quit trying to do anything. Explanation? For much of the game Outlaw looked like the old turd Outlaw of the last few seasons where we have had no system and so Travis has been left out there to completely ineffectually create for himself. So we again were treated to that ridiculously inefficient catch and take two dribbles to nowhere before bricking a midrange jumper game that has made his late career such a joke. But the statline doesn't fully reflect that inefficiency, and here is why: in stark contrast to the "create" off his own dribble stuff, from time to time he relaxed, realized he isn't actually very talented, and let other guys create for him. And for a second game in a row when he did that, did not think, just caught and shot, slashed to the hoop looking for a pass, he had effective moments in an otherwise fugly game. Best moment came in the 2nd quarter when he cut to the hoop and took a slick Cousins pass up for a big dunk. If somebody would just give Malone a ruler to slap Travis's hand with everytime he tries to dribble, he might actually be an effective catch and shoot guy.
Stats: 23min 7pts (3-9, 1-3, 0-1) 5reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
McClemore ( C ) -- well, here is grade where I wanted to go higher and probably should have gone lower. In the end what it came down to was this: Ben did not hit his shots, and he got just lit up on the other end by Jamal Crawford. And yet...outside of Grevis his game, or rather his playing style this game, felt perhaps better than any other Kings guard. In short he was doing the right things...just not doing them very well. Moreso than Marcus it appeared he was able to function in a Cousins-centric world. He hit an early three, and had an impressive finish along the baseline. He generally avoided dribbling it off his shoes this time, and he used his athleticism to help a bit on the boards, once even flying in to snatch one from Boogie, who seemed to pause as if to say what are you doing in my house little mouse. Now on the other hand, he kept missing. And late in the game he did nothing but miss. More problematically even in this comfortable win you could see the seeds of future trouble as our backup guards, really any of our guards, just cannot defend a traffic cone. The only reason we don't win this by 30 is because Ben got destroyed by Crawford, IT got destroyed by Collison, and we just had no backcourt answers. So realistically you get punked by your off the bench counterpart 25-7 that's not a C. But here in the preseason, with a rook...thought he had the right idea and played the game the right way, so going to give him a little pass.
Stats: 30min 16pts (4-8, 0-3, 8-8) 4reb 5ast 1stl 0blk 3TO
Thomas ( B- ) -- wasn't sure how to grade this, but fact is I have been running around handing out Cs to everybody, and we largely blew this team out. That was hugely due to Cousins being overwhelming (we were +23 in the 28 minutes with him on the court, -12 during the 20min when he was not), but he didn't do it 100% alone. Which brings us to the problematic case of Isaiah Thomas, who took over the scoring when Cousins was out, but did so by largely making it impossible for anybody else to play that role. In short, he was back to the same selfish stuff that he has flashed repeatedly during his career, pulling up for shots off his dribble, running plays for his own attempts rather than teammates, once making me want to throw something at the TV as he pulled up 1 on 4 on the break and shot a jumper with no other King even in the picture let alone underneath to board (he made that shot BTW)...the difference between how Grevis was running the team and IT was running the...well, Isaiah offense was stark. So this becomes a bit of the anti-McClemore grade for me. IT scored effectively, and for stretches when there was no Cousins he was the only guy scoring consistently. He gave us a push in the second. But man if it wasn't about him again, and occasionally you could feel us reverting offensively to the sort of gun it if you got it philosophy of last year. Throw in him getting lit up by Darren Collison after halftime and no, I wasn't nearly as happy with this game as the numbers say I should be. But I didn't want to get too harsh with the grade. We only got 11 min out of Grevis tonight, so it tainted the PT balance, but in many ways ITs more me-centric take on PGing is kind of what you expect out of an off the bench pace changer, which he's probably going to be for us, and he was more productive than any King not named Boogie.
Stats: 11min 0pts (0-0, 0-0, 0-0) 5reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Hayes ( INC ) -- I hate grading Chuck Hayes -- he just doesn't do anything gradeable most nights -- and it being preseason and all I am going to beg off. there was obviously nobody for him to guard on the Clippers this time, aside from the 7ft Mullens who could chuck over Chuck at will with his 30 foot heaves. He grabbed some boards, and got his one highlight to start the fourth with a little behind the back pass to a cutting Outlaw before being replaced by a more gradeable JT for the late center minutes
Stats: 7min 0pts (0-0, 0-0, 0-0) 0reb 0ast 0stl 1blk 2TO
McCallum ( D) -- rookie. This was the first night where we really saw that. Brought in late in the third, maybe as a normal rotation/chance to get some experience with Grevis not playing after half, maybe in an attempt to cool Collison who was lighting IT up. Either way, did not work, as Collison abused him, harassed his handle, and rather than playing out the string as I had expected, IT was back in the game by the mid 4th to close things out. Just got schooled by a pretty good NBA PG this time out.
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