[Grades] Grades v Clippers 11/2/2014

Anyway care to revise their season predictions at this point?

  • Nope -- I always thought they'd be a playoff team.

    Votes: 5 7.9%
  • Nope, they're better, but 38-40 is still about their top.

    Votes: 26 41.3%
  • Nope, something will happen, it always does, and we'll still suck.

    Votes: 4 6.3%
  • Yep, I am starting to think its possible.

    Votes: 14 22.2%
  • Yep, in fact how many wins do you think it will take to get homecourt?

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Yep, but only if we get a third weapon to complete this.

    Votes: 13 20.6%

  • Total voters
    63
  • Poll closed .

Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#1


Been a long long time since this fanbase could pull out them flabby out of practice arms and flex, but I think we may have something here.

DEFENSE.

A superstar to lead us.

We badly need a third weapon. We still need a shooter. But this is the brutal part of the schedule here, this is the Western Conference playoffs for us in November, and we are competing and belong. Its really the first time we've been able to do that in more than half a decade because we are throwing up a defensive wall and just hanging in there tough possession after possession allowing us to finally survive those offensive lulls. Its the huge key that has been missing forever in these parts. What allows good teams to be good. And thus far, we've got it. There's big time winds of change here.


Boxscore

Stats: 39min 25pts (7-14, 1-2, 10-11) 7reb 6ast 1stl 1blk 4TO
Gay ( A- ) -- real nice followup effort to the 40pt explosions as Rudy is just suddenly back in gear. This time he played Boogie's very effective wingman, and in the second half Malone even learned from his mistake and tried to keep at least one of them out there at all times (think there was only 45 seconds or so without either) to provide an anchor for the struggling benchers. Took him a little while to get going offensively, but while the first half of the first quarter belonged to Cuz, the second half belonged to Rudy as he took over where Cuz left off and put 10 points of his own, and for the second night wasn't forcing. It wasn't just another scoring effort though, as Rudy not only led the team in assists while setting up teammates on numerous occasions, but also had several defensive knockaways and blocks. When he and Cousins were out there together we were just clearly the better team. I wavered between an A or an A- for an excellent and efficient 2nd weapon game, but ultimately chose to go with the minus here for a late stumble as we went to him coming out of the timeout at the 2:56 mark of the game, and he made back to back mistakes on our next two possessions resulting in a blocked shot against him and a turnover. It was very a much a credit to this new defense thing the Kings seem to have discovered that we held tough and did not allow those empty offensive possessions to sink us, but the second mistake in particular could have been disaster as out of it JJ Redick ended up open for a wide open three that could have given the Clippers the lead. Fortunately he choked it, Cuz came down the other way and made a great little pass to JT under the hoop for a layin, and Rudy's bad minute becomes less than a footnote. Real strong set of back to back games against elite competition.

Stats: 37min 4pts (2-5, 0-0, 0-0) 7reb 1ast 2stl 2blk 3TO
Thompson ( B+ ) -- you know somewhere along the line in the great JT debates about is he or isn't he good enough to start, to be a rotation guy, to walk and chew gum at the same time, is the contract too big, is he happy here and just on and on, something has gone unnoticed: he's become a good, and sometimes really good, man defender. He is not a shotblocker, never will be, but last year we saw him really get into Kevin Love, Anthony Davis and others. This year he was coming off a strong defensive effort against LaMarcus Aldridge, and tonight he backed it up with really an outstanding defensive effort against Blake Griffin that really seemed to flummox the flopper. Griffin was trying so hard to make something happen, and with so little success that he was 3-13 form the field...in the first quarter alone! And after our bench collapsed and let the Clippers back into it, you could immediately feel the uptick in defensive intensity when JT returned and started hounding Griffin again. He's still not being productive in any other way particularly. His offensive clumsiness caused us some minor issues as Boogie and Rudy were out there all alone on offense for much of the night. He did grab 7 boards on the night, and a few of them were tough ones helping to clean up behind the scrum DeMarcus was attracting, but 4pts 7rebs on 2-5 shooting in 37min isn't often going to get a grade this high. It does this night though. He never let Blake get going the whole game, a huge factor for us. Held him to 6-20 on the night, and with the game hanging in the balance was on the receiving end of a nice little slip pass inside from Boogie, which JT converted for a layup to put us up 4 with 1:48 to go in the game. A strong contribution without much evidence of it in the boxscore. And good enough to win with as long as you have two stars combing for 60pts on the night.

Stats: 34min 34pts (15-23, 0-0, 4-5) 17reb 5ast 0stl 3blk 4TO
Cousins ( A+ ) -- if you gush too much, you sound foolish, so I will just resort to an evil laugh instead: MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Boogie had himself a wow game, and all it took to snap him out of the doldrums of those first two scruffy games was the sight of his long lost buddies in Clipperland. Boogie on the night: 34pts 17reb 5ast on 15-23 shooting in 34min. Entire Clippers starting C/PF/SF frontcourt on the night?: 28pts 18reb 5ast on 11-36 shooting in 95min. He started the game off once again displaying his versatility by draining long jumper after long jumper over Jordan, who just doesn't like to venture out of that lane. Added an excellent hustle play when he was headed back upcourt, then turned and raced in from above the three point line to snag an offensive rebound and follow it. He completely carried us in the early going as it took a while for anybody else to show up, Boogie scored our first 8 points and had 10pts and 6reb by the mid quarter before Rudy began to turn it up as a 2nd scorer. And in a sign of the defensive intensity we would see all night, he came over and helped JT finish off Griffin on several occasions as well. He added a beautiful long bounce pass to JT to cap a 15-0 run that had us running the Clips out of their own building. The second quarter was interesting because of Spencer Hawes, who was a thorn in our side all night and obviously was being used to draw Cuz all the way out to the three point line on defense. Cuz tried to batter him inside, succeeded a few times, but Hawes had help and it wasn't efficient. Meanwhile Spencer was causing problems the other way attacking our smaller frontcourt players and launching long jumpers against Cuz and in the end it was the only quarter the Clippers would win. Cousins came out of the halftime break a man on a mission, and immediately started things off with a great physical drive and layin. He would add another punishing drive, and forego the jumper for the inside attack all half long. And if Portland's near pivotal moment occurred when Boogie committed a poor foul and had to leave the game in the 3rd, sending us into a swoon, the pivotal moment in this one may have been when Boogie again committed a 4th foul in the 3rd quarter (not a bad one though), but instead of leaving the game, waved off Coach Malone and asked to stay in the game. Not only did Malone acquiesce, but Boogie rewarded the confidence, avoided picking up a 5th foul, and continued his strong play long enough to start pulling us back into the game before he left. Malone even felt enough confidence in his emerging maturity to send him back out to start the 4th quarter in order to support the ragged bench troops, and Cuz responded by battering Hawes inside trip after trip until the Clippers were forced to cry uncle and call a timeout. By the time Cuz left for a quick breather in the mid quarter, we had tied the game back up and were ready for a stretch run battle. Cuz's fourth quarter play featured not only tough finishes inside, but a series of really nifty passes for a big man zipping them to Casspi and JT when the Clippers flinched and overcommitted on him. His only real mistake came at the three minute mark when he directly challenged Jordan inside, got smushed, and the Clippers used the opportunity to race back the other way on the break. In the end it did not matter. This wasn't just an obvious All Star game. this was about as flat superstar a game as you are going to see, and once again against one of the best teams and best frontlines in the league. Just chewed them up.

Stats: 20min 3pts (1-4, 1-3, 0-0) 1reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
McLemore ( D- ) -- aka "The Thug". Hey, if Ben can't help us solve our gaping SG whole or shooter problem, perhaps he's looking to make up for it by carving out a different niche that we also could use help with: The Enforcer. All of this based off of one minor little early incident when Ben pulled down Blake Griffin to stop him on the break, Blake took exception, and Ben ended up getting called for a flagrant 1. You would just shrug it off except for the effect it seemed to have on the game as Ben's incredibly vicious and inhumane thuggery seemed to light a fire under our butts, and may just have intimidated the oh so tough Clippers right out of the building. We were down 13-8 when it happened, and would proceed to run off the next 13 points in the game. We need to get him a cool nickname like "The Bodysnatcher" or "The Assasin". In any case it certainly beat talking about the rest of Ben's game because...er...he didn't have one. Deffenively he seemed to be repeatedly losing Redick, amongst others, around the perimeter, and the Clippers helped our defense tonight by missing some good looks from 3. And offensively...it was offensive again. Kind of ridiculous really. The only thing that fell for him was a blind luck three in the third when he missed it so far left it ricocheted off the backboard and fell in...just the way he called it of course. Everything else was missed again Our starting shooting guard is now averaging 3.3pts a game on .214 shooting. Ahem. Things at the position got so dire that Malone hit upon an inventive little solution and used Casspi as our SG for the 4th quarter as we tried to win it. For Ben, I'm not sure where you go from here, but it would almost have to be up. Only leaving him a half grade's room to go down, and that only because he thugged Blake Griffin for us and sent us on a run. :) Hey...how about "Master of Disaster"? "Mean" Ben Mac?

Stats: 39min 14pts (4-12, 0-1, 6-6) 5reb 4ast 0stl 1blk 3TO
Collison ( C+ ) -- numbers were not the equal of last time out, but then again he really had his hands full with his old starter on both ends. But that's the thing -- CP3 clearly slowed Collison and harassed him at times, but Collison competed hard and CP3 was only briefly able to impact this one back the other way. You'll take that tradeoff. Along the way the few hoops he did get were often timely. He was finally the first king other than Boogie to
score when he smartly waited for his offensive rebounders to get under the hoop and then pulled up for one of his little side pops. He stepped up when Cuz left in the final two minutes of the half and scored our next 4pts to keep us close. He seemed to be losing control of Paul defensively in the early 3rd as Paul ran off 11 points in the first half of the quarter to push the Clippers out to a lead. But DC stabilized thereafter, and Paul would never score another point after the 4:27 mark of the 3rd quarter. And then late in the game DC stepped up and hit the dagger shot on another of his little pullups from the right elbow with 53 seconds to go and drained the jumper to put us up 4. He would finish it off with 2 clutch FTs as well. This was not a great game by Collison, but it was a tough competitive one where he gave the game's best PG something to contend with all game long, and in the end got the last laugh. I could be talked into a B- on this one.
 
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Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#3
Bench

Stats: 6min 1pts (0-0, 0-0, 1-2) 2reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Evans ( INC ) -- did not work out at all when he came in for Cousins at the end
of the first. Just too big a shrinkage in talent and started racking up fouls. Did get into it a bit with Blake which was helpful in making Blake's night miserable. But otherwise ended up being replaced by Derrick Williams of all wildly different people as Malone tried to goose his snoozing reserves to offensive life.

Stats: 9min 0pts (0-2, 0-1, 0-2) 0reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Sessions ( F ) -- just inexplicable awful again. I mean...truly inexplicable as in a WTH? fashion. This is a player with career averages of 11.7pts 4.7ast. After he was traded to Milwaulkee, the second half of last year he averaged 15.8pts 4.8ast on .461 shooting. He was good as recently as this preseason. And here, bang, he was just almost unplayable. He did nothing in the first half, and those were his good minutes. In the second half he started trying to score again, missed all his shots, missed both his FTs, and threw in a TO for good measure. Again...WTH? The only thing that I can remember feeling similar was the mysterious disappearance of JJ Hickson when we acquired him a couple of years back. Was blowing up for Cleveland, we get him and he turns into a scrub, we release him and he blows back up. Well...Ramon, I know you've been on a lot of losing teams, but we are trying to win now. Time to show up.

Stats: 16min 6pts (2-2, 0-0, 2-2) 6reb 3ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Casspi ( B ) -- was I at his SF spot in the first half and did have one nice take, but the bench was a disaster in that half, his play was scruffy, and he wasn't able to provide enough offense to elevate it. In the 4th was when we got more evidence of how useful this version of Omri Casspi is turning out, as with both of your young SGs just giving us nothing, Malone got inventive and went to Casspi instead as a mega 2-guard. He used his size on the glass, got a scrappy I'm bigger than you inside finish, and while Collison was haivng to bark at him to tell him where to go his physical scrapping gave us something from that position for the first time all night as we squeezed the Clips in the final quarter. We might have felt a little different about this if Redick was hitting his shots, as Omri was having a hard time staying close to him chasing him around on the perimeter, but as it was we won the SG minutes during that spell for probably the only quarter of the first 12 this season.

Stats: 21min 3pts (1-3, 1-3, 0-0) 0reb 1ast 0stl 3blk 1TO
Stauskas ( D ) -- aka "The Shotblocker". Seriously, if Ben and Nik can't be shooters, at least we've got them now combining to provide us with that intimidating rim protector we've been looking for. Whil it would be hard to pick out what was and was not credited, Nik was credited with not one, not two, but THREE blocked shots on the evening, which can be taken more as a sign he was competing on defense then that we have found our Ibaka. On the other hand, this is one half of the worst shooting guard platoon in the NBA, and so after immediately hitting a three to start the 2nd period, he went completely silent on offense, certainly could provide no punch to save the awful first half bench, and proved not remotely quick enough to stay in front of Farmar who was just balsting to the hoop unimpeded as the Clippers went on their big first half run. With Ben still doing nothing, Stauskas was out there heading into the half and threw an awful pass out of bounds at a bad time in the final 40 seconds of the half. Back in in the third and still not hitting his shots and the total lack of NBA effective SG play led Malone to turn in desperation to Omri to take over and try to at least give us something from the spot.

Stats: 4min 1pts (0-0, 0-0, 1-2) 0reb 0ast 0stl 1blk 1TO
Williams ( INC ) -- brought in in the second quarter in palce of Reggie Evans as we had just completely failed to score and wanted to try smallball. That was just throwing fuel on the firer as Derrick managed to get a -9 +/- in only 4 minutes. Was briefly left on when Cousins and Gay came back and got one drive and a couple of FTs before it was time to go back to JT to hound Blake some more.

Stats: 14min 4pts (2-3, 0-0, 3-3) 1reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Landry ( C ) -- nothing at all in the first half as thus far the idea that Sessiosn and Landry are going to be saavy vets carrying our 2nd unit has proven to be pure fantasy. Even got a brief stint as our "center" as Malone tried to go super smallball with a Landry/DWill frontline and we got ruined. In the second half picked up his grade here a bit as we kept one of Cousins or Gay out there to do the heavy lifting, and Landry was able to just linger about looking for garbage points. At the end of the third got a tip follow as we hung tough. But made the bad error with less than 1
second to go in the quarter, fouling Doubglas Roberts on a long near three on the baseline and letting the Clips go up 4 heading into the 4th. With Cousins dominating play in the early 4th, Landry got a powerful finish over the front of the rim that saw him do the two arm flex afterwars. Not sure you do that when you have 4pts 1reb and the guy our there carrying you is working on a 34pt 17reb night, but it was a good play, and I think these little displays of machismo from the "supporting cast" helped set a tone.
 
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#6
What a game. Our defense has been amazing, starting with Collison keeping PG's from just waltzing into the lane and carving up our defense.

Cousins, my god, what a monster.

Sessions and Williams should just take their game checks and hang out at home the rest of the season
 
#9
I'm not gonna get to high on this just yet. But i figured the Kings would start this year 0-4 and probably 1-9. So i'm starting to feel pretty good
 
#12
What a game. Our defense has been amazing, starting with Collison keeping PG's from just waltzing into the lane and carving up our defense.

Cousins, my god, what a monster.

Sessions and Williams should just take their game checks and hang out at home the rest of the season
And this is exactly what I predicted would be the huge benefit of letting IT go and getting a halfway competent PG defender. Someone who tries. Who understands and cares about the fundamentals of man defense.

Addition by subtraction, and addition of someone better.

Collison is not a fluke, people. We're not seeing crazy acrobatic plays, super streaky shooting, ball hogging inflating numbers. He's playing the game. His offense is coming within the flow, and he's not a matador on defense. If anyone is saying "Can he really be this good?" My question to you is: "Isn't this simply a normal point guard with no gaping holes in his game and a non-selfish style?"

Because he's not doing any of this with anything that looks unsustainable or streaky. This is what we paid for, and this is what we got.
 
#17
Awesome game.

One minor note: Derrick Williams needs to not play ever again. Not trying to be too negative, but all of our units looked much better when he wasn't on the floor. Casspi needs to be in there at all times. He's much smarter and a better team player than D-Will. It's time that the D-Will experiment comes to an end

Other than that, what a win. Very glad that the refs didn't fall for CP3's atrocious flop toward the end. That pissed me off. You have to resort to flopping because you can't do win legit? That's why I hate the clips. Bunch of divas too.

We got lucky that Reddick wasn't hitting those threes. We absolutely need to close out on those three pointers. Excellent play by Collison. Way to run your team, props.

Sessions: man, that was awful. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt though. He's never been this bad. Landry was solid. Evans...meh, not bad. Ben- bad on offense, decent on defense. Stauskas, solid defense.

Thompson was great. And I'm usually very anti-Thompson. He played extremely good defense. Stayed out of the way on offense. Killed it on the boards. Mad props.

Gay. Cousins. Nuff said.
 
#18
The addition of good facilitator/defender Collison and the subtraction of shoot-first/defensive liability IT made a huge difference for this team. Collison's effort on defense and ability to get the ball going around had been very contagious just as IT's me-first mentality and weak effort on defense were last year. Collison is a BIG plus.

Gay was also awesome and we are very lucky this game that the "smart" beasting Cousins showed-up instead of the "dumb" Cousins.

With Malone starting to learn to use his personnel wisely (meaning no more out of position small ball ala-Keith Smart), this team could very well smell the playoffs near season's end just like the Suns were last season.

Let's go Kings!
 
#20
3 games into the season Cousins and Gay have been a lethal 1-2 punch but it's Collison that has been the missing link. A lot of the kings improved defense has to be attributed to him. No more panicky reactions to cut off the opposing teams pg. Also, has anyone else noticed that instead of plays designed to get a wide open 3 it's often plays designed to create a mismatch or midrange jumper. How about putting a 6'8 player on Reddick to close out the game? It's called knowing your personnel. Who's responsible for that? Give credit where it's due.
 
#21
I'll be beyond impressed if we win in Denver tomorrow in the road back-to-back. If we lose narrowly I'll be impressed if there's no excuses about the altitude, back-to-back, and oh well we got Nuggets at our place next game to return the favor.
 
#28
We really do need to start getting some solid offensive contributions from the "other guys", especially the SG position.

As great as Rudy and DMC are, we can't be relying on them to put up numbers every single game like they have the last 2 games just to give us a chance to win