Alright, enough of this nonsense.
1) you can kind of blame me, because I shamed one of the other Consortium members into taking Cuz despite the bad karma they feared they carried, and look what happened
2) we had no Rudy, and after Cuz rolled his ankle in the first quarter, not much of a big guy either. The rest of the roster responded to that situation like chumps. Darren has a #3 been shown repeatedly now to being very VERY dependent on the presence of the #1 and #2.
3) If there was any positive it was that after beginning the game continuing to shoot us out of things, and stretching his fugly shooting freefall to 3 for his last 28 threes, Ben finally woke up after half and maybe, just maybe got out of his slump. Better hope so, because I don;t even know if we'll have Cousins tommorrow, and even with him if he gets as little help as tonight it will not matter.
4) And when I say enough of this nonsense, I mean even if the team won;t even if the franchise won't time, for the Grades to pick up the game. Accordingly I declare Girls.
Boxscore
Stats: 33min 10pts (5-11, 0-1, 0-0) 6reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Williams ( C- ) -- first half work was comically passive and ineffectual. Replacing Rudy Gay, he finally got an o-board and easy little finish over the rim in the mid-2nd, and that was it. Our second leading scorer was replaced by a guy who put up 2pts and 2rebs in 19 minutes while his opponent kept pouring it on. The second half was marginally better. There were a couple of little bursts, the biggest one centered around finally getting a jumpshot to go in the third after almost another Cuz turnover saw the ball bounce off two Heat and into DWill's hands where he put it up before he had time to think himself out of it. That led to a a little burst of energy, although the first result was a quickshot bricked jumper. But there was another good o-board and follow, a little activity in general around the o-glass. Got a backdoor cut and dunk at the 7:45 mark of the 4th for I think his final score. Unfortunately through all of that excitement, Deng just kept on professionally scoring, our pick and roll defense looks confused, DWill was on and off with Deng not infrequently getting around him, or popping free with space, and in general it looked exactly like the matchup of a longtime near All Star level SF and a backup tweener filling in It was one sided and we got none of the fill in burst we needed with Rudy out. --Brick
Carey Lowell -- former Bond girl and Gere girl, aged well too.
Stats: 20min 5pts (2-5, 0-0, 2-3) 3reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( D ) -- early on, for perhaps half a quarter, there was briefly hope for one of those defensive games from JT. He had somebody to challenge, played some great active defense on Bosh on a couple of possessions, made one of those out of the blue nice random post moves on right baseline, then an easy jumper from up top as an outlet with all the attention Cuz was drawing. But such hopes faded away more than were dashed. Bosh began to score. JT picked up a couple of loose/questionable fouls, and he sat out the entire second quarter, presumably to try to protect against a third foul, although you never can know what's up with Corbin. And when he returned after half...well he got in one good play stopping Whiteside (not exactly hard before the last two weeks) and then things went downhill fast. He blew a layup, after he had already got away with an uncalled travel on the play, and whatever focus he had had on Bosh was just gone, as Bosh was playing in luxurious practice quality space on jumper after jumper as he lit us up. When he returned late in the game he brought better defensive energy but the game was far far gone by then, and Bosh was on his way to a 30pt night and hitting tough shots even when challenged. In the end the matchup went pretty much exactly how the boxscore portrayed it. Our starting PF gave us 5pts 3reb on anight Cuz was hobbled and we needed much more. Their starting PF gave them 30pts 7reb, and the only reason this grade is not even worse is because we expect so little out of Jason anymore. --Brick
Lauren Cohan -- if that's my girlfriend there are going to be about 7 billion dead zombies if they insist on trying to eat her.
Stats: 39min 17pts (4-12, 0-0, 9-9) 11reb 5ast 1stl 0blk 8TO
Cousins ( D+ ) -- I had been avoiding grading Cousins because anyone I grade is cursed. However, I was bullied and shamed into it by the big Poopa. I hope everyone is happy. Actually the game started out fairly well for Cuz when he drove the left baseline, missed, was mugged, and made both freethrows. He followed that with a little 18 footer off the dribble. He made a nice pass from halfcourt to JT right under the basket, who missed but was fouled. Cuz missed out on another assist when he got tripled and kicked the ball out to McLemore who missed a three. He followed with another beautiful halfcourt bounce pass to a cutting McLemore for a layup. It was at about this point that there was a hint that things were about to take a turn for the worse. Cuz posted up, got doubled and threw up a wild looking shot high off the backboard that missed. He went to the bench at the 2:32 mark of the first quarter and returned at the 9:57 mark of the 2nd. He announced his return with a dunk off a feed from Stauskas. The very next time down the floor he repeated with another dunk, this time from Evans. From that point on most of his scoring for the rest of the half came at the freethrow line, where he went a perfect 8 for 8. After getting another assist on a kick out to McCallum, he ended the half by getting his shot blocked, and then with an airball from 5 feet. I'd really rather not write about the 2nd half, and the 3rd quarter in particular. It was just a series of Cousins turnovers. One after the other. One of the worse was when Cuz grabbed a rebound, dribbled the ball up past the three point line, had it knocked away, recovered it, had it knocked away again, recovered it again, and then tried to dribble through three defenders, who finally stole the ball. I thought for a moment I was watching the Keystone Cops. Yes he had 5 assists, but he also had 8 turnovers. Most of them unforced. By the way, a little advice for Corbin. Don't put Cuz and Evans on the court together if you want Cousins to be effective. Every time Cousins tried to post up with Evans on the floor, Evans moved to the basket, and of course brought his defender with him. That's where the triple came from. Cousins did grab 11 rebounds, and stayed out of foul trouble enabling him to play 39 minutes. He did turn his ankle earlier in the game, and it may have been affecting him. One of his worse games of the year. --Baja
Ariana Grande
Stats: 37min 15pts (6-14, 3-7, 0-1) 2reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
McLemore ( C- ) -- Ben spent most of game guarding Mario Chalmers, chasing him all over the court really but doesn't get his own game going until 2nd half. Gets his 2 TO's with a bad pass leading to Heat fast break then leaves Chalmers wide open for short 3, gives up another steal, misses another corner 3. Ben leads fast break grabs half court feed from Cuz for 2 and gets pass on quick curl thru middle for nice layin, held Chalmers to one 3-ptr in quarter. Heat hit 3 at buzzer (0.5 sec) lead 26-22. Ben still looking for his stroke but defense ok on Chalmers but help defense not too good as he is sucker for good fakes tonight. Into 2nd period Heat playing strictly half court game much better than Kings and getting shots they want with crisp passing and ball movement as Kings (and Ben) not doing good job covering the passing lanes. Ben misses another 3. Chalmers down lane vs Ben for little teardrop as Ben lost him, again. Kings only down 2, Ben is taking fakes from his man way too often leaving them with clear path. Finally, feet set, Ben gets pass from Cuz in corner for first 3, 2:20 Kings down 1, but allow 7-0 run by Heat to finish half down 44-52. Trying to see some good things Ben is doing in first half but other than holding Chalmers in check thats it but thru 2nd half taking fakes and generally out of position to make any stops. At 8 min mark of third quarter Ben gets feed for side 3, until then can't tell what he has done either end, he's there but just not accomplishing much. Leading fast breaks is probably his top asset but not enough of those tonight to help much. Ben replaces Nik at 9:34 mark of 3rd, Kings down 18, Ben gets side feed from Omri and hits very quick 3, later to FT line for 2 and a pull up jumper on baseline for 2, Too little too late. --Cruz
Sabina Altynbekova -- Kazakh volleyballer. A Kazakh volleyballer! See? Don't let it be said that I'm not giving a better effort digging up pretty girls to decorate these losses than the team is giving in producing them.
Stats: 38min 13pts (5-12, 1-4, 2-2) 1reb 6ast 0stl 1blk 2TO
Collison ( D ) -- I know that they like to refer to Cousins, Rudy, and Collison as our big 3, but the reality is that Collison is such a good fit with Cousins and Rudy precisely because he isn’t a ball-dominant player who is going to compete for the ball with Cousins and Rudy. He’s the exact type of player we need to help facilitate the game, play some non-horrible defense, and hit an open corner 3. The problem becomes when he has to carry a much larger load, as he was asked to do in this game. He had to know coming in that he was going to have to take on more responsibility with Rudy’s absence, and by and large he was playing well, and then Cousins had the minor ankle injury, and everything fell apart. Collison isn’t a guy that you rely on to go out and impose his will on a game, and when Cousins got hurt, we were left with literally zero players who had the ability/desire/game-planning to go out and dominate, and expecting Collison to step up and do something about it…well that isn’t why we brought him in, and we can’t really fault him for not being able to do so. So I’m just going to talk about his impact on the floor in this one. He hit his only 3, as well as a lay-up in the final minutes of the game…in complete garbage time. So in 34 minutes of actual playing while the game might have been salvaged he gave us 8 points on 3-10 shooting. And though he had 6 assists, he had zero assists in the 4th quarter, even though he played 10 minutes of it. He spent his time guarding Shabazz Napier, and I know that Grant and Jerry were complaining the entire game about Napier being able to get into the paint whenever he wanted. I’m actually going to quibble a little bit on that one, because Collison did do a pretty good job for most of the night. But you know what? Man, Reggie Evans is atrocious as a defender when put into pick-and-roll defense. I think Napier got into the lane every single time they ran pick-n-roll where Reggie had to defend it. So yeah, Napier was Collison’s guy, but Collison can’t actually teleport through Bosh to keep close to Napier, and the defense they were playing was having Collison go over the screen ao…yeah…Reggie was horrific and one of the primary reasons why the defense broke down over and over again. Anyway, Collison needed to step up, and not only did he not step up, he had himself a poor game to boot. So, a horrible game to watch, and he gets a bad grade for having a bad game. If both Cousins and Rudy are out in the next one….Collison is going to have to majorly step up his game, and frankly I just don’t know if he’s got what it takes to impose his will on another team in the absence of Cousins and Rudy. --Uncia
Bridget Malcolm
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