Get this beast some help.
So Boogie became only the 3rd man (Shaq, Ewing) in the modern history of the NBA (past 30 years) to notch two 39-20 games in the same season. I would imagine he is the first to do so twice in the span of two weeks.
And we lost.
Again.
And again there just was no help. Just almost nobody. Rudy was doing a good job on Davis for a while on defense, kind of sucked it up inefficiently to give at least a little offensive help in the 3rd, and that was just about it. Our bench recollapsed to disastrous +/- numbers all around, and Boogie would have had to score 50 to pull this out.
Meanwhile a certain former #13 on the Kings kicked the living crud out of our too old, too young, and too scrubby guardline, notching 25pts 10 assist while all 4 of our guards COMBINED for 18pts 7ast. Come to think about it I still think said former #13 would be a heck of piece to help our beast. Alas he has a beast of his own to feed down in New Orleans.
The good news is that having figured a workaround to my technical issues, this time I did NOT lose my notes, and so the grades will go up on time and in full. See? In every black cloud there's a silver lining.
Boxscore
Stats: 37min 18pts (7-18, 1-5, 3-4) 4reb 2ast 1stl 1blk 3TO
Summary: effective on Davis on defense, but not adequate game as a second offensive weapon
Gay ( C+ ) -- ok, one of my problems with the concept of Anthony Davis and his efficiency as a big man has been that he simply lacks 1 on 1 physical post dominance. And if that seems esoteric, no its not. Its the big man's equivalent to a guard with unguardable quickness. And tonight what we saw was something I have pondered before -- what if the answer to guarding this long, quick, off the ball playing big man is a long athletic SF to match him? Now where would we find one of those? Of course merely finding one isn't enough, the one has to be wiling to get in there and go chest to chest with one of the league's best players. And for about 2/3 of the game, that unlikely solider was Rudy Gay. Unable to use quickness to run by him, barely able to go over him, and at this young age still not powerful or clever enough in the post to just abuse him, A.D. actually had a real hard time with Ruby in the first half, backed up by an attentive with something to prove Cuz. Now the difficulty was that consumed Rudy on that side of the ball, and we go crushed on the boards despite Cuz's monster night, and on the other end Davis's extreme length kept Rudy from almost any of his favorite reach over the top jumpers and post moves. A few little scattered broken plays and offensive boards along the baselines was about it before half, and most of what he did try was forced. In the third there was a concerted effort to get him going offensively, and he got a few hits, hit a three, but it quickly spiraled into just out of control tough shot chucking as Davis really got into him, and he never was able to provide any real extended and efficient 2nd option for Cuz. And then down the stretch Davis increasingly began to get free and do the things he can do, and a fairly close game turned into a blowout as Cuz could not score every single hoop for us. So.. here's a real oddity for Rudy, a good D, bad O grade. Not what you associate with Rudy, and with nobody else helping Cuz either, we couldn't afford that mix tonight.
Stats: 24min 10pts (4-8, 2-2, 0-0) 1reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Summary: as close to a 3rd weapon as we had, lost time because couldn't guard anybody
Casspi ( C ) -- got an easy little open flip to go in the early going, and was effectively our 2nd weapon in the first quarter because he dominatingly scored 4pts.. Unfortunately not much else was happening (and where has Omri the rebounder gone these last couple?) early, and when we tried to use him to give Ray some relief from Reke's muscle, things did not go much better. The rest of his points came in the third as he gave us a pair of threes, but the rim was largely closed to him by the Pelicans length, and misadventures on the other end piled up, guys slipping off for threes, Omri looking like he didn't even want to give it an honest go vs. A.D. etc. I was still surprised to see his minutes so limited given the utter nothing the bench gave us, but it was less because Omri was so special and more because everybody else was so bad.
Stats: 41min 39pts (16-28, 0-0, 7-12) 20reb 2ast 1stl 3blk 3TO
Summary: only legends put up statlines like this, and against a huge frontline too
Cousins ( A+ ) -- ok, so another moderately respectable outing by the big guy. And another moderately respectable outing that somehow did not result in a victory after he found himself all alone out there. These are the ones that bother, because Boogie wouldn't be human if he didn't walk away from this one saying "what more can I do?". 39pts 20rebs has been accomplished a total of 22 times in the last 30 years (a span of approximately 36,900 regular season games), and 2 of those 22 have been by Big Cuz himself in the last two weeks. And we've lost both. SMH. Anyway, Cuz got right to work in this one, and faced with a near twin towers frontline of shotblockers, that work largely consisted of just lighting up Omir Asik and friends from outside with 5 straight long jumpers on his way to a 13pt 6reb 2block first quarter. When he returned in the second he immediately splashed in another jumper, but from that point onward with his point made he was increasingly able to get around the Pelicans' bigs to the rim, and about the only thing slowing him down was an unusually shaky night from the line (which even included a flat airball in the third). The videogame numbers were up to 23 and 9 by halftime, which only made the events of the beginning of the 3rd more alarming as Cuz came out and iummediately lost his composure, picking up a quick 3rd foul, and then yet another technical foul, effectively putting him 1 more foul of either kind of being lost. But he settled, played it smart (barely with the ref barking), got out leading the break and avoided picking up an offensive foul and dished it to Ben for a three. And maybe the timing of Rudy's one little push was fortunate,because Cuz could rest on the scoring front (other than the FTs) for a spell and cool down. He wasn't done yet though, the numbers kept on climbing, although the 3rd may have been the weakest of the quarter,s and when he came back in the 4th it was right back with another big push including a near double double in the quarter alone as he was pretty much singlehandedly keeping us within...well the sort of range the Warriors could overcome. We however, well let's put it this way. DeMarcus Cousins = 39pts 20reb. Every single other Sacramento King except Rudy Gay? 31pts 13rebs. So a slight step back on the whole team contribution front. That's not on the big guy though. He put up a statline you are lucky to see once a year in the league, and he didn't for the 2nd time in two weeks.
Stats: 31min 7pts (2-9, 2-4, 1-2) 4reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 0TO
Summary: hit two threes, that was his entire game
McLemore ( D ) -- paging Ben! yoohoo? Was a game last night, might want to set the ole alarm. Got off to another poor start, airballing a three, and forcing trying to do way too much into the sea of long arms the Pels use to protect their basket. By halftime he was sitting on exactly 1pt, with his only solace that Eric Gordon was barely any better. In the early third was a little sputter of life when he led a break and made a good dish to Ray for a layup, and then a minute later took a kick from Cuz for a three. And then that was that, and as we struggled and died away Ben was nowhere to be found for over a quarter. He added his only other hit, a second three, with 4min to go, and I guess discovered this additional silver lining -- so poor was our team play tonight that scoring all of 7pts was enough to be our 4th lading scorer on the night.
Stats: 34min 2pts (1-4, 0-1, 0-0) 2reb 5ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Summary: got butt kicked by Tyreke, highlight was winning a jumpball
McCallum ( F ) -- coming off of one of his better games, I felt like Ray had his mojo stolen by Tyreke right in the first minute of the game when Reke just squared him up and bully bounced him back to Baton Rouge for the easy power layin. It set a tone to say the least, and when Reke then blew right around him, and capped it by starting to hit jumpers..long night ahead. Ray never did figure out a thing to do against Reke defensively, but of course things might have been mitigated if he was generating offense on the other side. Absolutely no such luck however. In the early going he at least accumulated a handful of easy little assists basically consisting of give the ball to Cuz and get out of the way, but he was absolutely nowhere to be found offensively. Finally got a hoop on the break from Ben to start the 3rd, but that was the only thing he ever did offensively. Not able to get his own stuff to go against the Pelicans length, missed his only three on a kickout, and spent his entire long depressing night (Miller was almost unplayable so Ray got the bulk of it) watching Reke bowl through him or drain jumpers over him. In the end played 1 minute more than the Pels PG, but got outscored 25pts 10ast to 2pts 5ast. Ballgame.
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