So...yeah.
No need to get too upset about this. This was a scheduled loss from the moment the NBA released its schedule. There were no actual Kings games scheduled this weekend. Just Pretty Girls.
So now we are officially 1 game behind my hit .500 by Jan 7 pace because of the damn Minny loss. I have us beating Dallas, and then I forgot whether I called the pick 'em down in Mexico City. Either way, 6-12 now. 1-7 without Cuz. We need the big guy back on Monday, and he has to stay back this time. Then we'll see if we can work back into things by Christmas.
Boxscore
Stats: 27min 20pts (7-20, 0-1, 6-6) 7reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Gay ( C- ) -- this will be lumped into his struggles from the previous night, but it was not at all the same beast -- to give you an idea, when I copy/pasted over the previous night's statline to use as a template, I was able to simply add a 0 to his pints total in the same number of minutes. This was about as scruffy as scrappy as you are ever going to see Mr. Smoove, and that was the good part of it. He was not hot, missed some more relative bunnies, but he was also facing a pretty decent punk....er....I mean defender in Draymond Green. And the thing was, Rudy fought it. He was visibly frustrated, and it was an unusual game for him in that he was making some flat out hustle assaults on the hoop, throwing up a crap shot he knew had no chance, and then charging in and scrapping for the follow rebound and finish. We hustled and busted our butts hard to stay in the game for the first 18 minutes. You knew it wouldn't last, and by halftime Rudy has already thrown up 17 shots, and only made 5. But there was fight there, and believe it or not Rudy's 5-17 at halftime was BETTER than any of our other scoring options aside from Koufos. The rest of the perimeter scorers were a combined 6-30 at halftime.
Diona Baird
Stats: 29min 11pts (3-10, 3-5, 2-2) 7reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Casspi ( C- ) -- George just doesn't seem able to help himself with the lineup tinkering, and this time it was making good on his Gay/Casspi threats of earlier this week, taking Omri out of the bench role he has been thriving in, and dumping him into the starting lineup against a 17-0 team. It didn't pay off. The statline above looks like a fairly poor game for Omri, but in reality it was even worse as he was only 1-6 at halftime for 5 pts, all of which had come in the first 6 minutes of the game when we ran around like maniacs trying to spook the Ws. The other two threes did not come until after the game was decided, and the Warriors forwards dominated the matchup after half, and really were what provided the separating burst.
Kyra Santoro
Stats: 23min 14pts (7-13, 0-0, 0-0) 7reb 0ast 2stl 1blk 1TO
Koufos ( B ) -- was really working hard underneath early, and was quite possibly our most solidly productive guy, although it was still just modest Kosta Koufos production. It was 8pts 3rebs at halftime, but it was an efficient 4-7 shooting half, and with literally every other one of scorers struggling, out of the early 3rd quarter timeout we did the only reasonable thing we could -- we went to the All Kosta All The Time offense, Rondo pointedly forcing the ball in there, and our next 4 shots all came out of our own austerity version of the Greek Freak. He hit two of them, banged around for a little longer, but unsurprisingly when the Warriors' run eventually came and the threes started raining, Kosta's plodding little hook and half hook game could not keep pace. Karl pulled him to go smaller and smaller yet once things got out of hand because everybody knows that the way everybody has been beating the Warriors this year is to try to out-smallball them. Pretty sure he never returned as the lead floated out from between 20-30pts the rest of the way, because what would the point have been?
Oksana Andersson
Stats: 27min 10pts (3-7, 2-3, 2-3) 3reb 5ast 3stl 1blk 2TO
McLemore ( C- ) -- as with Omri's line, the above statline is tempered by most of it not taking place while the game was still on. Heading into the final 8 minutes Ben was sitting on a 3pt, and hadn't scored in over two quarters. Some of it was just a lack of shots, but of course some of that was a lack of aggression. When he did finally take a few little midrangers in the third, they looked tentative, searching. Fortunately it was not a total wipeout as he made a few defensive hustle plays, and notched back to back assists on two scorers in the first quarter (he would later on add 3 more in garbagetime, and 5 has to be up around his career high). Still, the statline is deceiving. Ben was less awful than he was completely invisible while the game was on, sitting on a 3pts on 1-4 shooting night as our starting SG as the game headed into the deep garbagetime. Its hard to accurately weight garbagetime numbers vs. real numbers, but here I'm going to say that Ben's overall statline -- 10pts 4reb 5ast 3stl -- which you would cheerfully take from him every night, was borderline useless to us as far as winning or losing. Let's say B or B+ garbagetime work, and D real time work.
Ciara
Stats: 25min 7pts (3-10, 1-2, 0-0) 4reb 7ast 0stl 0blk 3TO
Rondo ( C ) -- was out there really, and pointedly, directing traffic while the game was still on, at times just yelling at guys and motioning them into position like you do on the playground. But he was a general without any effective troops to lead. Meanwhile the Warriors were perfectly content to turn him into a shooter, and he couldn't consistently hit them. Had no effect whatsoever on Curry in the early going, and Curry was actually the only reason the Warriors never lost contact with us with 17 first quarter points. That Curry would only score 2 more in the game felt less like any lockdowning by Rondo, and more like a this is too easy, let's fart around and spread the wealth thing by the Warriors. Game was far too out of hand for any triple doubling this night, so we saved some wear on him, and he sat on the sidelines in the 4th quarter with giant icebags on his knees.
Mabelynn Capeluj
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