Kingsfans.com Official Game Thread
Game 15
Sacramento F Kings!!!! at Houston Rockets
By Stephen Tetsu, Owner of a TriBrowGame 15
Sacramento F Kings!!!! at Houston Rockets
Demarcus! Cousins!
Shorthanded and undermanned against a talented Pelicans squad, the upstart Kings somehow, someway found a way to pull off the startling upset victory. And the crazy thing is that the game was largely under the Kings’ control from start to finish.
Let’s backtrack a bit. Coming off of an ugly win against a poopity Timberwolves team, the Kings started off the day with the news that Rudy Gay would be missing the game on account of his tight Achilles tendon. Then, to make matters worse, the news came out before tip-off that Darren Collison would also not be able to make his start. Suddenly, our “Big 3” had been reduced to Demarcus, Ben McLemore, and the entirety of the bench. Surely, this would be too large an obstacle to overcome, right?
WRONG!
For forty-eight minutes, our beloved Sacramento Kings (or what was left of them at least) outhustled, outdefensed, and outhearted the Pelicans to come away with the hard-fought victory on the backs of strong efforts from Omri Casspi (!), Jason Thompson (!!), Ray McCallum (!!!), and Nik Stauskas (?????) and a run of the mill 22/12/5/2/1 night from the best big man in the NBA.
If you’re reading this recap and haven’t yet watched the game but have it recorded, close this window immediately, strip to your undies, and watch it RIGHT NOW!
There is really nothing I can say other than “This team makes my happy places tingle.”
One win down. Many more to go.
Awards Time
Tony Delk Memorial Award- I am almost ready to rename this one the Tyreke award. Everytime the Kings face him, he always puts up nice numbers. Tonight, he did us a favor and played like Keith Smart-era Bad Tyreke in crunch time, sprinkling in a couple of ill-fated drives to the basket to help us seal the deal.
Mikki Moore Award- Derrick Williams, who, after two relatively solid efforts, reverted back to his ineffective, unable to do much of anything self. Heck, he’s even starting to resemble Mikki Moore, complete with the tarantula living on top of his head.
Doug Christie of the Night- Jason Thompson, who pretty much turned the Brow’s night into a nightmare and left him with the worst performance of his young season. Doesn’t show up in the box score but it does show up in the win column.
WTF Moment- The Pelicans SF depth chart right now: Darius Miller/Luke Babbitt/John Salmons. How this is even possible, I’ll never know.
Stinky Fish Moment of the Night- With time winding down in the first half and the chance to take the lead on the fast break with an easy finger roll, the Stinky Fish instead opts to gather and go up for the highlight dunk, which he scores… after time expires. Keep on keeping on, Johnny Salmons.
The View from the Other Side
The following posts have been taken from http://www.pelicansreport.com/ and features *yawn* riveting Omri Casspi versus Miller at SF debate.
7:10 Hear Gay and Collison out
7:20 Pretty terrible start
7:24 Monty Williams is out of his mind. I'm
About to give up simply bc of his idiotic mentality.
7:25 That fast break by AD was amazing.
7:26 Cousins is not smart.
7:28 No. Miller is terrible because of 3 years worth of games. But we are at the bottom of the barrel anyway so it's not like I'm upset he's playing.
Although, it kinda sucks that we had Casspi on the team and let him walk. He sure looks pretty good for Sac and just what we need at the 3.
7:30 Ryno chewing some *** because no one is coming to help him on Cousins.
7:32 With Babbitt and Ryno, we are at a severe disadvantage on defense against this team. If they aren't making 3s, they are worse than useless. They're liabilities.
7:33 “ Originally Posted by Mythrol
No. Miller is terrible because of 3 years worth of games. But we are at the bottom of the barrel anyway so it's not like I'm upset he's playing.
Although, it kinda sucks that we had Casspi on the team and let him walk. He sure looks pretty good for Sac and just what we need at the 3.”
O yea all the sudden Cassipi is our missing 3 cause he makes a couple of shots. Seriously? If Miller has had a terrible career than Cassipi has been just as bad. Not a huge Miller fan but just a joke people wanna beat there fist how terrible he is cause of a few missed shots.
7:35 Wait Anderson sucks he can't play and is useless!! Never mind he made a shot he's the best bench player in the NBA!! 6th man of the year!!
7:37 Comparing Cassipi to Miller is laughable. Once again, you need to stop putting words in people's mouths and look at the comparison in the context of their entire body of work.
7:46 Cassipi is shooting 11% from the 3 this year!! What are you talking about! He is no better than anybody we have so don't know what your trying to say. 11% 3 shooter with little D is not just what we need.
7:49 Asik is so unathletic. It's sad AF.
7:53 First off his name is not Cassipi!!!! Secondly, Casspi is playing great ball and Miller will not ever come close to playing as well as Casspi. The PELS screwed up not signing him!!!
7:56 Try again another day I will. When someone mentions our missing 3 who is shooting 11% from the arc with garbage D not much trying I need to do. Acting like it a joke to mention our 3s with him and he is that much better than what we have is the joke.
7:57 Did Malone just get ejected?
7:58 Casspi didn't want to play here and he was very vocal about that.
7:59 For all the Casspi lovers!!!
David 'Dubi' Pick: "This is a big season for my career, it's important that I play," Omri Casspi said upon arrival in Israel. New Orleans isn't the best situation for me. We'll finalize terms of split," Omri Casspi added.
8:03 AD>Cousins
AD>Aldridge
AD>Marc Gasol
AD>Dirk
AD>Duncan
AD>LeBron 2014
AD>Melo
AD>Kobe 2007-2014
AD=AD
8:03 If Jrue Holiday's defense were a woman, I'd wife her so hard.
8:05 (cameo appearance by our very own Hadlowe) As someone who splits viewing time between the Kings and Pelicans, Casspi has been an excellent backup sf. He is playing miles better than any bench player for the pels not named Anderson.
8:06 Salmons. Dumb. LOL
8:09 Anyone else wondering why the 2nd leading scorer in the league.. 60% fg percentage and coming off a 43 point game got literally 0 touches in the 2nd quarter??
Let me remind you, the person marking him is jason thompson...
8:11 Yea it's completely ok for him to shoot 11% from 3 and say he would be our best bench player behind Anderson. God forbid Miller, Salmons, Rivers, or anyone else shoot below 40% and they suck.
8:13 Well.. they don't have Rudy, and Darren, and their coach is ejected.. and its home.. WE SHOULD be up by 20.
and we are getting the benefit of the doubt from the refs, aswell as shooting below 40%
8:17 Thompson did a fantastic job against AD in the first game. AD went off because the Kings stopped playing Thompson.
He has definitely defended Davis the best out of anyone this year
8:29 Casspi, 11% from 3 eh?
8:33 Why we keep letting the biggest player on the Kings bring the ball up unimpeded is beyond me.
8:36 You do realize that you're using a nine shot sample within a singular statistical category to make the argument that Casspi is a below average basketball player, right?
8:36 Is that your comeback? Someone who is playing 7 mins with the smallest sample size compared to 16 mins? Miller shot a higher 3pt % in his rookie year than Casspi has his entire career. Miller also has a better career 3pt%. Casspi can have 30 points and go 5-5 still does not make him our missing piece and the 3 haha.
8:37 Miller is 0% from 3pt this year and he's our starter. He's 25% in overall fg%. I don't see any argument where Casspi isn't blowing him away.
8:38 Why is it that all you care about is 3pt shooting? I like my players to hit shots and do other things as well. But even using your asinine argument of "11% 3pt this year" he's STILL blowing Miller out of the water.
8:40 Ok I'll use his pas 4 seasons including this one 31% 32% 34% and 11%. Is that a big enough sample size for you? While steadily staying in the 60% on FTs? With 40% avg from the field and no D? How much more sample size do you need?
8:43 Rivers aka "glue fingers" is just plain awful. Good god.
8:47 Is Holiday hurt or something? Why so many bums on the floor at once? Is it 2013 again?
8:48 It's a sad day when Landry has a mismatch when Ryno is checking him. SMH
8:51 I give up! Dells worst move ever is letting Casspi go! I'm gonna go post that in the thread on Dells worst moves. 2 people crying over a guy who didn't even want to be here and fits nothing anybody wants in our SF.
8:55 We don't pass more than twice a possesion. That's trash
8:55 What was the point of bringing Jimmer in for 1 minute?? That did nothing for anyone.
8:58 Landry is looking like Barkley right. Nobody can check him. We can only hope to contain him
9:00 Every game we play we run out of excuses for why this team doesn't execute at a higher level. Mike Malone, Mike Budenholzer, Jeff Hornacek, Jason Kidd (2x), Steve Clifford have all done more with less time. These mental errors, man I tell you,...
9:03 Maybe the Pels will sign me at my usual $10/hr and give me all of Austin's minutes.
9:06 Wow, look how Sacramento moved that ball until they got what they want. Why is it that we can't do that?
9:08 Monty is done. Either he's stale or the team beyond AD has tuned him out. They do absolutely nothing right beyond the initial action. 8th grade basketball
9:12 oh tyreke...
9:13 So how's our starter SF doing this game?
9:13 Casspi 22, DM 0. Cool Story
9:15 who knew that the difference between us making the playoffs or not could come down to the decision to cut omri casspi?
he is not this good, but he has played quite well this season...but he is an all-star compared to our SF's
9:15 we had casspi, and we decided to keep miller.Bower's style.
9:16 We have 3 good players on the team and they all play in the front court.
When Anthony Davis plays like the GOAT we can compete with teams. On off nights this happens. As simple as that.
Monty and Dell need to go. They had 4 years and Monty has never built the defense and Dell has made so many failure moves.
9:16 god damn i hate this team, why can't we just clone anthony davis and just have 12 of him on this team, i hate everyone else.
9:16 Kings players seems to play hard every game ours just seem like they dont want to be there
9:21 We make so many excuses when this team plays poorly. How many good looks have we just missed? How many times has Sacramento played really good D? It's easy to look like crap when you play a team game as a bunch of individuals. Even in our wins we play like that and THEN if AD doesn't play well or the shots don't fall we look like trash. This team is fundamentally flawed and that's before you start poking holes in rosters and skill sets. I mean look at that shot by Ryan. Why?
9:22 Yeah I was caught off guard when we released Casspi. I thought he was an ideal fix when we knew our biggest need was at the 3 spot.
9:23 Unfortunately, this is a classic "Tyreke puts up good stats on a bad team" kind of night.
9:27 It sucks when the assistant coach for the other team shows himself to be far superior to the head coach for your squad.
9:28 Asik wasn't the difference. Our players came out flat and did nothing. Our usual star AD has an off night. I'm already ready to see Salmons get a chance to start. He might actually grab a rebound or assist or something compared to Miller.
9:33 After 15 games, I'm seeing the light. I like Jrue as he is a go with the flow kinda guy who will take on the identity of the guys he is surrounded by, but Tyreke needs to go and I'm pretty certain I would be okay with giving up Ryan to get rid of Gordon once he's healthy. He's out of shape, doesn't play D. and his decision making is mind boggling. I expect him to be a guy that helps keep the younger guys on the straight and narrow and too many times he's the guy to veer us of course. Just bad fits all around.
9:38 Is it to soon to whisper fire monty?
9:43 If Jimmer doesn't get 10 shots a game we are doomed.
9:46 If AD isn't getting as many shots as Ryno and Evans you have bigger problems than Jimmer not getting touches.
10:10 I'm so dam tired of seeing the same dam thing from this team year in year out. I honestly would be shocked if we make the playoffs. Tyreke evans and ryan Anderson make the most bone headed plays ever. For every "plus" play Reke makes, he makes 3 "boneheaded" plays. It's getting very frustrating to watch. For every "flamethrower" shot Ryan Anderson makes, he gives up 10 more points with his pathetic defense. Not sure how much more I can handle the disappointment this team dishes out.
10:37 Ok guys, time to think about what kind of win totals will we need to retain our pick?
10:41 Not wanting to play here didn't stop Demps from signing Gordon. I doubt it was the determining factor in not signing Casspi. But its hard to deny that he is not better than our current SF's. Casspi signed a minimum contract and counts less than $1,000,000 against the cap.
12:13 As a team we're shooting 27% from three per Vorped. What's especially odd is that we've seen the threes we're taking and they aren't bad shots, nor are they from bad shooters (aside from Reke who is strangely hitting them). I don't know what to point that to. Our volume three point shooters in Jimmer and Ryno have been off for the most part. Gordon wasn't helping until his last couple games. Holiday hasn't been a great shooter. Maybe it's just getting comfortable and into the rhythm of the team. In any case, we've seen what this offense does when it is hitting it's threes. To me that seems as much a barrometer of our success as anything else. If we're hitting threes, we'll be in the game, and if not, then we struggle.
This was a bad loss. Losing at home to an upstart team is rough. This is the kind of game you have to win to be a playoff team. I don't think I'd blame any player/coach/etc. I think this is part of growing pains but it does make me feel pretty sure that there is a lot of mental growth that needs to be done before we turn it around. I didn't think we'd make the playoffs this season, but after seeing how we looked when we played well I thought there was actually a decent chance. I'm adjusting my expectations after seeing how we lack resilience.
It's going to take some luck for things to break for us before the 2016 season. I hope that the Pels get the city to rally around them by that time so it doesn't feel like every game is an away game. Seriously, watch games in Portland, Golden State, LA, Boston, Washington, Sacramento, and Chicago. Those teams have a home court advantage. Those crowds are into the game from start to finish and you hear them rooting for their team any time they make a run, even when they're down big. Looking at the blender lately it is still so quiet and sparse.
7:20 Pretty terrible start
7:24 Monty Williams is out of his mind. I'm
About to give up simply bc of his idiotic mentality.
7:25 That fast break by AD was amazing.
7:26 Cousins is not smart.
7:28 No. Miller is terrible because of 3 years worth of games. But we are at the bottom of the barrel anyway so it's not like I'm upset he's playing.
Although, it kinda sucks that we had Casspi on the team and let him walk. He sure looks pretty good for Sac and just what we need at the 3.
7:30 Ryno chewing some *** because no one is coming to help him on Cousins.
7:32 With Babbitt and Ryno, we are at a severe disadvantage on defense against this team. If they aren't making 3s, they are worse than useless. They're liabilities.
7:33 “ Originally Posted by Mythrol
No. Miller is terrible because of 3 years worth of games. But we are at the bottom of the barrel anyway so it's not like I'm upset he's playing.
Although, it kinda sucks that we had Casspi on the team and let him walk. He sure looks pretty good for Sac and just what we need at the 3.”
O yea all the sudden Cassipi is our missing 3 cause he makes a couple of shots. Seriously? If Miller has had a terrible career than Cassipi has been just as bad. Not a huge Miller fan but just a joke people wanna beat there fist how terrible he is cause of a few missed shots.
7:35 Wait Anderson sucks he can't play and is useless!! Never mind he made a shot he's the best bench player in the NBA!! 6th man of the year!!
7:37 Comparing Cassipi to Miller is laughable. Once again, you need to stop putting words in people's mouths and look at the comparison in the context of their entire body of work.
7:46 Cassipi is shooting 11% from the 3 this year!! What are you talking about! He is no better than anybody we have so don't know what your trying to say. 11% 3 shooter with little D is not just what we need.
7:49 Asik is so unathletic. It's sad AF.
7:53 First off his name is not Cassipi!!!! Secondly, Casspi is playing great ball and Miller will not ever come close to playing as well as Casspi. The PELS screwed up not signing him!!!
7:56 Try again another day I will. When someone mentions our missing 3 who is shooting 11% from the arc with garbage D not much trying I need to do. Acting like it a joke to mention our 3s with him and he is that much better than what we have is the joke.
7:57 Did Malone just get ejected?
7:58 Casspi didn't want to play here and he was very vocal about that.
7:59 For all the Casspi lovers!!!
David 'Dubi' Pick: "This is a big season for my career, it's important that I play," Omri Casspi said upon arrival in Israel. New Orleans isn't the best situation for me. We'll finalize terms of split," Omri Casspi added.
8:03 AD>Cousins
AD>Aldridge
AD>Marc Gasol
AD>Dirk
AD>Duncan
AD>LeBron 2014
AD>Melo
AD>Kobe 2007-2014
AD=AD
8:03 If Jrue Holiday's defense were a woman, I'd wife her so hard.
8:05 (cameo appearance by our very own Hadlowe) As someone who splits viewing time between the Kings and Pelicans, Casspi has been an excellent backup sf. He is playing miles better than any bench player for the pels not named Anderson.
8:06 Salmons. Dumb. LOL
8:09 Anyone else wondering why the 2nd leading scorer in the league.. 60% fg percentage and coming off a 43 point game got literally 0 touches in the 2nd quarter??
Let me remind you, the person marking him is jason thompson...
8:11 Yea it's completely ok for him to shoot 11% from 3 and say he would be our best bench player behind Anderson. God forbid Miller, Salmons, Rivers, or anyone else shoot below 40% and they suck.
8:13 Well.. they don't have Rudy, and Darren, and their coach is ejected.. and its home.. WE SHOULD be up by 20.
and we are getting the benefit of the doubt from the refs, aswell as shooting below 40%
8:17 Thompson did a fantastic job against AD in the first game. AD went off because the Kings stopped playing Thompson.
He has definitely defended Davis the best out of anyone this year
8:29 Casspi, 11% from 3 eh?
8:33 Why we keep letting the biggest player on the Kings bring the ball up unimpeded is beyond me.
8:36 You do realize that you're using a nine shot sample within a singular statistical category to make the argument that Casspi is a below average basketball player, right?
8:36 Is that your comeback? Someone who is playing 7 mins with the smallest sample size compared to 16 mins? Miller shot a higher 3pt % in his rookie year than Casspi has his entire career. Miller also has a better career 3pt%. Casspi can have 30 points and go 5-5 still does not make him our missing piece and the 3 haha.
8:37 Miller is 0% from 3pt this year and he's our starter. He's 25% in overall fg%. I don't see any argument where Casspi isn't blowing him away.
8:38 Why is it that all you care about is 3pt shooting? I like my players to hit shots and do other things as well. But even using your asinine argument of "11% 3pt this year" he's STILL blowing Miller out of the water.
8:40 Ok I'll use his pas 4 seasons including this one 31% 32% 34% and 11%. Is that a big enough sample size for you? While steadily staying in the 60% on FTs? With 40% avg from the field and no D? How much more sample size do you need?
8:43 Rivers aka "glue fingers" is just plain awful. Good god.
8:47 Is Holiday hurt or something? Why so many bums on the floor at once? Is it 2013 again?
8:48 It's a sad day when Landry has a mismatch when Ryno is checking him. SMH
8:51 I give up! Dells worst move ever is letting Casspi go! I'm gonna go post that in the thread on Dells worst moves. 2 people crying over a guy who didn't even want to be here and fits nothing anybody wants in our SF.
8:55 We don't pass more than twice a possesion. That's trash
8:55 What was the point of bringing Jimmer in for 1 minute?? That did nothing for anyone.
8:58 Landry is looking like Barkley right. Nobody can check him. We can only hope to contain him
9:00 Every game we play we run out of excuses for why this team doesn't execute at a higher level. Mike Malone, Mike Budenholzer, Jeff Hornacek, Jason Kidd (2x), Steve Clifford have all done more with less time. These mental errors, man I tell you,...
9:03 Maybe the Pels will sign me at my usual $10/hr and give me all of Austin's minutes.
9:06 Wow, look how Sacramento moved that ball until they got what they want. Why is it that we can't do that?
9:08 Monty is done. Either he's stale or the team beyond AD has tuned him out. They do absolutely nothing right beyond the initial action. 8th grade basketball
9:12 oh tyreke...
9:13 So how's our starter SF doing this game?
9:13 Casspi 22, DM 0. Cool Story
9:15 who knew that the difference between us making the playoffs or not could come down to the decision to cut omri casspi?
he is not this good, but he has played quite well this season...but he is an all-star compared to our SF's
9:15 we had casspi, and we decided to keep miller.Bower's style.
9:16 We have 3 good players on the team and they all play in the front court.
When Anthony Davis plays like the GOAT we can compete with teams. On off nights this happens. As simple as that.
Monty and Dell need to go. They had 4 years and Monty has never built the defense and Dell has made so many failure moves.
9:16 god damn i hate this team, why can't we just clone anthony davis and just have 12 of him on this team, i hate everyone else.
9:16 Kings players seems to play hard every game ours just seem like they dont want to be there
9:21 We make so many excuses when this team plays poorly. How many good looks have we just missed? How many times has Sacramento played really good D? It's easy to look like crap when you play a team game as a bunch of individuals. Even in our wins we play like that and THEN if AD doesn't play well or the shots don't fall we look like trash. This team is fundamentally flawed and that's before you start poking holes in rosters and skill sets. I mean look at that shot by Ryan. Why?
9:22 Yeah I was caught off guard when we released Casspi. I thought he was an ideal fix when we knew our biggest need was at the 3 spot.
9:23 Unfortunately, this is a classic "Tyreke puts up good stats on a bad team" kind of night.
9:27 It sucks when the assistant coach for the other team shows himself to be far superior to the head coach for your squad.
9:28 Asik wasn't the difference. Our players came out flat and did nothing. Our usual star AD has an off night. I'm already ready to see Salmons get a chance to start. He might actually grab a rebound or assist or something compared to Miller.
9:33 After 15 games, I'm seeing the light. I like Jrue as he is a go with the flow kinda guy who will take on the identity of the guys he is surrounded by, but Tyreke needs to go and I'm pretty certain I would be okay with giving up Ryan to get rid of Gordon once he's healthy. He's out of shape, doesn't play D. and his decision making is mind boggling. I expect him to be a guy that helps keep the younger guys on the straight and narrow and too many times he's the guy to veer us of course. Just bad fits all around.
9:38 Is it to soon to whisper fire monty?
9:43 If Jimmer doesn't get 10 shots a game we are doomed.
9:46 If AD isn't getting as many shots as Ryno and Evans you have bigger problems than Jimmer not getting touches.
10:10 I'm so dam tired of seeing the same dam thing from this team year in year out. I honestly would be shocked if we make the playoffs. Tyreke evans and ryan Anderson make the most bone headed plays ever. For every "plus" play Reke makes, he makes 3 "boneheaded" plays. It's getting very frustrating to watch. For every "flamethrower" shot Ryan Anderson makes, he gives up 10 more points with his pathetic defense. Not sure how much more I can handle the disappointment this team dishes out.
10:37 Ok guys, time to think about what kind of win totals will we need to retain our pick?
10:41 Not wanting to play here didn't stop Demps from signing Gordon. I doubt it was the determining factor in not signing Casspi. But its hard to deny that he is not better than our current SF's. Casspi signed a minimum contract and counts less than $1,000,000 against the cap.
12:13 As a team we're shooting 27% from three per Vorped. What's especially odd is that we've seen the threes we're taking and they aren't bad shots, nor are they from bad shooters (aside from Reke who is strangely hitting them). I don't know what to point that to. Our volume three point shooters in Jimmer and Ryno have been off for the most part. Gordon wasn't helping until his last couple games. Holiday hasn't been a great shooter. Maybe it's just getting comfortable and into the rhythm of the team. In any case, we've seen what this offense does when it is hitting it's threes. To me that seems as much a barrometer of our success as anything else. If we're hitting threes, we'll be in the game, and if not, then we struggle.
This was a bad loss. Losing at home to an upstart team is rough. This is the kind of game you have to win to be a playoff team. I don't think I'd blame any player/coach/etc. I think this is part of growing pains but it does make me feel pretty sure that there is a lot of mental growth that needs to be done before we turn it around. I didn't think we'd make the playoffs this season, but after seeing how we looked when we played well I thought there was actually a decent chance. I'm adjusting my expectations after seeing how we lack resilience.
It's going to take some luck for things to break for us before the 2016 season. I hope that the Pels get the city to rally around them by that time so it doesn't feel like every game is an away game. Seriously, watch games in Portland, Golden State, LA, Boston, Washington, Sacramento, and Chicago. Those teams have a home court advantage. Those crowds are into the game from start to finish and you hear them rooting for their team any time they make a run, even when they're down big. Looking at the blender lately it is still so quiet and sparse.
Tonight's Game
Houston, we have a (Boogie).
If you'll remember (or not), last season after we traded for Rudy, the Kings started to really really get rolling on the backs of the "Big Three" (or, rather, Cuz and Rudy, with IT running around playing keep away with the ball), only for both Cuz and Rudy to get injured in the same game in Houston. Fortunately (I suppose), that might be impossible tonight, with Rudy expected to miss the game against the Rockets.
As we saw last night, however, that doesn't mean an automatic loss, especially when the Rockets are equally injury ravaged on their side. With alleged child abuser Dwight Howard out, the Rockets are starting future superstar (slight exaggeration) Tarik Black at center, which wouldn't be wholly terrible were it not for the fact that Terrence Jones, their starting power forward, is also expected to miss the game, leaving the Rockets with a Black/Donatas Montejunas front court.
What? That's not enough injury talk for you? Well, it just so happens that the Rockets are missing their starting point guard, the 3 and D Patrick Beverly. In his place will be Isaiah Canaan, a second year player who has also emerged as a nice kick-and-shoot receptacle.
So fret not Kings fans, we are not the only team that has early season injury woes. Our injuries just seem worse because the Sacramento Kings can't seem to ever have nice things.
So who is playing for the Rockets right now? (Cue lazy defense and flopping reel in 5...4...3...)
James Harden continues to get to the free throw line at an utterly ridiculous rate AND continues to be comically lazy on the defensive end. But who the hell cares because his beard is fluffy and he's a fantastic scorer and distributor.
After losing Chandler Parsons, the Rockets decided to stop ignoring the defensive side of the ball and signed Trevor Ariza in the offseason, one of the better defensive wings currently in the NBA. Couple that with relatively efficient offensive basketball and the jettisoning of Parsons in a failed bid to sign Chris Bosh doesn't look so bad after all.
The Rockets also have their own Greek Freak in 6'8" small forward Koustas Papanikolaou, who has taken Omri's spot in the Houston rotation and been a key rotation guy as a rookie. Also, his name is really hard to type, which has got to count for something, right?
At sixth man, a rejuvenated Jason Terry is proving to be pretty effective, even if his legs are about to fall off and his batteries are starting to do that nasty blue foamy thing. The man is currently shooting .429 from three and has been way better than Ramon Sessions which would have been nice to have but who knows how it'll be in a month or so.
Even if Rudy and Darren miss the game, this isn't an auto-loss, as the Pelicans can attest. We just need a repeat of last night. 48 solid, teamwork-filled minutes.
Matchups
Demarcus versus Tarik- Poor Tarik might be having night tremors by the second quarter.
James Harden versus Defense- Over/under on crappy James Harden defense moments? Maybe 30.
The Kings versus back-to-back- Extra aspirin for breakfast!
Final Thoughts and Predictions
Back-to-back games, back-to-back wins. I BELIEVE! Kings win 105-98. Demarcus rules us all. Praise be his name.
And then this...
#BuildAStatueofKahn
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