[Grades] Grades v. Grizzlies 11/13/2014

Biggest grrf of the loss?

  • Technical foul call on Boogie, with his back turned, in what turned out to be a 1pt loss.

    Votes: 9 10.3%
  • Ben dives in for the d-board with 1sec left...then chokes BOTH FTs setting up the loss.

    Votes: 2 2.3%
  • JT fails to guard the ONLY play the Grizz can score on with 0.3 left on the clock. We lose.

    Votes: 30 34.5%
  • Defensive collapse let's Memphis (averages 94.8pts/gm) score 95 in final 3/4.

    Votes: 17 19.5%
  • Hello bench, you are pathetic.

    Votes: 12 13.8%
  • Refs review final play, say no tip. Say all happend in 0.3sec. We're outa here. Tee time at 8.00

    Votes: 17 19.5%

  • Total voters
    87
  • Poll closed .

Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#1


These hurt more because suddenly they matter again.

There's no need for me to recap what happened here. The refs blew it. Jason blew it. Ben blew it. I'll make a poll about it, but recapping it is painful and would involve multiple uses of obviously applicable words that unfortunately this board has decided to filter out. Suffice it to say that if anybody was doing their jobs, nothing extraordinary, just their jobs, we survive this.

However, I will mention this: our inability to play without DeMarcus Cousins is just devastating. I saw the Dallas mess coming a mile off all the way back in the first half when he got his third. Every foul on him makes me tense. Every B.S. foul on him doubly so. If I weren't so strongly anti-conspiracy Donaghy's mumblings about stupid games and vendettas by childish refs against certain players would make me nervous...and have me out kneecapping corrupt refs for the sake of the franchise. As it is I can only note that this is the 5th game in a row that Cousins has been called for 5 fouls or more, and in this one they even added a T, that oh, just decided the game in the end, no problem. A T mind you called on him for not saying a word.

Meanwhile oncourt we were +19 in his 30minutes. 19 points better than the Grizz while the refs allowed us to play our star. We lost the remaining 18 minutes of the game by 20 points. His primary reserve this time was Carl Landry, who checked in with a -23 of hopeless smallness against the big Grizz frontline.

We simply HAVE to either find some way to have DeMarcus Cousins on the floor, or we need to acquire a serious backup who can smooth over those periods when he is gone. Because its been disaster for us almost every night.


NOTE: the Grading Consortiuum is actively recruiting a new squad of graders for this season. And grading wins is more fun than grading losses. Give us a nudge If interested.

Boxscore

Stats: 40min 25pts (8-17, 1-2, 8-8) 7reb 2ast 1stl 1blk 0TO
Gay ( C- ) -- Normally when a guy scores 25 points on 17 shots you hand him a A in the grades and walk away. Not tonight. Why not? Because for as instrumental as Rudy was in building our big lead, he was almost certainly more instrumental in helping us waste it away. Things started out very good for Gay. He was working within the offense, especially in transition, scoring 6 of his 13 first-quarter points on the break (two big dunks, one out in front on a nice feed from Collison, one trailing the play on another DC assist, and one foul) and going 5-of-6 in that span. But from that point, things went very, very quiet for Rudy. He only managed two points in a six-minute stint in the second quarter, both from the line, and when he went out at the two-minute mark of the first half, it was his last rest of the game. In the second half, Rudy reverted to Toronto-style, relying on his own skills to create basically all of his shots. In the second half, Rudy only managed to shoot 3-of-9, with two of those coming in the very early minutes of the third quarter. When Cousins went out in the late third with foul trouble, Rudy proved completely unable to carry the team for the remainder of the game (hard as he tried, with at least four forced shots as our lead dwindled away, missing his final five shots and six of his last seven). Defensively, Rudy was able to take the first half off, as he was primarily assigned to Tayshaun Prince (a nominal starter who gives the Grizzlies a few token minutes at the start of each half and then goes to the back of the bench where he belongs) and Tony Allen. Vince Carter gave Rudy considerably more trouble, and while I was inclined to excuse one of Carter's baskets in the first half to team discombobulation, I can't be nearly so generous about Rudy's fourth quarter defense. We had a 17-point lead in the fourth when Rudy started to play sagging defense on Carter, who was exclusively in the game to shoot three point shots. Carter went 3-3 from deep in the fourth quarter, twice hitting when Rudy gave him a ton of space and once hitting when Rudy completely and totally left him. Compound that with a Carter drive that went right around Rudy for a dump-off assist (yes, the 37-year-old Vince Carter) and even if you excuse the play where Randolph popped him in the face before an easy layup Rudy was directly responsible for at least 11 of the Grizzlies' first 33 points in the fourth. Rudy's defense in the fourth, combined with his terrible offensive decisions, nearly single-handedly allowed Memphis back in the game. But the whole thing wouldn't complete without the night-cap. With the Kings up one point and with only three-tenths of a second on the clock, Rudy's charge was to stick on Courtney Lee. He couldn't do it. He couldn't play defense for 5.3 seconds to prevent Lee from getting completely wide open UNDER THE BASKET for the winning shot. Whatever you think about the failure of replay in this game to correctly identify the obvious inbounds tip by Ryan that should have run the clock, that does not change the fact that Gay could not stick on Lee long enough to prevent a wide open shot under the basket. Competent defense - only 5.3 seconds of competent defense - would have been enough to render replay moot and give us the win. Rudy couldn't do it. The way I feel right now, a D is mighty generous. Edit: I dunno, everybody seems to think that the final play was JT's fault and not Rudy's. Edit this if you want. I still think Rudy has to play remotely acceptable defense in the fourth even if the last shot wasn't his fault.--Capt.

Putting this right between these two, because SOMEBODY killed us on this play. Either JT was supposed to switch in which case he did, or Gay was supposed to stay with his man, in which case he did. Note at about the 21sec mark of the video, they zoom in on Gay's face and lip reading I think he says "switch that!" to somebody, likely JT, maybe himself. Maybe he's just making an excuse. Don't know.

Stats: 27min 6pts (3-5, 0-0, 0-0) 7reb 1ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Thompson ( C- ) -- It was a mixed bag for JT tonight. He had some good moments, and some bad moments. He started off in the first defensive sequence defending Randolph, and did a good job, causing a miss on a post up. It's my belief that if he had the assignment of guarding Randolph all night, he would have fared well. However, from that point on, he was on Gasol, and that was an entirely different matter. At the 1:09 mark of the 1st quarter he picked up his second foul and headed to the bench. However, he made a very nice tip in of a Collison miss, and also hit a 17 footer. In the second half, Gasol started asserting himself, and JT started struggling big time. First it was a reverse spin in the post for a score, and then it was a little 12 footer over JT's outstretched hand. After JT missed everything on a 18 footer, he did manage to score one more basket on a post up near the right baseline. After picking up his 4th foul, he headed to the bench. He did manage 7 revounds, and I personally had him down for a blocked shot, but apparently the score keeper didn't. He did manage to get back in the game as he and Cousins rotated in and out trying to avoid getting their 6th foul. All in all, a so so night for JT.--Baja

Stats: 31min 22pts (8-17, 0-0, 6-7) 12reb 1ast 2stl 3blk 6TO
Cousins ( B ) -- I’m going to do my best to talk about Cousin’s game tonight without immediately returning to that final play. It is seriously clouding my ability to think about anything else, but here we go. On the first play of the game Cousins got great deep post position against Gasol, but he missed the lay in. It was great position, but in the post is probably not where you want to attack Marc. Good thing Cousins isn’t a one trick pony. He is an incredibly versatile offensive player, so he knocked down a jumper on the next trip down and then proceeded to beat Gasol off the dribble twice in a row. He had 12 first quarter points, and the Kings were rolling. His second quarter run wasn’t as successful. He stopped attacking off the dribble, and went back into the post where both Marc Gasol and Kosta Koufos were doing a nice job staying down with their arms straight up. It looked like Cousins was focusing a little too much on trying to draw some contact, and the refs really weren’t giving him the calls tonight. Great first, subpar second, but only two fouls at halftime. I’ll take that. Most of the second half was a struggle for Cousins and the Kings. When he was in the game, they kept feeding him the ball in the post and while that works on most nights, its not the best place for Cousins to be when Gasol and Randolph are also in there clogging everything up, and the foul calls aren’t going his way. These forces to the paint really caused the turnovers to pile up. I thought he was very good defensively for most of the night. Cousins and JT swapped between Gasol and Randolph a lot, and I give them both a lot of credit for keeping those guys under control (Gasol did a lot of damage from the free throw line, and that had little to do with Cousins). As you can probably guess based on the fact that DMC only played 31 minutes tonight, he was in foul trouble again throughout the second half. His fifth foul was of the garbage variety, and it came shortly after Monty McCutchen (official) said something a long the lines of “stop complaining”, and Cousins sort of walked away angrily? (Eye-roll) After the foul call and Monty T’d him up. Cousins first tech of the season. It was weak. Some of the fouls were legit, some of them were not, but the point remains the same – the Kings need him on the court for more than the 30 minutes per game he currently averaging. I think that is a fair criticism to lob at DeMarcus. When he’s not on the floor, the Kings aren’t very good, and that contributed to the loss tonight. And even considering most of his game after the first quarter was below our expectations, he came back in with around five minutes left in the fourth quarter and came up with some massively clutch plays. In the final minute, (playing with five fouls) he blocked Randolph, scored off the bounce against Gasol, was awarded free throws (which he hit) taking Gasol off the dribble from the three-point line (name me another center who can do that) and then defended another Randolph jumper in the paint successfully. It’s a tough game to grade. Great first. Not so great through the middle of the game, couldn’t stay on the court, huge plays in crunch time, and yet he was clearly the most important King, as usual, considering they couldn’t hold a 20-point lead without him… B --Mass

Stats: 37min 17pts (6-12, 3-6, 2-4) 4reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
McLemore ( C+ ) -- a bell curve game for Ben, who started this one out simply not ready to play. Fortunately for Ben, and our early blowout, Tony Allen completely outworked Ben for the first 3-4 minutes, beat him on the glass, and amazingly got right to the rim on cuts for not 1, not 2, but 3 good layup attempts...and he somehow missed all three. It was a huge early momentum swing for us all wasted by the end of course. Ben's own game did not start until the 8 minute mark where he hit a confident corner three out of a timeout to make the lead at that time a remarkable 14-2. From that point on for the next three quarters or so we had a professional SG. he didn't hit everything, missed several shots we needed at big moments, but scored in a variety of ways and looked confident in doing so. Tony Allen never threatened again and never did score in the game, but Courtney Lee was effective, and of course by the end of the game a ****ing butthead, and Ben occasionally ended up guarding, and getting roasted by Mike Conley, who was too quick for any of our guards and sliced into our defense at will even against Collison. Nonetheless despite some little misadventures along the way, up through about the end of the third when he airballed a three against the clock, and missed another three in the final minute we needed as we got shaky, Ben was a 3rd scorer along with Cuz and Gay, and if he wasn't scorching hot, everytime he pulled up you thought it had a chance, and they were good shots. The first problem was that he scored his very final point at the 7:18 mark of the third, and from that point on out was a punching bad as the Grizzlies chipped and chipped and chipped. The second and of course oh crap point was that we were still going to win it, by that late point pretty much entirely by Cuz 1 man willing us to victory in the final minute, and after Cuz got the stop on Randolph in the final few seconds Ben leapt in eagerly on the defensive boards used his athleticism to snatch the ball and get fouled with less than a second to go. We were up 1, our SG was going to the line at the other end of the court, good play Ben! We win! Except we didn't win. Except our SG goes to the line with us up 1 and blatantly chokes, and misses BOTH FTs, and I'm almost sure the 2nd one wasn't intentional, it was too close. If it was intentional even that was done poorly. Still wouldn't have mattered if we played defense properly, but it also wouldn't have mattered if Ben doesn't choke. If he doesn't then we are up three with 0.3 seconds to go. and there is no layup possibility. Even the miracle of all miracle threes only gets you to OT. You throw in the fact that at the :45 second mark Collison had passed up what looked to be a layup to give ben an open corner three, which he had also missed, and good play Ben! turns into you lost the ****ing game Ben! This grade was in the B's before that but would have tumbled even further due the minor little issue of being a proximate cause of losing the game, but this is Ben, and we're still getting used to the idea of him being a solid contributor at all. He didn't come out ready to play, settled in and was a good solid NBA SG for a long stretch, and then choked hard when it came time to win it. And so we did not. --Brick

Stats: 37min 20pts (6-11, 2-3, 6-7) 2reb 5ast 1stl 1blk 3TO
Collison ( B ) -- Collison played a solid, game with a few highlights. He played the role of conductor during the first quarter outburst, scoring on open opportunities and mainly feeding the hot hands of Gay and McLemore. He was able to get Conley in early foul trouble and broke down Beno on several drives to give open looks inside and out to his teammates. The biggest thing that Collison brings is the ability to put a lot of transition pressure on opposing defenses and he had two such drives early on resulting in free throws. He also had a few sloppy plays with risky pocket passes to Cousins and a really bad pass to Gay on the high post. His offensive highlight was a contorted buzzer beating three at the end of the third to put the Kings up by 15 going into the fourth. The defensive end was a mixed bag. Conley isn't a major scoring threat, but he still got inside far too often off pick and roll plays and a few times in isolation. Until Beno got clobbered by his own teammate, Collison also let him get to the rim and gave him open jumpers on a few occasions. Overall, his defense was adequate to the task, and he comes away with a solid if unspectacular grade for the night. --Hadlowe
 
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Bricklayer

Don't Make Me Use The Bat
#2
Bench

Stats: 8min 0pts (0-1, 0-0, 0-0) 2reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Casspi ( C+ ) -- Omri did not see too much PT in this heartbreaker. Coming in at 1:42 he was guarding Quincy Pondexter. There was a clear mismatch with the bigs as Thompson and Landry were shorter than Koufos and Leuer. Trying to help with the bigs allowed Pondexter to go right and pass to Koufos for two as he was still not under control by Thompson. After a good interception he turned the ball over Courtney Lee with a bad pass. That was sloppy. Made a clever foul on freely driving Conley at the base line probably saving a basket there. His only field FG attempt came when the Kings, like they do way too often, played out the clock and Casspi, following Stauskas drive to the hoop, was forced to attempt a difficult shot with less than 2 seconds on the clock. After Carter checked in Omri made him miss a 3-pointer. None of the three players that Casspi was guarding, Pondexter, Carter and Allen, scored against him. Omri got very few touches during his 7:44 on the court so he had to settle with 2 rebounds without scoring this evening. Not as crispy as he usually is, but he stood his ground. --Kingston

Stats: 25min 10pts (3-7, 0-0, 4-4) 4reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Landry ( C+ ) -- Tonight Carl entered for the first time at the 1:42 mark of the 1st quarter, meaning Cuz didn’t have any fouls. Carl then played most of the 2nd qtr, the late 3rd and the first 8 min of the 4th, got his requisite down low hustle buckets and made all his FT. One score was a beautiful spin move in the lane early in the 4th. Starting the 2nd he was guarding all 7 ft and 265 lb of Kosta Koufos the Griz backup center. Then when 7 ft 270 lb Gasol came back in Carl was saddled with him too and in second half, as if that wasn’t tough enough, had to guard Zach Randolph, a handful anytime. Not an easy task but Carl was up to it, played a very good game contributing 10 pts, 4 reb and no TO’s. He did hold down Randolph almost nothing in the 2nd and 3rd but Zach got going late as did Gasol. He was the main contributor to holding Gasol to shooting 5 of 13 but Marc began running roughshod over Carl during his 3rd and 4th qtr stints making 10 of 11 FT along the way. In the 3rd and 4th quarters Carl was again stuck guarding Gasol or Randolph who in turn guarded him. Not a lot of fun. But on defense Carl sticks with his man most of the time and is usually in the right place on the court when the ball is moving. After awhile his ultra tough defensive assignments on all 3 of the Griz bigs earned him his 6th foul around the 4 min. mark of the 4th. Watching Carl through the game its amazing how invisible he seems to be. Never out of place, never spectacular and working down low where most of the bigs are taller and bigger, lost in the timber. Can’t ask much more of him as he did his job made contributions and took a beating in the process. Thia grade was doing a good job guarding bigger guys down low as best he could.--Cruz

Stats: 13min 2pt (1-2, 0-0, 0-0) 4reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 1TO
Evans ( D+ ) -- Reggie wasn’t great in his limited minutes. The Grizzlies bench size of Jon Leuer and Kosta Koufos really gave Landry and Evans a tough time. They just couldn’t defend the paint, and they were part of the Kings completely ineffective bench unit. I am going to give Evans a few points here for showing some energy and hustle on the offensive glass, particularly during the second half, but this wasn’t a great showing.
--Mass

Stats: 11min 3pts (1-2, 1-1, 0-0) 1reb 1ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Stauskas ( C- ) -- Nik played 12 minutes and hit one of two shots, a three pointer. Defensively, he only had one real bad moment, when he got caught in a screen and got to his man late, which resulted in a made three. He got beat off the dribble once on a cross over, but pursued the play, and his man missed. He did have one nice play when he got back on a Memphis fast break in time to break up a pass under the basket. Offensively, other than the shot he made, he ran the pick and roll with Landry, who scored. He didn't turn the ball over, but then you have to touch the ball to turn it over. At the moment, his number seems to be forgotten when he's on the floor. Maybe he should take Sessions out to dinner. --Baja

Stats: 11min 5pts (1-3, 0-1, 3-4) 1reb 2ast 0stl 0blk 1TO
Sessions ( D ) -- Ramon Sessions and the rest of the bench continue to be the achilles' heel of this team. Sessions got stuck guarding Mike Conley in the second and could not get back into the play once hit with even the lightest pick. Eventually, Malone switched and had Stauskas guarding Conley (apparently hoping that size would bother him) and Sessions began losing Courtney Lee off the ball, helping off his man a pass away and giving up open looks outside. On offense, he continues to be a solo act in the second unit. He had a few head-scratching shots including a really bad floater from the free throw line when he could have just pulled up for a jumper. He also contributed to the lane violation that gave Conley a mulligan on a free throw. On a night when every point counted, Sessions gave up too many and gets the D. --Hadlowe

Stats: 0min 0pts (0-0, 0-0, 0-0) 0reb 0ast 0stl 0blk 0TO
Hollins ( INC ) -- Came in on the final play of the game to defend the inbounder with 0.3 seconds on the game clock. He may or may not have gotten a finger on the inbound pass, which would have ended the game before Lee hit his layup, but it wasn’t called. --Mass
 
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VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#6
As it is I can only note that this is the 5th game in a row that Cousins has been called for 5 fouls or more, and in this one they even added a T, that oh, just decided the game in the end, no problem. A T mind you called on him for not saying a word.
And it will hurt even more when the league office rescinds the technical. :(
 
#8
JT is an imbecile
we shouldn't complain about anything
we lost another 20+ lead, missed FTs in the end and left the ENTIRE key open with 0.3 seconds to go

vomit...that's what I think of this team
 
#11
My current thoughts as a Kings fan:

1. Boogie, why can't you stay out of foul trouble?
2. JT, you're a goon and I've never liked you. You can check my post history, I am such a hater to the point the sodium content in my body is reaching critical mass.
3. These collapses are actually very reminiscent of successful Kings teams in the past, so at least this regime has that going for them.
4. Ben has less confidence than the shortest, most unathletic kid in gym.
 
#17
I'm not sure if anyone else heard but the refs were talking about how there was space between the ball and Hollins outstretched hand in the replay. I noticed it too but the ball obviously changed trajectory.
 

rainmaker

Hall of Famer
#18
We allowed 65 points in the 2nd half and blew a 17 point lead with just over 7 mins to go. While the refs ****ed us at the end, it's our lack of defense down low and decision to not have a backup center on this roster which continues to kill us. As much as Sessions hurts us at point it's the freeway to the rim and poor defensive presence in the paint every time Cuz goes out that has and will continue to handicap this squad until it's fixed.

I've been banging on this point since our first preseason game. A Landry/Evans pairing off the bench will severely hurt the ability to reach the ceiling this team has. Splitting up Rudy and Cuz and having one on the floor helps mask the offensive issues but with Rudy out there when Cuz goes to the bench, good teams will take advantage down low. I can't think of a bigger drop off right now around the league from starters to the bench.

If our bench can't protect the paint down low then we have to run Ray out at backup point. We have to start cutting off penetration from up top.

Should have signed Fesenko.
 
#21
Apparently, Kings have put in formal protest to NBA over the final play in Memphis. Also, it appears they are less calling attention to so-called deflection and more that the catch and shoot was absolutely impossible with only fraction .03
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#22
We allowed 65 points in the 2nd half and blew a 17 point lead with just over 7 mins to go. While the refs ****ed us at the end, it's our lack of defense down low and decision to not have a backup center on this roster which continues to kill us. As much as Sessions hurts us at point it's the freeway to the rim and poor defensive presence in the paint every time Cuz goes out that has and will continue to handicap this squad until it's fixed.

I've been banging on this point since our first preseason game. A Landry/Evans pairing off the bench will severely hurt the ability to reach the ceiling this team has. Splitting up Rudy and Cuz and having one on the floor helps mask the offensive issues but with Rudy out there when Cuz goes to the bench, good teams will take advantage down low. I can't think of a bigger drop off right now around the league from starters to the bench.
I must have said it three times during the fourth quarter: we'd have had a better shot of winning if, when Cousins went to the bench, we had just deliberately held the ball on, like, five straight possessions, until we were charged with a shot clock violation. Even getting charged for five straight turnovers, we could have still managed to burn two full minutes of game time off the clock, and bought time for Cousins to come back in.

In fact, that should be Malone's new second-quarter strategy: let the starters get us up 20+ in the first quarter, and then tell Sessions/Stauskas/Evans et. al, "Okay, fellas, I need to get DeMarcus and Rudy about five good minutes of rest. So, what I want you to do is play defense, and run the shot clock out every possession on offense. Don't even bother trying to shoot, because they might get the rebound and score on a leak-out. Just hold the ball, and make them inbound on the violation, so we still have a chance to set our defense. All you have to do is stall, until I can put the real players back on the court."
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#23
Apparently, Kings have put in formal protest to NBA over the final play in Memphis. Also, it appears they are less calling attention to so-called deflection and more that the catch and shoot was absolutely impossible with only fraction .03
If that's their angle, they're going to fail. It's not impossible, because the rule says it's not impossible.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#26
Not my understanding. The rule says you can catch and shoot in fractions down to .04 - no lower. At .03 it is only a tip in that is possible. Lower at .02 or .01 it is not possible to score by rule.
I'll tell you the same thing I told HereWeVivek: I think that your interpretation of the rule is incorrect. If that were the rule, they wouldn't have even bothered to review it to see if he got it off in time.
 
#29
I didnt agree with sitting Cousins after his fifth foul, you are up 18 with 7 minutes to go, all you need to do is hold it steady for 3 or 4 more possesions and the Grizz waive the white flag. There was no evidence that the Grizz could sustain a big run with Cousins on the floor. By the time Cousins came back in the avalanche was in full strength.