There's a game on....

[ADoaN17]

I was actually at arco today but didnt see the game. Looking at the box scores tho it was nice to see cuz have a good game and reke have two good games in a row.

The sf position needs to be more consistent.

[pillwenney]

Yeah, I wasn't too bothered by this loss even though it was by a decent amount and OKC didn't play very well. Maybe it's just lowered standards. I was annoyed that Tyreke, yet again, didn't have more of an impact in the second half, but over all, it was mostly getting beaten by a better team.

But I think we really might need some better outside shooting--which really means consolidating talent as much as anything. I understand that Cisco is just kind of the odd man out right now, and Westphal is avoiding playing him to keep the rotations consistent (or at least trying to), but the fact of the matter is that when Omri isn't on, Beno is our closest thing to a consistent 3-point threat, and Beno's really only consistent on the shorter 3's. So that's a problem and it was one of the problems tonight.

[fallacy]

Did any one notice, besides me. That Donte' Greene looked a few inches shorter then Durant. When the two were standing side-by-side as cousins was shooting free throws.

I thought Greene was 6'11" and Durant was 6'10" ... hmmm, that seems a bit odd to me.

Durant is 6'11", i don't know how tall your guy is.

Good game overall guys, even though we blew you guys out in the second half. Cousins can play some basketball, if he didn't act like a five year old i would love to have him on my team.

You guys might have a chance to trade for jeff green, it doesn't seem like we want to keep him next year. I don't really know why.

PS. Udrih annoys the hell out of me, i don't know why either

[darkadun]

Even though we lost, I'm feeling much better about the Kings after the past few games.

Cousins is putting it together, he is a freaking Beast when he stays out of foul trouble. That and Reke has been playing better, which is very encouraging. Who knows, I'm starting to wonder if Cousins won't be better than Tyreke in 4-5 years. Hard to say, but he has so much talent its scary.

Maybe Ron Ron should give DMC the number of his Therapist jk....but seriously...

[Nicky Nix Nook]

Pooh Jeter is the man.

As I said before DMC will be option 1, with Reke as his sidekick.

I love Reke, but when Cousins has the ball, there's a visible offense being run. With Reke it's stand, stand, stand.

[Wolfay]

Pooh Jeter is the man.

As I said before DMC will be option 1, with Reke as his sidekick.

I love Reke, but when Cousins has the ball, there's a visible offense being run. With Reke it's stand, stand, stand.

I agree with this. Cousins is the franchise guy in my opinion. Tyreke has the talent to be a franchise guy, but he lacks one thing that Cousins has shown some of: swagger (although at times it borders on $wag, if you know what I mean).

[SacKingZZZ]

I don't think it's that, it's more so that Cousins does things that almost no big can do and he does pretty much everything offensively other big men can do. Reke has holes in his game but he's most certainly an elite talent at a few different things. The only holes I see in Cousins' game are inexperience/lack of maturity (he's 20, you know?) and he's not a dominant help defender as a shotblocker. Still takes up a lot of space and he's been doing a much better job lately of going after shots in the paint, not just trying to take the charge.

A game like this at least gives some signals that yes, we do have two guys that can be the focal point of a system. They are starting to try it the last couple of games, but Reke cutting to the hoop is the next step. Once Cousins can start getting him easy buckets we have the beginnings of a very dangerous two man game. Reke's ability to score with out dominating the ball is going to be crucial to both his development and this teams development. Reke needs to be a threat without the ball and since his shot is still a work in progress a great way to help it is with his off the ball movment.

[pillwenney]

It's hard to say right now. Demarcus certainly seems like he could get over some of his on-court problems, but I don't think we should take that as a given, and we also shouldn't judge this based off of recent play, since Tyreke isn't fully healthy. He seems to be wearing down as games go on, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the pressure he's putting on his foot, because for the last two games he has been absolutely stellar in the first half, and really fallen off in the second.

In any case, I don't know which will really be the first option in the future, and I'm not sure if we should necessarily worry about it. In the future we should be mostly based around feeding Demarcus in the low (and sometimes high) post and working with cutters (that means you too, Tyreke), and spreading the floor for Tyreke to drive. Part of the problem right now is we don't really have a set plan on any given play. So Demarcus (or sometimes our other bigs) will set up in the post s they're supposed to, and then as they try to re-gain position, Tyreke drives and that's why Tyreke has gotten so many charges this year. That's in part due to the disorganized offense, in part due to Tyreke just having a "I'll do what I want" attitude, and sometimes because of the bigs not clearing out when they should.

[pillwenney]

Separate note, I was just thinking about the play on which Demarcus fouled out last night.

I'll first say that while, I wouldn't want to encourage the behavior and Grant and Jerry were right that he should have passed it off, I didn't think it was a charge. I thought it was an awesome and-1 where the defender wasn't set.

But I also noticed afterward when Grant said "As a big you get it to Tyreke and run the floor and...." and then he just kind of stopped. It's usually where a commentator would say "he'll reward you" but you can't really say that with Tyreke, and I think that's an issue.

[SacKingZZZ]

It's hard to say right now. Demarcus certainly seems like he could get over some of his on-court problems, but I don't think we should take that as a given, and we also shouldn't judge this based off of recent play, since Tyreke isn't fully healthy. He seems to be wearing down as games go on, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the pressure he's putting on his foot, because for the last two games he has been absolutely stellar in the first half, and really fallen off in the second.

In any case, I don't know which will really be the first option in the future, and I'm not sure if we should necessarily worry about it. In the future we should be mostly based around feeding Demarcus in the low (and sometimes high) post and working with cutters (that means you too, Tyreke), and spreading the floor for Tyreke to drive. Part of the problem right now is we don't really have a set plan on any given play. So Demarcus (or sometimes our other bigs) will set up in the post s they're supposed to, and then as they try to re-gain position, Tyreke drives and that's why Tyreke has gotten so many charges this year. That's in part due to the disorganized offense, in part due to Tyreke just having a "I'll do what I want" attitude, and sometimes because of the bigs not clearing out when they should.

Pretty much the main problem, but the last game was major progress. Fingers crossed that Westphal builds on some of the things he implemented last night. He might possibly go from the brink to back on the fence should he do so. Even Beno acknowledged it. Garcia and Beno will KILL if we go to Cousins more and play motion.

Don't know if this is even a real problem but I'm noticing here and there plays where it seems like Tyreke completely ignores Cousins and/or doesn't really try to get the ball to him. The last game Cousins had Tyreke wide open on the wing and instead went to Beno on the other side of the floor. I could swear he was giving him a little "payback". Hope not, but I know he saw him and I've seen enough times that Reke could have fed the post but gave up and decided to swing it back to the guard on his right instead.

Posting up in the way of guards and eachother has been a problem this year as you bring up as well. With JT playing instead of Landry it's been less of an issue though since JT has the bball IQ to recognize unoccupied spots on the floor and Landry is more of a side post iso play himself. Once this team learns to a) get out of the way of Demarcus and b) get out of the way of Tyreke we will actually be a pretty decent team!

[pillwenney]

It boils down to Tyreke not being a PG. He isn't going to look to feed the post as much because it's not really who he is. He's a reactive passer and playmaker. Part of it is because of the mentality we have approached him with. When you don't punish players when they screw up and treat them as a savior for your organization, they're going to inevitably get kind of an entitled attitude.

This is part of the reason we need more of a floor general running the team. Get Tyreke in a position to score and Demarcus in a position to score and choose to run things through one of them on a given play.

[SacKingZZZ]

Tyreke needs to learn that in time if he feeds the ball into the post and can play off of it, he'll be 10X as dangerous. I hope in time he does learn that, but if a sense of "entitlement" is truly keeping him from doing it on a consistent basis he needs to be shown what it can accomplish and how it can improve his game. Hopefully the coaching staff attempts to really involve Cousins and Tyreke more as a combination.