Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

[studbucket]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Ouch. I didn't expect Gordon to be that bad/frustrating. I get benching him, but that probably hurts his value in trade, right?

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Ouch. I didn't expect Gordon to be that bad/frustrating. I get benching him, but that probably hurts his value in trade, right?

Yeah, it does. I was hoping Eric Gordon was the Eric Gordon I remembered, back in 2K13 ... dude was a BEAST in that game with my Suns, but he simply isn't that any more after the injuries. Now he's a shell of himself -- goes up soft for layups, shoots in extreme hot/cold streaks, he's just not what I want as a full-time guy.

So, I moved him to the bench in the 2nd half. He starts the game and if he's having a night where he's hot, I'll leave him in, but I have the rotations set up to take him out midway through the 2nd quarter and glue him to the bench for the 2nd half (barring injuries of course).

He's having a sorta decent year, scoring 16.2 PPG but only on 40% from the field, 34% from deep. He's just inefficient and he's killing me with how he shoots. I'd rather start Wright (who puts out less points than Gordon, but is way more efficient) and I play Wright heavily in the 4th.

Speaking of Wright, the man had quite a game for against the Lakers ...

__________________________________________________ ______________





Ch. 11

Gordon’s benching for the fourth was a good thing for the team, but our record sure as hell didn’t improve. We were sinking, slowly, back into the lower-tier NBA teams and Thon was out till Christmas at the earliest. We needed a boost from somewhere and that’s when we played the Lakers.

The 17-12 Lakers were a surprise team, but Luke Walton got those kids — he got that team. Brandon Imgram was lighting it up all over the court and the cobbled together Lakers frontline, starring Jason Smith at the five and Jeff Green off the bench, was actually not horrible.

But they had absolutely killed us the last time we met: we lost 104-67 at Staples and it was embarrassing as hell. I wanted us to draw blood this game, I wanted us to win this.

The Lakers didn’t consider us much of a threat and why would they? When you blow a team out 104-67 like they did, you don’t have to consider that team a threat ever again. We had to really push in this one, but it was a home affair.

And the Dome was rocking. Chants of “Beat LA” rained down on the court as soon as we took a lead. The problem wasn’t taking the lead, it was holding it; we simply couldn’t stop the Lakers from coming back after we got out ahead. They would always come back, always pull back ahead, and the lead would trade again.

By the time we got to the fourth, you could feel the tension in the air. We were up 95-91, but we had coughed up an 11-point lead already and no one was confident we could hold. But leave it to Delon Wright to help put us over the top — he stepped up HUGE in the second-half after having a poor first half.



Once we got that, the Lakers started fading away. Brandon Ingram almost shot them back into it, the kid was special from day one in the NBA, but we held on and got away with it. If not for the outstanding play of Wright, Joseph Young, and Dedmon, we would have lost that game. Delly came alive in the fourth and helped close it out with his free throws, but his day wasn’t the best day.

We got the win, though, and that was the high point of our season against the Lakers.

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story


Ch. 12


There are games in the history of a franchise, of a player, that signify they’re going to be something special. Something memorable. Something that transcends the stats, the highlights, the Youtube mixtapes. Players are remembered not just because of the games they win, but how they win those games. That’s why Jordan’s shots are always played, over and over: the man had a presence on the court and that presence, that swagger, washed out everything and everyone else.

Jordan could have gone 1-11 on the day and all anyone would remember would be that one shot, because that shot and not the misses.

The game against the Nuggets was like that for Thon. Maker had come back the previous game (a Christmas day slaughter at the hands of the Cavs) and looked rusty, but three days of practice and some coaching up seemed to shake the rust off. By the team we got to Denver, the team was looking to Thon to set the tone. And he did so in a brilliant way.



He scored our first three points, then wrestled with Jokic before sending him to the floor with a nasty block. The ball went into the crowd and they were even afraid of it. Jokic was the Nuggets enforcer and he wasn’t sure what hit him. Hell, I wasn’t sure what hit him. Thon had been athletic before, but that night he was vicious to the Nuggets. He pulled every trick he had, he was knocking down shots from deep, he was sizing up his defender on the post, he was hitting baseline fades, and that doesn’t even account for all the shots he changed on the other end.

I was floored. That game Thon demolished the Nuggets and he carried us to the win — we had swagger. We had confidence and, yes, it was against the 15-18 Nuggets, but at 12-18 we could use the boost just as much as they could. We demoralized the team ... and I couldn't get enough of it.



I thought that was our last win of December, we had the Lakers next and I assumed we’d lose, but we beat them — the return of Thon gave us the season series against them, 2-1, and that was a victory in of itself.

That Nuggets came was Thon’s coming out party. He took a shotgun to their team, the sniped them from deep … it was a work of art. A work I was hoping to see for years to come.

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Ch. 13

By January we were sitting at 15-23. We were 8 games under .500 and our next opponent was the league leading 29-8 OKC Thunder. The Thunder were straight up punking other teams and Russell Westbrook was annihilating the competition. The Thunder, minus KD, were absolute terrors and the entire team seemed to be feeding off the seething rage of Westbrook. We came into that game losers of two straight and I assumed we would be obliterated, at home, by the league’s best team.

I was wrong. The Thunder came out and scored the first seven points, then went ice-cold as our defense locked them down. Delly was doing a number on Westbrook, forcing him into shots he could hit but that were low percentage. Westbrook was starting to get frustrated, the Thunder’s defense began to overcompensate with aggressive play, and we started going to foul line.

We sunk our shots. Thon utterly dominated Ibaka, who disappeared in this game. The Thunder were down 29-16 at the end of one, and in the second we kept pouring it on. Our team was playing better as a team than the Thunder. I mean, look at this play:



That’s why we were up 55-38 by halftime.

I was astounded. That first year it really seemed like we played at our competition’s level; if they were *hit, we were *hit. If they were hot as *uck, we were hot as *uck, and the Thunder were the hottest team in the league. But we locked their sorry *sses down and I tell you, I didn’t mind one bit.

OKC — and Clay Bennett — were an organization that had robbed Seattle of their team. It was some of the dirtiest backroom dealing I’ve seen in a long time and, to this day, I’m not sure how it happened … but I didn’t particularly like the team or anyone on it. There wasn’t a player there that you could have sold me, because that team was mentally weak. If things got bad, they got down.

They got way down this game. We played our deep reserves for most of the fourth quarter. It gave me some time to assess some of the younger, end of bench guys and I came away thinking they were okay. We were still a young squad, we still had a long way to go, but this game was just another one where we played up to our potential.

[studbucket]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Whoa Thon, 37 points! Is he the leading RotY candidate? Or do Ingram and Simmons have that locked up?

And what a great win against the Thunder. I know the Flight aren't doing great, but how far out of the playoffs are they? Is it like 4 games, 8 games out?

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Whoa Thon, 37 points! Is he the leading RotY candidate? Or do Ingram and Simmons have that locked up?

And what a great win against the Thunder. I know the Flight aren't doing great, but how far out of the playoffs are they? Is it like 4 games, 8 games out?

Well, we're the 4th worst team in the conference, 6th overall in the NBA. Rookie of the year has Dunn leading the way, followed by Ingram, Simmons, Thon, and Saric.

We're not super-horrible, but I doubt we're getting the 1st overall -- the Knights are the worst team in the league and they have only 8 wins to their name at this point.

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story



Ch. 14

Going down to Miami is always a treat, even at the end of January. The sunny beaches, the beautiful weather, and the equally beautiful women. What’s there not to like about Miami? When we met up, the Heat were 18-21 and we were 16-25. The team was coming off a brutal stretch of three losses straight to the Spurs, Warriors, and Pistons … it wasn’t a fun time for us. Our offense had grown stagnant and we lost Delon Wright for two weeks with a high ankle sprain, which meant we had to play Gordon more minutes.

As you can imagine, that led to more losses. Gordon was good in short bursts, but we needed a different strategy, so McHale decided to give Wright’s minutes to Gbinije, our 2nd round pick from 2016. Gbinijie had been seeing minutes in spurts, about five or so a night to wet his whistle, but he hadn’t been trusted to play more than that.

We trusted him that night and it turned out all right. The Heat played us ugly — the game was damned unsightly to watch as both teams struggled, lofting up piss poor shots and fouling each other. It was a thuggish game of streetball, but I have to say the Heat’s play was a thing to watch. They were gritty, tough, they mucked things up for us and disrupted the flow of our offense. Defensively, you had to like that. We still got our shots up, but it wasn’t exactly Shakespeare.



Offensively it wasn’t until the third that we finally broke away from them — and they continued to claw back, even after we got Whiteside to foul out. They still kept coming and the veteran core of Dragic, Wade, and Bosh absolutely refused to lose. Dragic was objectively horrible but it wasn’t like Delly was doing much better … the game came down to a duel between Bosh and Lauvergne.

Lauvergne was the younger of the two and it showed as the game progressed. Bosh was hustling to all the boards, he was the hub of that offense in the fourth, but Lauvergne merely took it and got it back on the other end. The Heat couldn’t get Dragic going and Wade tried to hero them out of the hole, but it simply wasn’t enough — the Heat’s bench got nothing going.

Meanwhile, Eric Gordon actually scored well and efficiently. Being a role player suited him, though he sure as hell was paid like a starter. It was a nice win and it set us off on a mini-run; we went 4-2 over the next six games before we welcomed the Knights to the Dome on Feb. 4th.

The season series was tied 1-1 and I wanted to give them another loss, even though we were 20-27 and well above the 9-40 Knights. They could tank their *sses off for all I cared … the 2017 draft was deep.

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story



Ch. 15

We came into the game having just lost to the Bulls in a 112-79 affair. We looked liked a team of rookies who lost the ability to handle the ball. The same thing that happened then, happened here: we simply fumbled the game away. Turnovers killed us all game and we choked away the lead, then finished the game with a whimper.

It was an embarrassment and I cursed more watching that game than I did any other game of the year. The Knights — the *hitastic Knights — beat us on our home court and what did we have to show for it? Nothing. Fouls plagued us all game, Lauvergne was a foul magnet, Ezeli hit nearly all his free throws, and no one could get going consistently.

Delly? Might as well have opened up a deli with how he was playing.

Lauvergne? Spent more time on the bench then being helpful.

The only players to show up were Thon, Mickey, and Gbinije. That was it. Three guys performing well and the rest of the team doing jack. Two of those guys were bench guys, but they were guys I was high on — G-man was going to be a difference maker for our bench for years to come. Mickey, too, if he decided to stick around after 2017.

I wasn’t in a great mood after the game. Marshall had come to visit us and gloated, all throughout the game, about how his team was going to get the first pick. About how he was going to build a champion before I did.

“The West coast way is better,” he declared as we watched the game. “You tank, you build back up, you dominate for two decades. Your model of building a team is old, like you.”

“Old?” I laughed at him. “The only thing that’s ‘old’ here is your bull*hit. That’s old and it smells like hair gel and way too much cologne.”

Marshall was a prideful SOB and straightened his tie, a sure sign I had hit a nerve. “You’re outdated. This whole system is. The 76ers had the right idea; you tank till you can’t anymore, and then you win. Look at them, they’re above .500 for the first time in years and their fans love it. They’re raking in the money.”

“Only after taking their fans money for a *hit team for years. They lost respect. They lost value. They’ll never land a good free agent until they prove they’re done tanking.”

“So, three years, tops,” Marshall said with a scoff. “Basketball players are like any other players, they care about money. Bank. Cash. If they have that, they’ll fall in line, like everyone else.”

“You’re a true believer, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to perfect the 76ers strategy. You can’t stop me. The NBA can’t stop me. The Knights will have the first pick and we’ll be set for two decades.”

I took a look at the score, then continued to drink my whiskey. We lost the game, but Marshall left disappointed that his team had won.

I promised myself never to be like him.

[vtcha]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Ouch that's gotta be disappointing. Getting the W against Playoff teams but then dropping one against the Knights, of all teams.


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[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Ouch that's gotta be disappointing. Getting the W against Playoff teams but then dropping one against the Knights, of all teams.


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It's maddening. My team just doesn't perform consistently across games, we play up or down to our competition. Still too young and inexperienced to play like a well-oiled machine. I want that Spurs-life, but we have a long way to go before we establish that kind of culture.

[SkyFlyer]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

What are the standings in the East and West like atm?

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

What are the standings in the East and West like atm?

Was just looking at those. I'm at the trade deadline, Feb. 16th, so I'm looking through the league to see what deals should be made ... the standings are interesting this year.

[BookWork123]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Man, the Knights-Flight rivalry is only competitive now because both teams are so bad!


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[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

Man, the Knights-Flight rivalry is only competitive now because both teams are so bad!


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Yeah, we're bottom-feeders. If we were out East, we might be in better shape, but the West is brutal as hell and there's no getting past the top-tier talent at this stage of both organizations.

[trekfan]

Re: Through The Storm: A St. Louis Story

League Injuries Feb. 16th