MILWAUKEE - Tyreke Evans deserves the credit.
He won the battle of the rookies against Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings, coming up huge with a game-winner for which I had the perfect angle while sitting on the opposite baseline. Bucks center Andrew Bogut bit so hard on his jab step hard that he almost wound up in the front row, and that simply didn't come through on the video highlights. It was a gorgeous, memorable, one-of-a-kind move on Evans' part that gave the Kings the win in a place where the home team had yet to lose to a team with a losing record (the Bucks are 9-5 at home).
But it also did one thing from a coverage standpoint: it took some of the spotlight off of Jason Thompson. And that's just not fair.
Thompson scored nine of his 22 point in the fourth quarter, and he continues to carry what one could argue is the heaviest load of any frontcourt player in the league. Considering coach Paul Westphal used his 10th starting lineup on Saturday night, Thompson never really knows who he'll be playing next to come tipoff time. But he has been producing on a consistent basis and is quickly earning major respect around the league.
Of all the shots that were huge for the Kings in this game in which 14 of the 24 lead changes took place in the final quarter, Thompson's three-point play with 2:40 was as big as any. With the shot clock winding down, Thompson slithered his way along the baseline and squeezed in a reverse layup that became a three-point play when he got the continuation call and pulled the Kings within one (89-88).
It came at the most crucial of times, as the Kings' spirits had appeared to be sapped by the night-long trend of Bucks' tenacity winning out. With 4:14 left, Spencer Hawes did his part and contested Andrew Bogut down low. Three offensive rebounds later, Carlos Delfino's layup tied it 85-85. Evans got caught in the lane and the jumpball went the Bucks' way, followed by a Delfino three from Jennings that contnued the momentum switch.
It didn't get bigger than his floater with five seconds left, of course, when Thompson was there to bail Evans out when his drive nearly drove him out of bounds. And by the time it was all over, Evans was more than willing to shell out some kudos Thompson's way.
"When I gave it to JT, I saw Bogut coming to help," Evans said. "I'd told JT, when I drive to pop middle because I couldn't see when Bogut was coming up and I didn't have anybody to pass it to. He did a good job of listening to me. WhenI drove, he popped up, and when I'd seen him, I gave him the dish."
Other than Thompson and Evans, no one was bigger than Beno Udrih. And after a 2008-09 campaign in which I grew so accustomed to seeing Udrih play so poorly, I'm the first to admit I never saw this coming. He hit 6 of 11 shots for 16 points, marking the 10th time in the last 12 games in which he has hit at least 50 percent of his shots.
He is shooting a career-high 53.3 percent overall and scoring a career-high 13.8 points per game. And while Udrih is averaging four assists per game, his 1.7 turnovers is quite the improvement considering he averaged 2.2 last season in similar minutes (31.1 to 30.2 per game).
Yet at the end of it all, it was obviously the Evans-Jennings show.
"It was a good game," Evans said. "He played good, and I played good. (Jennings) didn't go out there and force anything. He was playing the same way he'd been playing all year. If he saw the open shot, he took it. He made open passes, that's what I like about it. We didn't feed into the two Rookie of the Year thing, we just went out there and played basketball."
And both of them, truth be told, played the game remarkably well for a pair of 20-year-olds.
"That was a really fun game for us I think it would have been a fun game for any neutral observer," Westphal said. "But I'm sure the Bucks didn't have that much fun at the end.
"It was outstanding to watch those two young kids play like that. I thought Tyreke and Brandon Jennings were sensational in their own way. They're both very, very special, and they have a lot of great basketball ahead of both of those guys." - Sam Amick
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