Put together two decent home wins over the Clips and Wolves, I'll take it. Dawight continues to play like a monster, 25 and 20 last night with 4 blocks, and hit his FTs when they were intentionally fouling him at the end. Frank also playing strong with 24 off the bench. Lamb continues to impress and Batum is working his way back in. Batum's all-around game is definitely better as the 3rd or 4th scoring option in most cases. MKG's fugly jumper is falling, which is a welcome addition.
The downside is that Monk's minutes have gone to shit as MCW is playing very strong D in the backup PG role and Lamb/Batum/MKG/Bacon rotate through the SG minutes. I get playing D over O, but I also don't want our best pure scorer rotting on the bench all game. And Marvin just sucks. I mean really, really sucks. His outside shot isn't what it once was, and without that he gets no space to get to the hole with his relatively limited athleticism. Clifford praises his D, but I don't know how much of that is him versus how much is the fear of D12 on help rotations.
Clifford is frustrating in general. Last night, Frank was unstoppable in the second half, both from outside and taking smaller players the basket. He had a season-high 24 points with maybe 5 minutes to go in the 4th quarter, and Cliff yanked him for Marv because that is the rotation pattern. Isn't part of his job to read the #hothand? Marv sucked all game and Frank was on fire, why the hell would you make that change? I assume the rational was D on KAT, but Dwight had helped well enough on him to where he was generally ineffective all game anyway and we were up double digits. Let the Tank roll and try to stretch the lead, don't Grobe it up by playing not to lose.