An abbreviated post-gamer tonight due to a fussy baby (and, okay, a depressing game):
The Lead: An inconsistent, frustrating, and perplexing Grizzlies season took another bad turn tonight with one of the worst losses of the season.
The five best teams in the NBA so far this season have been the Celtics, Spurs, Mavericks, Heat, and Lakers. The Grizzlies have wins against three of these teams and have taken the other two to overtime. Meanwhile, the Grizzlies have now lost to the Cavaliers (8-20), Wizards (7-19), the Warriors (9-18), and the Nets (9-20) en route to a 8-7 mark against teams that currently have losing records. You can’t be more than a mediocre team until you start beating the mediocre and bad teams more often. Extra note of frustration: Per ESPN, the Nets were 7-1 this season when point guard Devin Harris scored at least 21 points and 1-19 when he fell under that threshold. Make that 2-19 now, as Harris managed only 12 points on 4-11 shooting.
Making the loss more frustrating tonight was that the team’s three most effective players for most of the game — Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, and O.J. Mayo — ended up playing only 28, 32, and 27 minutes, respectively, and foul trouble wasn’t really at the root of this. Gasol and Randolph sat to start the fourth quarter, with the Grizzlies down 9, and didn’t re-enter the game until the 3:27 mark, with the team down 7.
