Larry Kuzniewski
Zach Randolph played tough but not well in Game 4.
The Grizzlies did not have their floor general on Monday night, and in the end, they couldn’t get it together to beat the Portland Trail Blazers and close out their first round playoff series in a sweep. The Blazers beat the Grizzlies 99-92, so instead of sitting around waiting for a series against Golden State, the Griz are coming home to play Portland on Wednesday night (at 8:30 Memphis time) at FedExForum.
It’s not the extra rest the Griz surely hoped they’d be able to grab, after Conley headed back to Memphis for surgery on facial fractures suffered during Sunday night’s Game 3 win. A win in Game 4 would have given the Grizzlies their first-ever sweep of a playoff series, but it wasn’t to be, as Portland rallied on their home floor to win a Game 4 that was short on Grizzlies offense and long on Portland hustle.
Without Conley, the Grizzlies’ offense has been a dicey proposition all year long. Their offense is so intricate, so predicated on exact passing and minute spaces that when someone else takes the reins, it’s hard to slip into the right rhythm to keep everything together. The Griz played slow, and settled for jump shots early instead of making extra passes and probing the (flimsy) Portland D.
In the end, there wasn’t enough defense to keep Damian Lillard quiet, and wasn’t enough scoring to balance out his outbursts at the other end, and the Grizzlies lost, allowing Portland to make it a series instead of just a sweep.
Obviously, given Portland’s injury situation, the Grizzlies’ lack of Mike Conley makes this much more of a series than it was at the outset. Conley has long been the engine that drives the Grizzlies’ offense, and the Conley Corrolary (as Conley goes, so go the Grizzlies) has been used around these parts often enough to be memorized now, like the Golden Rule. But the Griz have beaten the Blazers in Portland without Conley before this year (albeit not in a playoff game). Without the clogged toilet offense from the Grizzlies, it’s possible that even Conley’s injury wouldn’t have kept the Griz from pulling off the sweep. The poor offensive execution from the Grizzlies was, of course, a symptom of Conley being out, if not entirely thus.
Alas, it wasn’t to be. In the end, the Blazers hit more shots, rebounded better, and played smarter basketball than the Grizzlies, while Joerger appeared to get hung up on weird lineups and questionable decisions—playing Jon Leuer for two random minutes while the Blazers went on a six point run, making an offense-for-defense sub of Jeff Green in for Tony Allen when Green was having a terrible offensive game and there was no guarantee of a stoppage during which to bring Allen back, and a few other weird (dare I say “Hollins-y”?) decisions.
The Grizzlies couldn’t get it done in Portland, and so we’ve got a Game 5 coming tomorrow night in Memphis. Another chance for the Grizzlies to close out the series at home and rest up for the next round. The Grizzlies had a similar chance last year—a Game 6 against Oklahoma City with a 3-2 series lead—and blew it, so I’m not going to assume it’s a sure thing the way some folks were calling for the sweep Monday morning. Without Conley in the mix, nothing is a sure as it was when Game 3 tipped on Saturday.
Larry Kuzniewski
The Grizzlies need more of this in Game 5.
Game Notes
➭ Without Mike Conley, the Grizzlies needed scoring from Zach Randolph and didn’t get any. Randolph has not had an efficient offensive outing yet in this series, but last night, with Conley out and the Grizzlies needing to lean on the production of one of their go-to guys to get them over the hump, Randolph was a non-factor on both ends of the floor, going 6-20 for 12 points (by the same token, LaMarcus Aldridge went 6-22 for 18, but he also spent much of the night being guarded by Gasol instead of Randolph) and playing the worst defense we’ve seen from him yet in this series, jumping at things he hasn’t jumped at, being in the wrong place at the wrong time… just generally playing a very poor game.
Neither Randolph nor Gasol has had a particularly stellar series so far (though Gasol’s Game 4 was his best of the series so far, especially on the defensive end, and shows that he’s on the right track). That hasn’t been a problem yet because the Griz have been able to slice and dice Portland with guard play—Lee and Conley both having big nights, Beno’s midrange outbursts in the first two games, et al—but without Conley, the spacing on offense is even worse than it usually is, the passing is all out of whack, and the bigs have even less room to work than normal. That’s not good for a team that is now starving for offensive production after breaking triple digits more than once in the series.
If Randolph can have even a decent game, not necessarily a great one, the Grizzlies have a much better shot at Game 5 than they did at Game 4. That production has to come from somewhere, and if Randolph can do better than 6-20, that would be a start.
Larry Kuzniewski
If anyone finds Jeff Green’s scoring, please send it to FedExForum c/o the Memphis Grizzlies.
➭ Jeff Green had a terrible night. Green was 3-10 for 7 points. That’s a similar shooting line to what he’s had throughout the series, but last night he didn’t get to the free throw line a single time, something he’s very good at. The Blazers did a very good job of baiting Green into pulling up for one of his horrible, no-good, very bad mid-range pullup jumpers, and he was happy to just clank away at them instead of trying to find a lane to the rim.
It wasn’t just offense, though: after playing fair-to-middling defense most of the series, Green was bad last night on that end of the floor, too, especially when he somehow got caught guarding Aldridge after a switch (which isn’t really his fault). He’s got to be better for the Grizzlies to win. The poor shooting doesn’t hurt so bad when he’s still getting to the line and making good decisions. Last night he was just bad. At everything.
For what the Grizzlies traded for him for (offensive playmaking, athleticism, whatever other buzzwords everybody kept saying), Green hasn’t been anywhere near as much of a factor in the playoffs as he was during the regular season. That’s going to have to change if the Grizzlies want to advance and have even a sliver of a chance in the next round. He’s just got to be better. After everything that has happened since the All-Star Break, the Grizzlies’ hopes of winning a title are barely alive, hardly hanging on. If Green can’t contribute, Randolph is a non-factor, and Conley is sidelined with a broken face, the Griz have no shot to make it out of the second round, regardless of anything beyond that.
➭ The backup point guards were good but not great at carrying the team and running the offense in Mike Conley’s absence. Offensive execution was noticeably bad, but the Grizzlies still managed to have a chance to win the game down the stretch despite everything breaking Portland’s way. Calathes was really good on defense and hit some 3’s that few people expected him to hit, but struggled to make the right passes at the right time to keep the Grizzlies’ precision-crafted interior game going. Beno Udrih, on the other hand, was a solid contributor scoring-wise, but (as we’ve seen all year) struggled to run the offense for any extended period of time, having to stifle his urge to score bucket after bucket in Steve Blake’s face for the greater good of running the team.
It’s not the ideal replacement for Mike Conley, but (1) there is no ideal replacement for Mike Conley other than Mike Conley, and (2) it sure beats Keyon Dooling and Tony Wroten, and it sure beats Gilbert Arenas and OJ Mayo as the point guard depth chart, too.
Tweet(s) of the Night
My approximate level of understanding re:Jeff Green http://t.co/iw9tsXaXT3
— Beer Cat PhD (@syllable_sound) April 28, 2015
(here’s the GIF, since it didn’t embed:)
Up Next
Game 5 is in Memphis Wednesday night, and tips off at 8:30 Memphis time. Which means the weeknight crowd will either be sleepy, a little more drunk than usual, or both. The Grizzlies really don’t want this one to go back to Portland again without Conley, so if they don’t wrap it up in 5, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go 7 games. Portland now knows they can beat the Grizzlies when Conley isn’t playing, and they have confidence they didn’t have before Monday night.
