Larry Kuzniewski
It came and went, poorly, much like the regular season to which it belonged, only with fewer injuries and less existential dread. The 2015–16 regular season finally came to an end last night in Oakland, with the Grizzlies unable to stop the Golden State Warriors from winning 73 games in a single NBA season. After only losing to the Warriors by a single point in Memphis on Saturday, it seemed like a forgone conclusion that they’d have a harder time of it at Oracle Arena, and that proved to be true.
It’s hard to find much to say about it other than “turns out it’s hard to beat the best team of all time without all of your good players.” Tony Allen sat out with hamstring tightness, denying us one last burst of “first team All Defense”-shouting insanity to cap the Grizzlies’ 82 game run, adding to the already-long list of players not available for last night’s game. If the Griz had been able to pull off the victory, it would’ve been one of the biggest regular season upsets in the history of the NBA, if not the biggest. But it’s curious to me that the Grizzlies lost a game at Oracle by fifty points earlier in the year, when everyone was ostensibly healthy. This season has never stopped being strange and snake-bit.
Here are some thoughts on last night’s game and what these last few regular season games have told us about the Grizzlies in the playoffs.
Five Thoughts
Larry Kuzniewski
★ Xavier Munford got burnt to a crisp and I’m fine with it. The rookie, one of the Grizzlies’ many 10-day guys this year, had the challenge of guarding Steph Curry in a game where (1) 73 wins and (2) a mind-numbing 400 made 3-pointers in a season were on the line. It didn’t really go that well for him; Munford did a lot of chasing and a lot of closing out just a bit too late to stop Curry from getting a shot off. Such is life. Better to have Munford getting torched and learning valuable lessons about defense at the NBA level than to have Jordan Farmar getting torched and learning valuable lessons about what he can and can’t do anymore.
This is what happens when you play young guys: sometimes they get turned into BBQ chicken and that just has to be the way it is. If the Grizzlies had more on the line last night, maybe I’d be more upset about this, but I doubt it.
★ Lance Stephenson had a good game. Lance scored 22 points on 8–14 shooting, including 3–3 from long range. He had some really nifty assists. He made things happen. It was a pretty good performance from him, and he provided scoring that the Grizzlies needed desperately because they weren’t really getting it from anybody else not named Zach Randolph. I don’t know what the future holds for Stephenson and the Grizzlies. If he’s back next year, I strongly doubt it will be because the Grizzlies picked up his team option, but would more likely be on a cheaper, longer deal. But I do know that having a guy like Lance who can create scoring opportunities for himself is really valuable, and with a Grizzlies team that has Gasol, Conley, and Wright all playing, there’s a possibility that Lance could grow into a really important role player. We’ll see.
★ The Spurs. Again. Always crashing in the same car.
Larry Kuzniewski
★ I still wish they’d kept Ray McCallum over Jordan Farmar. Farmar has hit some threes at important moments. Other than that, he’s had some horrible blown layups, he’s been burned like Centralia, Pennsylvania on defense, and he always seems to be arguing with somebody who’s been on the team longer while walking back to the bench. I’m not saying I think McCallum would be playing a lot better in the same role, but at least he’s a younger guy with more potential, and more NBA experience this season. The Grizzlies’ Retread Point Guard Collection is one of my least favorite things about the franchise.
★ The defense has to get better for the playoffs. Part of this is personnel, part of it is playing younger guys with less experience, and part of this is just focus. They can’t really do anything about the first two, but they can help the third. There have been countless baskets made by the Grizzlies’ opponents down the stretch of this brutal slog of a season where the Grizzlies just haven’t been paying attention on defense and let somebody get a wide open look. Last night PJ Hairston stood in the restricted area and watched his man shoot a three more than once. The communication has to get better, and the mental acuity has to get better. They’re never going to be as good at it as a full-strength Griz squad, and even that full-strength squad has been starting to show signs of a decline on the defensive end, but they can be better than they are, and they have to be, or the Spurs are going to cut them into little pieces like a band saw. Given that they might do that anyway, the Griz need to find that extra bit of focus and communication on defense.
Tweet of the Night
So much this. He’s like the control rod in a nuclear reactor.
If nothing else the last few weeks of the Grizzlies have proven how good Conley is at controlling tempo.
— Eric Freeman (@freemaneric) April 14, 2016
Up Next
Larry Kuzniewski
A playoff series against a Spurs team that is way better than most people noticed because they were overshadowed by the 73-win Warriors, which will probably be over pretty quickly.
Then, probably a few weeks of rumors like the ones that broke last night that the Timberwolves want Dave Joerger to be their coach even though he’s got another year on his contract with the Grizzlies. You know. I’d like for the Grizzlies to sign Russell Westbrook this summer, too, but he’s got another year on his contract with the Thunder, so publicly announcing that doesn’t do a lot of good.
I’m not sure if the “Wolves want Joerger” rumors are origiating with Joerger/his agent (who understandably want to use whatever leverage they have to get more money/a longer deal; that’s kind of the whole job of an agent) or from the Timberwolves (who would need to trade something back to the Grizzlies to acquire Joerger at this point, something they were unwilling to do the last time Joerger wanted the Minnesota job), but either way, before the playoffs have even started, the timing is pretty stupid.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think the Grizzlies have any plans to fire Joerger this summer. It may have seemed headed that way earlier this season, with Dave being openly critical of the front office and the way the team is constructed, but as trades and injuries happened, everyone seemed to start pulling together towards one goal, and it felt (from my vantage point, anyway) like a lot of those tensions dissipated, or were at least subsumed in the frantic playoff push. He’s got another year on his contract, a year that was guaranteed in an extension the last time he talked to the Timberwolves about taking their head coaching gig. We’ll see. I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear of this or talk about it, because the fact that the rumor mill has already started, before the regular season is even done, means it’s on somebody’s agenda to keep it in the public eye.
