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Magic 101, Grizzlies 99: Five (Cranky) Thoughts

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

Tyreke Evans scored 32 on 65% shooting in last night’s loss.

The Grizzlies lost to the Orlando Magic last night, 101–99, and they just flat-out shouldn’t have. Orlando is playing well—they rolled into town as the #1 team in the Eastern Conference—but not so well that the Grizzlies could afford to make the careless mistakes and poor plays that they did last night. It’s their second straight loss, and the second of the season in which they sabotaged themselves rather than just being outworked. (I’m counting the Charlotte loss in that latter category, because Charlotte as an excellent defense and put the clamps on the Griz in the second half. There were no clamps last night.)

I have five thoughts about what went wrong for the home team last night, and though most of them are similar, the subtle differences roll into one slightly cranky narrative of a team that just didn’t do many things right.

Five Thoughts

★ Mario Chalmers played like hot garbage in crunch time. After Marc Gasol came to life and tied the game at 97, and then immediately put the Grizzlies on top by 2, Chalmers had three of the most bone-headed possessions I’ve seen from a championship player to close out a game. He turned the ball over on the base line; he blew a fast break layup by anticipating contact instead of, y’know, trying to make the layup (which I can only assume was a wayward tribute to the departed Tony Allen); and then in a pick and roll with Marc Gasol on a play that could have put the Grizzlies ahead, he went around the screen and immediately pulled up his dribble, sat there a few seconds with it, and launched a bad three.

To be fair, Chalmers owned his mistakes after the game, and said he felt like he cost the Grizzlies the game. I find it hard to disagree. I was reminded of all those Heat championship years when everyone always seemed to be yelling at Chalmers.

Magic 101, Grizzlies 99: Five (Cranky) Thoughts (2)

Larry Kuzniewski

David Fizdale looked like this most of the night.

★ David Fizdale put his team on blast after the game, and then told us everything he said. It wasn’t just Chalmers who caught hell from the coach after the game. In the press conference, in what I can only assume was a G-rated version of the rant he’d just unleashed on the players, Fizdale said “We didn’t deserve to win this game. Our huddles were a joke, our communication was ridiculous. No one owned anything tonight.” Asked about Chalmers’ handling of the end of the game, he said “Mario made a ridiculous play.”

His frustration was apparent. He praised Marc Gasol’s leadership and his efforts to get the game back on track, but other than that, he seemed very frustrated by the team’s demeanor from moment one of the game. He went on to stress the teachability of these kinds of games, that he was going to watch it a couple more times and make the team do it too. He also pointed out that the Grizzlies were trying stuff like lobs off the backboard (Tyreke Evans’ missed connection to James Ennis) with the game on the line.

Fizdale’s bluntness has gotten him in a little bit of hot water with players before, but last night there’s no way they could have disagreed with his assessment. Nothing was working for the Grizzlies on either end of the floor for long stretches of last night, and even though they built up a double-digit lead at one point that only made them even more casual and even less willing to dig in and communicate. It’s worth monitoring what the team chemistry situation is as they leave town for a long pair of road trips; these issues could get worse before they get better, and if they do, batten down the hatches.

Larry Kuzniewski

Andrew Harrison

★ Andrew Harrison is barely able to stay on the court. Harrison made some nifty plays last night when the game tightened up, but for the most part, he was not good, and without Mike Conley the Grizzlies’ starting lineup was even worse than it has been, which is no mean feat. Single game +/- is not often instructive, but it can point you in the right direction, and last night Harrison was –18 in a 2 point game, in only 20 minutes of play. (And Jarell Martin, the other young guy currently starting because of injuries, was –23 in 19 minutes. Whether or not these numbers are very meaningful, they’re not not meaningful.)

The bottom line is that the sooner Ben McLemore and/or Wayne Selden return from injury and push Harrison back down towards the bottom of the rotation, the better. His defense is good, but he still lacks any other distinguishable NBA skills, and he’s just not good enough to carry major minutes as a starting shooting guard. There’s no one else to start if Fizdale wants to keep the bench unit of Chalmers, Evans, Brooks, Parsons, and Wright together, but he may be forced into further experiments while awaiting Selden and McLemore. It just doesn’t seem like this bad of a starting lineup is in any way tenable.

★ The longer these guys stay hurt, the worse the Grizzlies will get. With Conley out, an uncertain injury situation became a bad one. One hopes he’s just taking it easy because it’s early in the season. JaMychal Green’s absence is certainly felt on the defensive end. And Selden was never supposed to have been hurt this long in the first place, and was expected by many (including me) to be the starting 2 guard until McLemore returned from his foot injury to challenge for the spot. The net result is a Grizzlies team that has about seven players who play well together but needs to play ten guys to make it through a game. If guys don’t start coming back soon, I don’t see any way they do more than tread water, and headed out on the road for a couple of weeks, that has the potential to get very ugly. Because:

Larry Kuzniewski

★ This group of personalities has not gelled completely yet. There are young guys, brash characters like Tyreke Evans and Mario Chalmers, whatever you want to call Chandler Parsons, the quiet solid guys like Ennis and Wright, and Conley and Gasol’s still-evolving leadership roles. There are a lot of opportunities for the chemistry on this year’s Grizzlies team to go south, and they may be coming up on one of those opportunities with this road trip.

Fizdale seems to have a handle on what’s going on, but he can only do so much, and with the injuries taking a toll on what the team is capable of, the Grizzlies, this early in the season, are already in a bit of a pressure cooker, having so outperformed early expectations. I think things might get weird.

Tweet of the Night

If I’d had six thoughts instead of five, the bonus one would have been that Tyreke Evans scored 32 points last night, and shot 65% from the floor. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him shoot as well as he’s shooting so far this year, which bodes well for how the Grizzlies can use him. But last night wasn’t just about shooting jumpers:

Magic 101, Grizzlies 99: Five (Cranky) Thoughts

Up Next

The road awaits. A pair of games in LA this weekend, one a Saturday matinee against the Clippers (and the Grizzlies almost always lose road matinee games, same as every other team who goes out on the town in LA the night before—which is to say every team in the league). Then it’s up to Portland, before coming home and heading back out on another road trip without playing a home game.

The chemistry is the thing to watch. Can the Grizzlies correct the issues they’ve developed in these two losses, or will the added isolation of a road trip only intensify and deepen their issues? That’s the story of the next week.