The Lost Weekend: Sadly, a very compelling long weekend of basketball went by without any activity in this space. I was on-hand for both Friday night’s loss to the New Orleans Hornets and Monday’s win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, but my desire to knock out standard post-game write-ups was thwarted by — respectively — a post-game social engagement and pressing non-Grizzlies deadlines for both this week’s paper and next month’s Memphis magazine.
It’s no use going into detail on the weekend’s games at this point, but there are some individual and team trends worth putting a spotlight on.
Add in the home win last Tuesday against the Spurs and the past week — win over Spurs, loss to Hornets, win at Dallas, win over Thunder — was a continuation of a season-long trend for the team, in which the Grizzlies are extremely competitive against the West’s elite but struggle more against the team middle group of teams they’re competing with for playoff positioning.
Record vs. West’s Big Four:
Spurs – 1-2
Mavs – 3-1
Lakers – 2-2
Thunder – 3-1
Total: 9-6
The Grizzlies have won the season series against the Mavs and Thunder, tied the season series against the Lakers, and have a chance to tie the series with the Spurs with San Antonio comes back to town on March 27th.
Record vs. Other 5-8 Contenders:
Nuggets – 1-2
Blazers – 1-1
Hornets – 0-2
Suns – 2-1
Rockets – 1-3
Jazz – 1-2
Total: 6-11
The Grizzlies have won the season series against the Suns but have lost the season series to the Rockets and Nuggets. They’ll need to beat the Jazz on March 21st to tie that series and sweep the Hornets on their remaining two games (April 1st and 10th) to notch a tie with New Orleans. An April 12th game at Portland will determine who wins the season-series with the Blazers.
