After a long Thanksgiving holiday trip to visit my in-laws in Minnesota, I returned to FedExForum tonight for the first time in more than a week. Did I miss anything good? Let’s count it off:
1. Zach Randolph and O.J. Mayo miss shootaround, are benched to start the Heat game.
2. Rudy Gay ends a wild final minute with a buzzer-beater over Lebron James in one of the great moments in Grizzlies history. The building goes bananas. The season, for the moment, is saved.
3. O.J. Mayo becomes Sixth Man. Xavier Henry installed as starter.
4. A ho-hum route of a bad Pistons team.
5. Hamed Haddadi loses his mind.
6. A fun win over the Golden State Warriors on national television.
7. The return of Hubie Brown, which may have hurt almost as much to miss as the Rudy Gay buzzer-beater.
Yikes. But, hey, at least I was gifted with a good game on my return to FedExForum tonight:
The Lead: Grizzlies fans are certainly no stranger to disappointment over the years. But — opening nights aside — it seems like whenever there’s a high-profile team in town and a good crowd in the building, the result is a close, exciting game. This was the case with the Boston Celtics (overtime loss) and Miami Heat (final shot win) earlier this season and was the case with both home Laker games a year ago, both of which — if memory serves — came down to final Laker shots, one a Ron Artest miss and one a Kobe Bryant make.
Tonight was something of a repeat of last season’s first home Laker game. In both instances, the Grizzlies held a two-point lead while the Lakers held the ball for the final shot. Like last season, a Griz defender closed out aggressively on Kobe Bryant (last year Marc Gasol, this time O.J. Mayo) and Bryant passed to Ron Artest for a potential game-winning three-pointer. And, like last season, Artest missed. (In this case, his attempt was blocked by Rudy Gay.)
