- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- The Grizzlies evened up the series behind a dominant performance from their frontcourt stars.
The big trains from Memphis kept rumbling along Saturday afternoon at FedExForum, as Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol combined for 48 points and 22 rebounds on 61 percent shooting to lead the Grizzlies to a 104-83 victory over the Clippers that sends this series back to Los Angles tied at two games apiece.
Fitting their city’s pro wrestling heritage, this was a classic tag-team affair.
Randolph got it going early — in more ways than one. Randolph’s 16 points on 8-11 shooting in the first half came with 10 attempts at the rim. How has Randolph’s game transformed since his middling production in Los Angeles? Randolph credits the home-court eruption to “getting the ball in the right spots, being aggressive, going a little faster instead of waiting for the double team.”
Gasol echoed this, saying the team had to get Randolph the ball in the right spots instead of getting it to him in isolation situations and asking Randolph to simply go get shots.
In the second half, the team made a clear choice to emphasize Gasol, and he responded with 18 points and 6 rebounds on 7-9 shooting in the half, all of his second-half shots, in contrast to Randolph, coming on short or mid-range jumpers. Gasol’s three quick makes early in the third quarter helped keep the Clippers from building any kind of lead, and Gasol hit a couple of back-breakers later in the quarter: A 23-foot catch-and-shoot make off a Tayshaun Prince in-bounds pass, with .6 seconds on the shot clock, to tie the game at 60, and then a 13-foot baseline jumper off a Tony Wroten feed with .2 seconds on the clock to end the quarter and give the Grizzlies a two-possession lead going into the fourth. What does Gasol present to opposing defenders?, Randolph was asked later. “Trouble,” he responded.
And it wasn’t just Randolph and Gasol’s scoring. They combined for more offensive rebounds (seven) than the Clippers’ entire team (five). The most important sequence in the game might have come midway through the fourth, when Gasol contested Blake Griffin at the rim, forcing a miss, securing the defensive rebound, and starting a fastbreak that ended with a drop-down assist from Randolph to Tony Allen, who finished at the basket despite a Griffin foul and hit again from the line. The Grizzlies were up 10 at the time and the sequence made it a 13-point game with 7:14 to play instead of the 8-point game it might have been if Griffin had converted over Gasol. From that moment, the Grizzlies blew the game open.
The Grizzlies have now outscored the Clippers 380-370 through four games, but the series is tied and the Clippers maintain a homecourt advantage. For the Grizzlies, this may be a painful reminder of last spring, when the Grizzlies outscored the Clippers across seven games but were sent packing because of the failure to close out the close ones. Though Chris Paul’s fourth-quarter magic from Game 2 still has the series even, the Clippers have to be concerned about their downward trend. From their perspective, here’s how the series has gone: +21, +2, -12, -21.
“We haven’t accomplished anything yet,” Gasol said after the game. “But we’ve gotten a little bit better every game, and we have to continue to do that.”
