The Grizzlies embark on the second half of the season tonight against a Brooklyn Nets team that’s gone 10-1 in January and is pushing its way up the Eastern Conference standings.
This is likely to be a much tougher test for the newer-look Grizzlies than the Lakers provided Wednesday night.
As always, three thoughts:
- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Zach Randolph, All-Star
1. Zach Randolph: All-Star: The Grizzlies will welcome Zach Randolph tonight as the franchise’s first two-time All-Star. It was very unclear how All-Star selections were going to shake out for the Grizzlies this year. It could have been Randolph or Marc Gasol or both or neither. Any of those outcomes would have been defensible, with the final three spots presumably coming down to five worthy candidates — Randolph, LaMarcus Aldridge, and David Lee, who all made it, and Gasol and Stephen Curry, who did not.
Prior to yesterday’s announcement, I did a quick survey of media picks around the web. Of the 11 I found, only one — CBSSports.com’s Ken Berger — had no Grizzlies on the team. Two — ESPN.com’s Marc Stein and Ethan Sherwood Strauss — picked both Randolph and Gasol. And the other eight all had Gasol making it over Randolph. Still, I wasn’t surprised the coaches went the other way. Randolph’s per-game stats (16-12-1) are a little more impressive than Gasol’s (13-7-4), and Randolph has the easily digestible pegs of “second in the league in rebounding” and “first in the league in double-doubles.” For Randolph, it’s an outside affirmation of his full return from last season’s knee injury.
Gasol’s offense has waned along with the team’s over the past month, but his chief calling card is his rock-solid but rarely flamboyant defense, where he anchors the conference’s best unit. The choices of Joakim Noah and Tyson Chandler in the East proves the coaches don’t ignore defense for the sake of scoring averages, but in Gasol’s case, with so much worthy competition, his subtle excellence on that end wasn’t enough.
Gasol will be matched up tonight with another “snub” in Nets center Brook Lopez, who is having a bounce-back season with the Nets, averaging 19 points a game on 52% shooting.
