The Lead: After a brutal double-overtime loss at Phoenix Friday, the Grizzlies got their revenge tonight and, along the way, settled into something close to what might be a regular rotation for the near future.
- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- The Griz were greeted to vintage Z-Bo tonight.
The Grizzlies built a modest lead in the second quarter on the strength of Zach Randolph’s energized play and then pushed the lead up to 18 early in the fourth quarter after Randolph came out of a scrum with the ball and laid it in. The team seemed to have control of the game at that point, but, fittingly given the lessons of last weekend, the Suns didn’t go down easy, going on a 7-0 run out of a timeout and eventually cutting the Grizzlies lead to 7 at the five minute mark before Rudy Gay and Mike Conley ended the Suns run with back-to-back three-pointers from opposite corners.
After leaning heavily on the starters on the recent road trip, the minutes were more reasonable tonight. Randolph played a higher-than-typical 41, but after that it was Gay at 38, Conley at 36, O.J. Mayo at 31, and Marc Gasol at 28. Off the bench, three players got regular rotation minutes: Xavier Henry (25), Darrell Arthur (20), and Acie Law (12). Sam Young got nine spot minutes, and that was it.
In the post-game, coach Lionel Hollins suggested that this would be his normal rotation in the next few games with one exception: Hasheem Thabeet would join the mix. Hollins cited the Suns small-ball lineups as the reason for Thabeet’s DNP tonight. Hollins suggested that other players had had a chance to earn minutes and hadn’t done so, and were taking a backseat for now. Hollins said he hoped to settle on something of a set rotation by the 20-game mark.
Two conclusions to draw from this: Tony Allen is in the doghouse and Acie Law has been given a bit of leash. It had been reported that the coaching staff thought Allen had been forcing the issue too much offensively and wasn’t settling into his role as a defensive specialist. I heard tonight that there was some concern on the road trip about Allen missing defensive assignments. It’s still early in the season, but the team needs to try to find a useful role for Allen, who has proven he’s capable of filling one and whom the team has invested three years of significant (for the Grizzlies) salary for a bench player. Allen isn’t eligible to be traded until December 15th, so for now the focus should be on trying to make it work.
