The Lead: Yikes. This was a bad, bad performance from the home team. The Grizzlies came into tonight leading the league in steals at 12.5 per game. More than three minutes into the fourth quarter tonight, they had only one, and finished with four. The Grizzlies were also third in the league in fastbreak points heading into the game at 20.1 per, and finished with only 7 (3/9 conversion rate). To put it more plainly: There was no energy.
The Grizzlies weren’t torched by Mavs star Dirk Nowitzki tonight. Nowitzki suffered a sprained ankle in the first half and limped, literally, to only 12 points on 6-14 shooting. Instead, the two key elements I cited in my game preview went awry. After containing Jason Terry (13 points) in the win at Dallas earlier this season, the Grizzlies let Terry get off tonight, with 25 points (11-16 shooting) and 4 assists off the bench. And after winning the center battle rather decisively in Dallas, it went the other way tonight. Marc Gasol, who is clearly not at 100 percent, struggled, with 10 points (4-9) and 5 rebounds, with Hasheem Thabeet, shockingly, giving the Grizzlies nothing in six minutes off the bench. Meanwhile, the Mavericks big-man duo of Tyson Chandler and Brendan Haywood looked alive tonight, combining for 17 points and 16 rebounds.
The Grizzlies showed a bit of life in the second quarter, bringing the team to within a few points behind a scoring burst from Rudy Gay and Zach Randolph, but otherwise the Mavs controlled this game from buzzer to buzzer. Lionel Hollins spent most of the second half shuffling players in and out of the lineup searching for a spark. He never found it.
