With my typical Tuesday morning print deadlines, I wasn’t able to do a postgame notebook for Monday night’s 89-84 loss to the San Antonio Spurs. So I’m pulling together a gaggle of quickish thoughts today looking back at that game, ahead to tonight’s game with the Minnesota Timberwolves, at some more general issues with the team.
It’s Not April Anymore: After going 7-6 in 13 playoff games against the Spurs and Thunder this spring, the Grizzlies are now 0-6 against them this season. At least there’s only one regular-season game to go — in April in San Antonio — against these teams. Monday night, the Spurs were without Manu Ginobili and the Grizzlies had Rudy Gay (more on that in a minute), but the Grizzlies team that took the floor Monday night was absent six players (Zach Randolph, Darrell Arthur, Tony Allen, Greivis Vasquez, Shane Battier, and Sam Young with a DNP) who played significant roles in the playoff series win over San Antonio.
Fatigue and Bench Exposure: The loss to San Antonio underscored problems the Grizzlies have with their rotation in terms of starter workload and a lack of reliable bench production. Spurs stars Tim Duncan and Tony Parker played 32 and 37 minutes, respectively. By contrast, the Grizzlies’ primary starters — Gay (45), Marc Gasol (42), and Mike Conley (41) — were all over 40 minutes. Was fatigue a factor in a fourth quarter in which the Spurs outscored the 22-11, erasing a lead the Grizzlies had built with a spirited third quarter? Impossible to say for sure, but the Parker and Duncan sure looked fresher than Gasol and Gay in particular at the end of the game. And, for the first time, Lionel Hollins acknowledged that he needs to put more emphasis on managing minutes.
The reason Gasol, Gay, and Conley play such heavy minutes, of course, is that injuries have sapped this team’s depth and Hollins hasn’t trusted his bench with significant playing time. The causal question: Does Hollins not trust the bench because they haven’t played well or have they not played well because of too short a leash? My instinct is that it’s a big of both. Look at the Spurs, getting big contributions from such obscure-to-most role players as Tiago Splitter, Kawhi Leonard, Matt Bonner, and Gary Neal. The Spurs not only find players at the team-building margins. They clearly do a great job of developing those players and finding roles for them.
