Larry Kuzniewski
Last night needed more of this.
The Grizzlies can’t stop beating Western Conference playoff teams who seem to be sleepwalking through the last couple weeks of the regular season. First it was Minnesota on Monday night, their first road win of the calendar year 2018. They continued the trend—creating an honest-to-God winning streak, something they haven’t seen in weeks—on Wednesday at home against a Portland team missing Damian Lillard.
It’s just like the Denver game from earlier in the month: team somewhere in the bottom half of the West playoffs bracket (this is before the Nuggets found themselves in 10th place) comes up against a Grizzlies team that, while bad, plays hard, and manages to play with so little intensity of execution that the Grizzlies, with whichever good player happens to show up on that given night, sneak up on them and steal a win out of the jaws of their sojourn in the wilderness.
Look, last night was a fun, exciting basketball game, but we’re way too late in the season for this to start being fun. Up until Monday, the Griz were neck-and-neck with the Suns for the league’s worst record, but now, two wins later, they’re tied for third-worst with Atlanta, and barely hanging on to an edge over Orlando and Sacramento. The Grizzlies were absolute garbage for so long they were practically guaranteed a top-3 pick, but if they keep on winning, it’s entirely possible that they’ll have spent an entire season in the depths of misery only to fail to reap the (Ayton/Bagley/Doncic-sized) reward.
But, fear not. There’s a solution to this mess, he’s already under contract (no, not MarShon Brooks, who came in on a 10-day straight from China and scored 21 off the bench, including 14 in the 4th quarter alone), and he’s guaranteed to be making $10M of the Grizzlies’ money through the end of next year: play Ben McLemore 40 minutes in every remaining game.
This is not the McLemore the Grizzlies need in order to lose their remaining games. It is, however, a Memphis classic, in the same way a top 3 Grizzlies pick would be.
I can’t believe I’m actually putting forth a solution like this; one doesn’t normally choose to subject oneself to the basketball equivalent of waterboarding (apologies to the 2012 Bobcats, whom I may have also called “basketball waterboarding”), but McLemore has been uniquely well-suited to torpedoing any chance the Grizzlies have at winning this year.
I bring this solution up—really, the solution the Griz have deployed all season long when trying to lose on purpose—because McLemore didn’t play at all against Portland and only played 8 minutes against the Wolves. He’s so bad, so bad, that he’s got to be on the court for the rest of the season.
A top-3 pick, which, let’s be honest, is the only acceptable outcome of a season this craptacular if you’re a Grizzlies fan, is well within the Grizzlies’ reach, even now, after these wins. But they can’t win again. The stakes are too high. To avert their eyes from the utter darkness of the Tank at the last second would be to undo the one thing bringing hope to so many the whole time they’re been going on multiple double-digit losing streaks: the chance that the Grizzlies might actually get the #1 pick in the NBA Draft. The later the pick, the bigger the chance that the Grizzlies will pick badly. This is what they’ve been losing for all season long. The young kids are good, or at least better than they have any right to be—this much we know.
Now keep losing. Time is tight.
Tweet of the Night
Grizzlies are out here erasing fourth-quarter deficits with a Kobi Simmons/MarShon Brooks backcourt. These West playoff teams are not taking the race seriously enough.
— Chris Herrington (@HerringtonNBA) March 29, 2018
Grizzlies 108, Trail Blazers 103: They Won Again
Up Next
Road games in Utah, Portland, and New Orleans, and then the last two home games of the season on Friday and Sunday against Sacramento (a must-lose if I ever saw one) and the Pistons.
They need to lose out. Whether that’s actually what happens, we will see. I’ve got an interesting guest post lined up that will tackle what the Grizzlies should do with whichever pick they actually end up with (feels destined to be, like, fifth, doesn’t it?) so stay tuned.
