Larry Kuzniewski
The Goon Squad was fun, but in the wake of another flood of injuries it has transformed into something else entirely: The Suicide Squad. I’ll let the Wikipedia entry for the comic book series do the talking:
The modern Suicide Squad is an antihero “strike team” of incarcerated, death row supervillains. Acting as deniable, covert assets of the United States government, it undertakes high-risk, black-ops missions in exchange for commuted prison sentences.
Larry Kuzniewski
Vince Carter left the game with an injury and didn’t return.
The Goon Squad was a result of adding PJ Hairston, Lance Stephenson, and Chris Andersen (and removing Jeff Green and Courtney Lee) from a team that already featured Tony Allen, Zach Randolph, Matt Barnes, and Mario Chalmers. When you take away Randolph, take away Mike Conley and Marc Gasol, take away Brandan Wright, and take away Chalmers (and replace him with Briante Weber, from the D-League, thrown into a 40-minute starting appearance on the first game of his 10-day contract), and “strike team of death row supervillains” starts to fit like a glove.
About that “death row” thing. Tonight, on paper, wasn’t supposed to be fun. The Pelicans aren’t great, and they’re one of the only other teams with as many injuries as the Grizzlies have, but they’ve given the Griz fits for years—Anthony Davis just causes problems for the way the Grizzlies play basketball. But tonight, without any of the usual players for whom the Pelicans are a problem, the eight Grizzlies who played all night went out, played hard, and got it done.
Vince Carter left before halftime and didn’t come back. He’s got a leg injury. The Grizzlies are dropping like flies, and now they’re 2-1 in this stretch of games with fewer than 10 active players, and both wins have been gutty, all-effort, exhausting affairs, and the loss came at Boston after watching Chalmers go down for the season, and then having to defend (“defend” to the extent possible, anyway) Isaiah Thomas without any more point guards on the team.
Larry Kuzniewski
Briante Weber started and played almost 40 minutes in his NBA debut.
Weber was good tonight. He was nervous at first, and not sure what to do with the real size and speed of the NBA—Anthony Davis was able to jump some of his passes early on. But he adjusted, and adapted, and never played scared—in the postgame presser Dave Joerger pointed out that the few times he got forced into over-dribbling, he was mostly erring on the side of not making a mistake and turning the ball over. In 39 minutes, he finished with 10 points on 4 of 6 shooting, 5 rebounds, 7 assists, a steal, a block, and only two turnovers. Not bad. My suspicion is that Weber will at least get a second 10-day; We still don’t know if/when Conley is returning, and Tony Allen, Matt Barnes, and Lance Stephenson can’t play point guard by committee for every game that’s left.
Larry Kuzniewski
Lance Stephenson set a new career scoring mark wtih 33 points.
JaMychal Green had another career scoring high tonight (20 points) and played excellently. Jarell Martin played well, too, and made a really athletic play to block an inbounds pass and save the game for the Grizzlies at the end of regulation. Tony Allen was (predictably) good on defense and showed up in some key spots on offense. Matt Barnes didn’t have a great shooting night overall, but finished 4 of 8 from 3-point range, and his calming influence on the rest of the team down the stretch was a definite factor in the Grizzlies’ ability to hang on in regulation. (Wonder how many times Matt Barnes has been called a “calming influence”?)
We know what we’re going to get from this group from here on out: effort. Confusion about the plays, weird turnovers, and missed layups, sure, but effort. Whether that’s enough to carry them to maintain their current seed, and carry them into the first round of the playoffs without getting blown out and swept, we’ll see, but for you, it’s hard not to root for a team missing 4 of its 5 best players, and who knows how many of its best 10. (Although certainly JaMychal Green is climbing those rankings, and rookie Martin is starting to look like he’s worth the draft pick he was or wasn’t promised depending on who you ask.)
That’s what was so exciting on Friday night: a team of guys with no real reason to expect to win a basketball game doing everything they could to do just that. Whether they have anything left in the tank Saturday night at Atlanta (hint: probably not unless they’re all already asleep on the team plane as I write this, resting up) is almost immaterial at this point.
