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Grizzlies 95, Pacers 83: Clarity and Home Court.

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies’ success last night was on the backs of these two.

Last night, the Grizzlies defeated the Indiana Pacers 95-83 in the final game of the regular season, and they finally gained some clarity regarding who their opponent will be in the first round of the playoffs. At the beginning of the game, the Grizzlies had four possible matchups—the Clippers, Trail Blazers, Rockets, and Spurs—but as the night wore on, one by one, other games eliminated those possiblities until finally, as the Griz sealed their win down the stretch, they were locked in to a 4/5 series against Portland in which the Griz are the 5 seed but have home court advantage.

The game itself, played (yet again) without Mike Conley and Tony Allen, and surrounded by questions of how healthy Marc Gasol’s ankle was, played out in November Grizzlies fashion: Gasol, who set a new career high of 32 points in the season opener at home, topped his own mark and scored 33 in the final home game. Along with a brilliant performance from Gasol, a few other Grizzlies stepped up, and while the game wasn’t quite the kind of total domination we saw from this team back in November, it was a close enough approximation to put Griz fans a little more at ease as their banged-up home team now readies itself to face a equally banged-up (if not more so) Portland team starting Sunday night.

The Pacers, for their part, were just not able to pull off the win they needed to grab the 8 seed from Brooklyn and complete their unlikely run for the playoffs on the heels of Paul George’s lost season. George actually left the game late with a left calf injury; he reportedly told the Pacers bench he “heard a pop” and he was carried off the floor by his teammates to applause from a sympathetic FedExForum crowd. George is a great player, and though he’s got his work cut out for him this summer, I have no doubt that he’ll be back, and with him, the Pacers’ current run of success as one of the East’s toughest teams.

Game Notes

Larry Kuzniewski

➭ Marc Gasol looked unstoppable last night, pulling out the stops and putting to bed most of the concerns about whether his ankle had healed. Gasol scored 33 points on 13-of-19 shooting, along with 13 rebounds, 2 steals, and a block, and was positively dominant on both ends of the floor. This is the version of Gasol for whom the Grizzlies have been waiting patiently (well, somtimes patiently) since the All-Star Break. The Pacers’ frontcourt was unable to do a thing to slow him down, and when they did, he just kicked the ball to Zach Randolph, who racked up 18 and 9 essentially by trying to run directly through whichever Pacer was in front of him, be it David West, Ian Mahinmi, Luis Scola, or some other unfortunate large man in a navy uniform.

When Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol combine for 51 points on 20-31 from the floor and 22 rebounds, the Grizzlies are very, very hard to beat. Gasol’s play last night was a revelation, proof that maybe those November and December nights weren’t some kind of fever dream we all had together, that maybe he really can play like this whenever he wants to and/or feels like he absolutely has to. Given the uncertainty surrounding the status of Tony Allen and Mike Conley, the Grizzlies really need this Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph to show up on Sunday night to kick off the first round.

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➭ After spending most of the season with the Iowa Energy and spending whatever time he had with the Grizzlies riding the bench and watching, Jordan Adams looks ready to play. Last night, Adams played 23 minutes and had 6 points on 3-7 shooting (clearly not ideal) but he also had 5 rebounds and a steal, and more importantly, he looked like a real-live NBA shooting guard, something that’s been hard to come by for the Grizzlies lately with Courtney Lee just now beginning to return from an extended (and very injury-related) slump.

Larry Kuzniewski

Jordan Adams had a great night last night, showing promise in extended minutes.

It’s no secret that I’ve been on the Jordan Adams bandwagon since draft night, when I started looking at the projected VORP stats for the whole draft class and realized that Adams was #3 on the list. He’s still a ways away from being a reliable NBA starter, and he even still has work to do before he can establish himself in the rotation, but what we saw from Adams last night was a revelation. He’s just smart at basketball. For the most part, he knows where to be, knows which passes to jump for a steal, knows when to shoot and when to lower his head and run into a crowd of people.

He also did this:


And inspired this postgame comment from Dave Joerger:

All in all, I’m not sure any of it means he’ll see a single meaningful minute in a playoff series. Joerger is on record as being averse to playing rookies in the regular season, so it’s hard for me to imagine he’d throw Adams into the mix too often against Portland, a team with a great deal of offensive firepower to take vicious advantage of Adams’ still imperfect defensive rotations.

Although:

Larry Kuzniewski

Vince Carter’s struggles are hard to continue to talk about optimistically.

➭ I hope that I have to write a future piece retracting this statement, but Vince Carter looks cooked. All season long, we’ve cast Carter’s struggles in an optimistic light, saying “As long as he’s ready to go by the time the playoffs come around…” and, as much as I hate to say it, the playoffs are here and the only things Carter looks ready to do are (1) shoot the ball in ill-advised situations and (2) make neat assists because he’s still Vince Carter and still has really good court awareness.

And though that latter one is a good thing to have, the former is problematic. When Carter was signed, the thinking was that he was the best offensive wing on the team, and he’d be the answer—or at least part of an answer—to the Grizzlies’ longstanding wing production and 3-point shooting issues.

That hasn’t been the case, outside of three or four games where he’s played well, and none of those games have been in the last two weeks. Carter just looks like a guy who doesn’t have it. I’m not sure whether he needs another summer and training camp where he can actually run (Carter had ankle surgery during the summer before this season) or whether he needs to call it a day, honestly.

I do think that, much like Tayshaun Prince, who looked similarly overripe last season due to his multitude of lingering injuries, Carter could possibly benefit from conditioning and a real summer to work out and not be hurt. But none of that matters with the playoffs starting on Sunday. Last night’s 0-6 in 19 minutes did not fill this writer with hope for a future of 3’s and the occasional dunk. The Grizzlies need the Vince Carter of last year’s Spurs/Mavericks series, and instead they’ve got the Carter of the statue of Carter they’ll probably put in Toronto someday.

Larry Kuzniewski

Gasol set a career high of 32 points in the season opener and then broke that last night with 33.

About That First Round

A real preview that I’ve actually had time to research and think about will appear in these pages tomorrow or Saturday, but for now: the 5th-seeded Grizzlies are playing the 4th-seeded Portland Trail Blazers in the first round, and the Grizzlies have home court advantage.

Once the Pelicans beat the Spurs last night, there was some question about whether the Grizzlies should try to win the game and have homecourt in the first round or lose the game, play the Clippers on the road in the first round, and quarantine the Spurs on the same side of the West bracket as the Golden State Warriors. I think going for the win was ultimately the right move, given the Grizzlies’ injuries. Now they’re here, instead of traveling, and that just means that much more rest for Mike Conley and Tony Allen (and Jeff Green, who is still playing through back spasms, and Marc Gasol, who did tweak his ankle recently despite his crazy performance last night).

Besides, the Blazers are probably the better matchup for the Grizzlies, even given their historic success against the Clippers. For one thing, they’re the only other West playoff team that’s as injury-hampered as the Grizzlies are, with Wes Matthews out for the season and Batum and Afflalo missing time recently.

Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies swept the regular season series against Portland, mostly because they were able to defend Portland’s dangerous offense well enough to keep them from running so far ahead that the Grizzlies couldn’t score enough to keep up. I do not expect this playoff series to be a sweep, though. Portland is a tough team, they’ve been to the playoffs before, and their home crowd is pretty universally regarded as one of the best in the league.

A Blazers/Grizzlies playoff series is actually probably the best possible series for pitting famously insane arenas against each other. Portland has always had some of the best crowds in the league, even when they’re bad, and the Grizzlies have established the Grindhouse as a place where You Do Not Want To Play in the last five years of playoff runs. Different vibes, of course—”Whoop That Trick” is a little too politically incorrect to go over well in Portland, for one—but it will still be great. Every game will be loud.

The other aspect of this series that’s intriguing from a “narrative” aspect is the fact that Zach Randolph will be playing against Portland in the playoffs for the first time in his career. Randolph loves showing up big against the team that drafted him, and is still very vocal about how much he likes Portland and Portland fans, so it should be interesting to see the series play out, especially since the Blazers are still paying Randolph per the deferred compensation terms of the contract he signed with them in 2004.

From a basketball standpoint, this will be a series that pits offense vs. defense, for the most part. The post battles between the Grizzlies’ Gasol/Randolph tandem and Portland’s LaMarcus Aldridge (and Chris Kaman I guess? Meyers Leonard?) will be epic. Tony Allen, assuming he’s healthy enough to play, will have to do Tony Allen things to Afflalo and Batum and Lillard and whoever else he guards. Mike Conley/Damian Lillard would be a really interesting playoff point guard duel if Conley were healthy, but it promises to still be fun to watch either way.

All in all, I’m just glad I don’t have to watch yet another Grizzlies series against the Clippers, Spurs, or Thunder. It’s been a long time coming.

Tweet(s) of the Night

Several tweets from last night made me laugh out loud in my seat.

Up Next

Larry Kuzniewski

What happens next? I try to steel myself for another year of NBA Playoffs coverage. You can expect to see a little bit more in-depth preview of the upcoming series here, along with a column in next week’s print Flyer, and all the usual game coverage activities.

If you’re interested in the Blazers’ side of the story, Blazer’s Edge is basically the best “fan blog” on the whole entire Internet for real, actual basketball writing, and without even looking at what they’ve posted so far I can assure you they’ve got great playoff preview stuff up already, albeit from a Portland angle.

This is a momentous season, an important one in the future of the franchise. What happens here will determine all kinds of things that will greatly affect what our Beale Street Bears look like going forward and what they can achieve—not least of which Marc Gasol’s impending free agency.

Grab this series, these moments, these crowds that we’ll be a part of together, and drink them in. It’s playoff time in Memphis, Tennessee, and we’re all running a little ragged on what this team has been up to the last two months. Go outside this weekend. Go stare at the river for a while. Remember how high it was when the Grizzlies knocked off the Spurs in 2011. Get ready for Sunday night, when the second season starts and the whole town loses its mind for a few weeks in the best and brightest and most Memphis way possible.