The Grizzlies return to the court at 8:30 tonight at FedExForum in a spot they were able to avoid last spring: Down 0-1 and fighting, early on, to keep hope alive.
Can they recover from a historic collapse and a game that functioned like one the greatest cases of unintentional rope-a-dope ever seen? The mood at practice the past two days has seemed relaxed but determined. If anything, I’d worry about a hangover for the too-quiet, nail-biting fourth-quarter crowd than from the players themselves.
I had a chance to re-watch Game 1 last night for the first time, and it looked a little different than in the blur of the moment.
With that in mind, here are 10 takes on the state of the series heading into Game 2:
1. Offsetting Improbabilities and the Sensible Center: The fourth quarter of Game 1 was like a rock slide: In the four minutes that the Clippers cut a 24-point Grizzlies lead down to 12, it was like a few small chunks of stone were falling down the hill. Something to take note of but not be too concerned about. When that lead held for the next two-and-a-half-minutes — a 12-point lead with less than three minutes on the clock? — the quiet felt like everything had stabilized. And then Nick Young hit three three-pointers in the span of exactly 60 seconds and the whole mountain came tumbling down.
To lose a 24-point lead in eight minutes and then a 12-point lead in under three takes everything going wrong. We won’t see anything quite like that again. But some of what built that lead was pretty improbable too: Chris Paul and Blake Griffin combining for more personal fouls (4) than points (3) in the first quarter. Grizzlies perimeter players connecting on 10 of their first 12 three-point attempts.
It felt like the Grizzlies dominated the game until those last eight minutes, but they only really dominated the first quarter. The Grizzlies’ 34-16 explosion in the first was balanced by the Clippers’ 35-13 explosion in the fourth. Those quiet, comparatively forgettable middle quarters — in which the Grizzlies outscored the Clippers 51-48 — are probably more indicative of what to expect going forward.
