Larry Kuzniewski
In Game 1, Beno Udrih lit the Blazers on fire even though it wasn’t 4/20 yet.
The playoffs are all about adjustments and matchups. What makes these series so fascinating is how strategies change from game to game, how performances ebb and flow over the course of a seven-game series, how the two teams attack and counterattack and counter-counterattack.
With that in mind, and also bearing in mind that Portland’s whole goal from the end of the regular season was to get a split in the first two games in Memphis—something they can still very much accomplish with a win tonight—here are five questions, the answer to which will determine whether the Grizzlies head to Portland with a 2-0 series lead or the Trail Blazers steal home court advantage headed back to a raucous Rip City arena.
➭ Who gets hot: the Griz from midrange or the Blazers from 3? Injuries have taken away some of Portland’s firepower from long range, with Wes Matthews and Arron Afflalo both missing game 1. Matthews is out for the year, but Afflalo was upgraded to “questionable” for Game 2, so he may give it a go. The Blazers’ defense is designed to prevent teams from getting easy baskets at the rim and also from getting open 3-pointers.
The problem for them in this series is that Memphis is actually a terrible team from beyond the arc and a decent-to-good team from midrange, with Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, (obviously) Beno Udrih, and ol’ jab-step Zach Randolph all able to hit shots from 8-18 feet with pretty good percentages. The midrange game is decried by stats-oriented fans as inefficient and outdated, but it’s only inefficient if you don’t have guys who shoot really well from those spots, and so Portland’s scheme, especially in Game 1, actually allowed the Grizzlies to shoot the few kinds of shots they hit with any regularity.
Meanwhile, Portland can still get going from outside. Noted Spain-hater Nic Batum is a scoring threat if he gets going, and CJ McCollum, stepping in for the injured Afflalo, can hit shots, if not consistently. If Afflalo is actually healthy enough to return and knock down outside shots, the Grizzlies will have more of a game on their hands than they did in Game 1. Whichever team gets hotter will have an edge in this second game in the series.
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Larry Kuzniewski
Damian Lillard had a terrible Game 1. Will be be that bad again in Game 2?
➭ Will Damian Lillard show up on both ends? Portland fans in Blazer’s Edge comments took calling him Amian Lillar (get it? No D?) after Game 1, and he earned that criticism. Lillard shot 5-21 from the floor, forcing things in an attempt to carry his team, and he was downright terrible on defense, running into screens and getting confused and/or quitting on the play with alarming regularity. Mike Conley owned him on both ends of the floor.
It’s unlikely that a player of Lillard’s caliber will have two straight nights that go that poorly for him. Lillard has a well-earned reputation for being a guy who loves big moments and big shots, and one would imagine that he’ll step up for Game 2 and improve. That said, the Grizzlies’ defense game him all kinds of problems in Game 1 when he wasn’t busy creating problems for himself, and I don’t expect that to change in Game 2. If Lillard can show up and have a big game, Portland has a better chance at stealing a win. If not, or if Lillard has a big game but Conley has a bigger one, the Grizzlies will have an easier go of it.
Larry Kuzniewski
The Aldridge/Randolph matchup is a key to the whole series for the Grizzlies.
➭ Will Zach Randolph fight LaMarcus Aldridge to a draw again? Much has been made so far in the media coverage of this series—especially from the Portland side—about the relationship between Z-Bo and LaMarcus Aldridge, who was a rookie Randolph’s last year in Portland. These are two guys who have spent a lot of time battling each other, both in practice and in games, and who know and love playing against each other.
Both of them are great power forwards. The problem for Portland is that they need Aldridge’s scoring to carry them in this series since they’re so banged up, and Zach Randolph knows how to both score on Aldridge and defend him well at the other end. In game one, Aldridge was 13-34 from the floor and Randolph was 6-19. Neither of them was efficient, but neither of them allowed the other one to carry his team. If Randolph and Aldridge can beat the daylights out of each other again, that works in the Grizzlies favor. Randolph lives for these kinds of physical dogfights against players he likes. (And also Blake Griffin players he doesn’t like.) He was ready for Game 1, and he’ll be ready for Game 2, and he’d probably be ready for Game 19 if they were going to play that one, too. That physicality and defense from Randolph was key on Sunday night and will continue to be tonight.
➭ Which Grizzly outside the Big 3 will be the one to go off? In Game 1, it was Beno “Supreme Midrange Leaner Overlord” Udrih who torched the Blazers for 20 points. Udrih has played well against Portland all year long, and has generally been brilliant in the playoffs for Memphis so far in his tenure here, being unleashed as a bench scorer. I expect him to get his, though Portland will be ready for him tonight, and it might be harder for him to get his 20-piece.
Larry Kuzniewski
Jeff Green struggled to score in Game 1. Will that happen again in Game 2?
That said, it seems like there’s always somebody outside of the Conley/Randolph/Gasol troika who has a big game when the Grizzlies win (except when Gasol scores more than 30 points, at which point everyone else on the court becomes kind of moot). Jeff Green had a pretty poor offensive game in Game 1 (though he played pretty well on defense, as strange as that is to write, except when he found himself matched up against LaMarcus Aldridge, which should never, ever, ever happen again), so maybe he’ll be the one. Maybe Vince Carter will finally find his stroke and hit some 3’s. Koufos and Calathes are both guys who can score 10 points without anyone realizing they’ve done it. Maybe Jordan Adams will score 50 points and immediately have his jersey retired. It could be anyone, but the Grizzlies will need a big game from somebody other than their main three guys to get it done tonight. Generally, when they’ve needed those kinds of performances this season, they’ve gotten them.
➭ How much will Meyers Leonard matter? I hear some of you laughing about this one, but it’s a serious question. The one thing the Grizzlies’ defense struggles with (besides keeping teams from finding open 3-point shooters on the weak side) is bigs who can pull Randolph and/or Gasol out of the paint to the three point line. Leonard barely played in Game 1, and when he did, he was a non-factor at best (including getting totally turned around on a sick Gasol pivot move that was also actually a travel), but he still has the potential to hit an outside shot or two and force the defense to pay attention to him.
If that happens, Leonard is a matchup problem for the Grizzlies’ starting lineup. It doesn’t work well if Randolph is bodying up Aldridge and Gasol has to go all the way out to the 3-point line to check Leonard—the Griz defense works much better if Gasol is close to the basket to catch anything that comes at him. If Leonard can step up for Portland, the Grizzlies will absolutely have to make adjustments for it, and stretch bigs have given them problems all year long.
Of course, Leonard is a pretty inconsistent player, so it’s totally possible he doesn’t factor at all. That would be the best-case scenario for the Grizzlies, and it’s exactly what happened in Game 1.
The win tonight is extremely important for the Grizzlies. It’s not that I don’t think they can win a playoff game in Portland—I believe that they can and probably will—but Game 1 was bad for the Blazers’ confidence, and a win tonight would put them right back in “we believe we can win” territory. The saying is that “It’s not a series until someone wins a road game.” If that’s really true, the Griz would do well to keep this from becoming a series, and if these five questions get the answers the Griz are looking for, they can do just that.
