Larry Kuzniewski
Mike Conley continues to struggle.
The Grizzlies finally lost a home game on Monday night, falling 104–99 to the Charlotte Hornets after leading by as many as 13. A lot of things combined to take down the home team on Monday night but the biggest story is that the struggles of Mike Conley and Marc Gasol finally caught up with them. Conley and Gasol shot a combined 8 of 33 (that’s 24.2% for those of you keeping score at home) and the rest of the offense went cold as they tried to chuck any and every three point opportunity that came their way so the Grizzlies could keep up. That’s never really worked for this Memphis team, and it’s not about to start working now.
Here are five takeaways from last night:
★ The Grizzlies can’t pretend they’re a 3-point shooting team. Totally restored vintage Chandler Parsons or no, the Grizzlies have yet to win a game when they’re shooting threes at the expense of initiating any other offense. Last night, the shots weren’t falling, and in the third and fourth quarters, the Grizzlies refused to compensate by taking the ball to the rim. A good deal of credit for this, obviously, goes to Charlotte’s defense—but certainly not all of it. The offense stagnated when it started trying to shoot over the Hornets’ defense instead of working through it. The Grizzlies took thirty five threes last night and only made 8 of them. That’s never going to be a winning formula, especially if they’re all coming in half court sets instead of in quick offense generated off of defensive stops.
Larry Kuzniewski
★ The starters are bad. Period. The bench has bailed out the team in every win so far, and with Conley and Gasol both struggling now in addition to Andrew Harrison and Jarell Martin (maybe “because of” rather than “in addition to” but I haven’t rewatched enough game tape yet to say that), there’s no relief in sight unless (1) Selden or McLemore and JaMychal Green return to the starting lineup or (2) Gasol and Conley miraculously pull themselves out of the slump they’re in. Given that Selden’s injury was supposed to be a short thing—Fizdale even said at one point during the preseason that they were targeting an opening night return—I’m not sure what his timetable is anymore. But the sooner the starting lineup can be filled with slightly less marginal NBA players, the better.
★ Dillon Brooks finally looked like a rookie. He hesitated to take shots last night, defended well but also got burned a few times, didn’t shoot well even when he got good looks. The whole rest of the team looked like that too, but last night was the first time I’ve seen Brooks look so tentative, like he’s still so young and pure of heart that he was shocked when Gasol kept feeding him the ball instead of trying to drive. Those of us who have watched this team a long time know better. Speaking of which:
★ The offense got some great looks for the wrong guys. Ball movement is meaningless of Jarell Martin is the guy you’re hoping will hit a bunch of crunch time 3’s, or that Dillon Brooks will somehow save you. The Grizzlies, and Gasol especially, were overpassing down the stretch of the fourth quarter, kicking out to guys who were open for a reason. I’d be more upset about it if Gasol hadn’t been doing that since about 2009. (Remember all those times he fired a beautiful skip pass to a wide-open Tony Allen instead of taking it to the rim?)
★ Charlotte is good. This was not a loss to a bad team. The Hornets are #7 in the East, but I think they’ll rise in the standings as the season grinds on. The Grizzlies are somehow still in first place, having only lost one conference/division game and only two games overall.
Larry Kuzniewski
Tweet of the Night
From happier times in the first half when it looked like the Grizzlies were rolling, fueled by another big scoring night for the bench:
That delicious smokey applewood aroma wafting through FedEx Forum is Tyreke cooking Dwayne Bacon in his sneakers over and over and over and
— Matt Hrdlicka (@theRealHrdlicka) October 31, 2017
Hornets 104, Grizzlies 99: Five Thoughts
Up Next
The Grizzlies, #1 in the West, take on the Orlando Magic, #1 in the East before the Celtics finally pushed them down to #2 yesterday. No one expected either of these teams to be anywhere near as good as they’ve been to open the season, so this should be an interesting test game to see how good they really are.
Historically, this is a game that the Grizzlies would not get up for, so it’ll be interesting to see what kinds of effect that has on the starting five. But Orlando, like the Grizzlies, does not look to be a bad team that’s randomly hot; they look like they’re legitimately better than people expected. Should be a good one.
Also, when these two teams played in preseason, Jarell Martin did this to Bismack Biyombo, so Orlando has to play with four players. I think that’s how that works.
