- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- The Clippers manhandled Marc Gasol and the Grizzlies.
After Friday’s stirring win over the San Antonio Spurs, I bypassed my typical postgame notebook. The game was just too good for it. Tonight, after this stinker of a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, I’m forgoing it because the game was just too bad.
Well, not really. I’m actually ditching it again because I have multiple print deadlines looming tomorrow and have to keep this quick. But, boy, was this bad.
What happened? Take it away, Marc Gasol:
“Tonight we couldn’t make shots. We couldn’t score. We couldn’t finish around the basket. We couldn’t make plays for each other. And our defense wasn’t very good,” Gasol said after the game.
Okay then.
The 26-point scoring margin is the Grizzlies’ worst defeat of the season and the 30.3% shooting was the worst home performance in franchise history. It marked two terrible games in a row, with Friday’s big home win over the Spurs followed by a miserable loss in Dallas the next night.
Both games had mitigating circumstances, but not enough to forgive efforts this poor: The Dallas game seemed like a classic schedule loss, the second night of a back-to-back on the road after a draining overtime win. This time, the team was playing without leading scorer Rudy Gay, out of town for a family funeral. Gay’s loss, on top of the loss of his own back-up, Quincy Pondexter, had the Grizzlies playing little-used and unconventional lineups all night, and against the league’s deepest team.
A surprise early insertion of second-year guard Josh Selby proved particularly disastrous. Selby entered with under a minute left in the first quarter and the Grizzlies were only down by two. Four minutes later, when Selby went to the bench, a 13-2 Clippers run had pushed the deficit to 13. A mini-run brought the Griz to within 6, but the Clippers hit back and the Grizzlies were down 15 or more from the end of the second quarter on.
