- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Rudy Gay and Corey Brewer battled in the game’s most eventful match-up, but Dante Cunningham dropped the bomb on the Nuggets.
The Lead: The Grizzlies survived perhaps one of the wildest games in franchise history, one where they lead by as much as 23 points and didn’t trail until late in the fourth quarter, when Denver held four different one-point leads. Dante Cunningham’s tip-in with 0.2 seconds on the clock averted disaster and the win — coupled with a Houston Rockets loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves — moved the Grizzlies into 6th place (with help from tiebreakers) in the Western Conference.
It was a game that featured some of the best basketball this team has ever played, and also some of the most frustrating.
“I expected it to be this close,” Lionel Hollins said after the game. “I never expected it to be a runaway. We worked really hard for that win.”
The first nine minutes showcased some of the best offensive execution I’ve ever seen. The Grizzlies scored 30 points on 13 baskets, all either three-pointers (four) or lay-ups/dunks (nine), all but one of the baskets assisted. Marc Gasol scored or assisted on six of the first seven buckets.
“The start was what won the game for us,” Hollins said, at which time the early fireworks seemed to have happened weeks ago. “They were having to play from behind.”
The Grizzlies led by 19 at the end of the first quarter and had pushed the lead to 23 early in the second, and then Corey Brewer happened. The Nuggets forward, starting in place of injured Danilo Gallinari, hit three three-pointers in the span of a minute, a one-man 9-0 run that slashed the Grizzlies lead to 14.
The Grizzlies were able to maintain a double-digit lead for the rest of the third quarter, but in the fourth , the Nuggets steadily worked it down, going on an 18-10 run to take a one-point lead — their first of the game — on a Brewer tip-in at the 4:34 mark.
From there it was an alternately frustrating and exciting finish, featuring seven lead changes (no lead greater than 2 points), three ties, two terrible Grizzlies turnovers, six straight points from Rudy Gay (each score a go-ahead score), and, finally, the ball in the Grizzlies hands, down one, with 24.6 seconds left to play.
