- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Rudy Gay’s double-clutch reverse jam opened up a lead the Grizzlies would never quite relinquish.
The Lead: The Grizzlies continued to thread the needle between rest and winning, playing down to the competition and winning a tighter-than-necessary contest against a team out of the playoff hunt for the fourth game in a row.
Playing without Zach Randolph, who was rested on this second night of a back-to-back, the Grizzlies’ traded baskets with an even more under-manned Blazers team (playing without season-long starters LaMarcus Aldridge, Nicholas Batum, and Raymond Felton) in the first quarter, then finally built a double-digit lead near the end of the first half.
The lead swelled to 15 midway through the third, but the Grizzlies bench couldn’t put the Blazers away. When a J.J. Hickson layup brought the Blazers to within six points midway through the fourth, coach Lionel Hollins was forced to bring four of his starters — Rudy Gay, Marc Gasol, Mike Conley, and Tony Allen — back into the game.
Even that didn’t end the too-listless play. Holding a seven-point lead with under three minutes to play, the Grizzlies spent consecutive possessions funneling shots to new signee Lester Hudson — making his debut at the 4:41 mark of the fourth quarter — instead of running a focused offense. Hudson missed three straight jumpers and the Grizzlies found themselves clinging to a two-point lead with the shot clock off and the Blazers with the ball. This all gave Rudy Gay the chance for a game-saving block when Blazers guard Wesley Johnson rose up for a potential go-ahead three-pointer with five seconds left. But it really didn’t need to be that dramatic.
Everyone I talked to after the game essentially acknowledged the mixed-blessing of the Grizzlies’ “easy” closing schedule. It’s nice to be able to win without playing your best, but it’s harder to get up for these games with the playoffs looming and the odds of seeding mobility getting slimmer.
“We’ve played a lot of really good teams,” Hollins said, referencing the dramatic stretch that preceded this whimper of a closing run. “We’ve played Oklahoma City. We’ve played Dallas twice. We went to Miami and we played the Clippers at home. Those are the kinds of games that these guys get up for. Then, after we had that stretch, all of a sudden we get a stretch of teams that aren’t in the playoffs. I can’t say we struggled. But we haven’t been as focused to go out and dominate them. But we won the game, and that’s also important.”
