Larry Kuzniewski
Marc Gasol still wasn’t fully engaged, but he did look better than he has.
A Loss to the Spurs
It was a loss, and it was a loss that saw the Grizzlies lose their lead over the Southwest division and fall from the 2nd seed to 3rd behind the Houston Rockets, so it’s hard to reconcile why Sunday night’s 103-89 road loss to the San Antonio Spurs felt like it was more silver lining than cloud itself. (Insert “Touch of Grey” joke here.)
The Grizzlies lost to the Spurs, sure, but they did it while playing more or less like the Grizzlies. They weren’t close to being the early season Griz, to be sure, but they showed signs of life that had been severely lacking in the last two outings against the Cavaliers and Warriors. They played with more aggression even though the shots weren’t falling (especially for Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, and Courtney Lee—stop me if you’ve heard that one before). The defense was good for stretches, even with Tony Allen out with the hamstring injury he suffered towards the end of the Golden State game. They looked halfway decent again… but the outcome was ultimately the same, record-wise and standings-wise.
The Spurs kept running out to double-digit leads—13 points at one point during the third quarter—and the Grizzlies kept reeling them back in. All night long, until the Griz finally won the third quarter and cut the San Antonio lead to 4. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, Joerger outsmarted himself a little bit and played a three point guard “super smallball” lineup of Beno Udrih, Mike Conley, Nick Calathes, Vince Carter, and Jeff Green.
[jump]
Larry Kuzniewski
Tony Allen’s one-on-one defense was the only thing that could’ve stopped Kawhi Leonard, but Allen was out with an injury.
Maybe if Tony Allen had been in the game to deny Kawhi Leonard the ball, it would’ve worked—Allen is the only guy on the roster who could’ve hoped to do that kind of a defensive job one-on-one on Leonard—but he wasn’t, and Leonard promptly scored 15 straight points for the Spurs and the Griz found themselves sliding back down into a double-digit loss. By the time the starters got back in, it was too late to do anything about it. The Spurs Machine had already ground them up into little pieces as they do so often.
This is the Spurs team that won the title last year, or a close approximation of it. When the Grizzlies beat them (twice) earlier this season, the Griz were in a much better place, and the Spurs in a much worse one. Now those tables have turned, and it’s San Antonio who is back on track and the Grizzlies who just aren’t quite on their level. In a seven-game series, who knows, because the Grizzlies do have the ability to compete with them if they’re playing at their best, but I’d prefer that the Grizzlies do whatever it takes to miss seeing them until the Western Conference Finals.
Perhaps most reassuring for the Griz even in the midst of the third loss in a row was Zach Randolph. He looked like himself. After only managing a combined 15 points and 6 rebounds in the last two games, Randolph came out in something approximating Vintage Z-Bo form and hung 20 points and 13 rebounds on the Spurs, single-handedly carrying the Grizzlies through a rough first quarter in which nobody else made more than 1 shot. He was ready to play last night—something that has been a genuine question as of late—and his body language looked better. When the game was out of hand and Joerger pulled the starters with 40 seconds left, Randolph sat on the bench with a towel on his head, very obviously furious that the Griz couldn’t pull off the win. And that’s, frankly, been missing a little bit lately. After the Cavs and Warriors game, Randolph was mostly catatonic, not sure what to say about it. I wasn’t in San Antonio to hear what he had to say in the locker room, but it was obvious from the broadcast that he was mad. Mad Z-Bo, as we know, is the best, most motivated Z-Bo. Maybe that’s the spark the Grizzlies need right now.
Marc Gasol looked terrible at first and slowly came back alive as the second half wore on, but it was too little too late. At first he was hesitating to shoot, and not making anything when he did. As the game ran its course, Gasol started to get into a little bit of a rhythm—still not making many shots; he was 7-15 from the field for 16, 6 and 6—and playing like he wanted to be on the floor, getting more aggressive than he’s been in a while. But he still just didn’t look right. Early on he was clearly playing distracted and overthinking what he was doing—to the point that I was making Twitter jokes about how he was trying to convince the Spurs they didn’t want to sign him—but as things kept going, he got a little more into it.
I’ve got no idea what’s going on with Gasol, and I don’t think anybody else does either—nobody who’s talking to the media, anyway. But the Grizzlies need him 100% back. I know these games “don’t matter” or whatever, but that’s not even true anymore. With the 2nd seed going to Houston but very much still within the Grizzlies’ grasp, every game does matter again.
Larry Kuzniewski
At this point, Courtney Lee’s floor spacing ability (or lack thereof) is a key indicator of how far the Griz will go in the playoffs.
Big Picture Playoff Implications
And that’s what really matters at this late stage of the regular season: who the Grizzlies are going to play in the first round. In 3rd place, the Grizzlies would play the Spurs in the first round, which is probably a worst case scenario in terms of Grizzlies advancement.
If they can get to the 2nd seed, and win the division from Houston—something very achievable if they can be trusted to actually, you know, win some games they’re supposed to win, which is a thing that hasn’t happened with any consistency for a couple of months now—it means a probably first round matchup with the 7th-seeded Dallas Mavericks, who I don’t think are going to catch the 6th-seeded Spurs or 5th-seeded Clippers.
Barring that, if that for some reason becomes unattainable, the next best option is to rest every single starter for the rest of the season and tank (yes, tank) down to the 5th seed to play Portland. Portland is already locked into the 4th seed as a division winner, but the Griz would have a better record, so even as the 5th seed they’d have home court advantage in a 4/5 series against Portland, which… would be a really exciting playoff series, too.
The problem with being in a 4/5 matchup with Portland—a problem that doesn’t happen if they win their way back to the 2nd seed—is that then in the second round the Grizzlies would have to play the Warriors. I feel better about their chances against the Warriors in the second round than I do about their chances against the Spurs in the first round—they’re too out of sorts for me to feel comfortable with their having to win four games out of seven against the Spurs right out of the gate of the playoffs. In the 2nd spot, they’d play the winner of Rockets/Spurs in the second round, or—if the Spurs keep winning at this rate—the Spurs may win up to the 5 seed and that second round opponent may be the winner of Rockets/Clippers—a very winnable series for the Grizzlies.
That’s the “easiest” path back to the Conference Finals, where the Griz would presumably either face the Spurs or the Warriors, at which point, if they’re playing like they played in December and January and Courtney Lee can space the floor a little bit while Marc Gasol puts up 25-10 stat lines, they could beat either team. Or, if not, they’d lose. But at least they’d be in the Conference Finals when they lose, and not in the first round after an entire season of “this is the year” and “now is the time” and “we’re all in for this season.” A first round exit would lead to some serious Bad Vibes around this organization, and should be avoided at all costs.
Tweet of the Night
No, I actually hadn’t considered this, Greg, but it does explain things:
Did anyone consider that the Griz might have given up playing basketball good for Lent?
— Greg Akers (@GregAkers) March 29, 2015
