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Beyond the Arc Sports

In-Between Games: Griffin’s Ankle, Z-Bo’s Flashback, and Really Missing Reggie Evans

Zach Randolph vs. Blake Griffin was a match-up advantage for the Grizzlies, even before Griffins recent ankle injury.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Zach Randolph vs. Blake Griffin was a match-up advantage for the Grizzlies, even before Griffin’s recent ankle injury.

The power forward match-up between All-Stars Blake Griffin and Zach Randolph had already shaded into the Grizzlies’ favor ahead of Tuesday night’s Game 5 in Los Angeles, but that game was something of a tipping point.

Griffin, struggling with a high ankle sprain suffered in practice the day before, scored four points on 2-7 shooting in fewer than 20 minutes of play before finally bowing out for good in the third quarter. Randolph, meanwhile, notched a team-high 25 points and 11 rebounds, including scoring 10 points on 5-6 shooting, with an assist, in the fourth quarter.

Randolph has generally played well — and increasingly so — the whole series, despite subpar rebounding in Game 1 and foul trouble in both early Los Angeles games. But his fourth quarter in Game 5 was something a little different. With Marc Gasol on the bench and the Grizzlies searching for offense to keep a Clippers’ comeback attempt at bay, Randolph routinely set up on the right block — but catching and facing pretty far on the right wing — and playing in isolation. He scored three of his five baskets with one-on-one moves from this space — a running hook and then a baseline floater, both over DeAndre Jordan, followed by a stepback jumper over Lamar Odom — and got his assist there too, hitting Tayshaun Prince on a cut down the lane.

It was a flashback to the spring of 2011, when Randolph took over in the fourth quarter of consecutive Game 6s in similar right wing/isolation fashion. Randolph has played well this post-season, but for better or worse, he hadn’t really played like that.

We tend to misremember Randolph’s spring of 2011. The great games — like those dominant sixth games — were so searing that the rough games (especially when Oklahoma City clamped down, leading to Randolph shooting 22-69, or 32%, in Games 2-5) fade away.

Though five games is a terribly small set of information, Randolph’s production, in a lot of ways, has actually been better than in 2011, and certainly more consistent. While Randolph’s rebounding (a little bit up offensively, a little bit down defensively) has mostly held steady, as it pretty much has through the ups and downs of the past two seasons, his scoring has been significantly more efficient, with his 53% true-shooting percentage from the 2011 post-season up to 58% through five games so far this spring.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies-Clippers Series Preview: Ten Takes, Part One

Its that time again ...

Rematch. The Grizzlies and the Clippers open their first-round series Saturday night in Los Angeles, with the Grizzlies looking to avenge last spring’s seven-game loss against a team that seems to have their number. Here’s the first half of a two-part series breakdown. Look for the rest tomorrow morning:

1. The State of the Clippers: For much of this season, the Clippers were right there with the Heat, Thunder, and Spurs among the NBA’s elite. They went undefeated in December as part of a 17-game win streak and stood at 32-9 in mid-January, a pace that would have garnered them the top seed in the West. At that 32-9 peak, the Clippers boasted the league’s fourth best offense and third best defense. The Spurs were the only other team in the top five on both sides of the ball, and they were right behind the Clippers in both measures. At that time, the Clippers could rightfully claim to be the NBA’s best team and seemed on the short list of legitimate title contenders.

But then the Clippers went on a four-game losing streak and played .500 ball — 17-17 — for more than two months. During the 17-17 streak, the team’s offense fell off some (8th in that span), but the real story was on the other side of the ball, where the team plummeted to 20th.

This wobbly defense had the Clippers looking more like a potential first-round casualty than a championship hopeful, but, unfortunately for the Grizzlies, April has been a period of rebirth in Los Angeles. The Clippers have ended the season on a seven-game win streak. There are caveats aplenty: Beyond the microscopic sample size, five of the team’s seven opponents in this closing stretch have been lottery participants. But for whatever it’s worth, the Clippers have ended the season with their offense absolutely humming and their defense back to the high level displayed earlier in the season.

On the season, this Clippers team has been a little bit better on both sides of the ball than a year ago. They’re a little more turnover prone, but have also done a better job capitalizing on their athleticism with a sharp uptick in both fastbreak points and points in the paint.

They’ve turned over most of the bench that gave the Grizzlies so many problems last spring, but still own an edge — on paper at least — over the Grizzlies there, with two Sixth Man-caliber candidates in Jamal Crawford and Matt Barnes. Perhaps most importantly, Chris Paul and Blake Griffin have had another year to hone their two-man-game chemistry and, after being banged up last April, will enter this postseason in what seems to be good health.

For a deeper look into how the Clippers look on the eve of the playoffs, check out this report from ESPN’s Clipperologist Kevin Arnovitz.

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