Tag: Jerryd Bayless

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Countdown: The 2012-2013 Season’s Top Ten Moments

I wanted to put this up in the meager time between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the playoffs, but was too bogged down. With a two-day break before Friday’s Game 6 and coming off a rousing win last night in Los Angeles, let’s take a moment to remember some of the high points of what was an eventful and thoroughly enjoyable regular season. I’ll return with a Game 6 preview on Friday morning. Let me know what I missed:

10. DPOY:
Not a “moment,” but I couldn’t find a clip of Tony Allen’s extraordinary defense late in that home loss to the Pacers, which I wanted to use. So I’ll lead off with this, Gasol adding to a Grizzlies’ trophy case that already included a Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, and Sixth Man of the Year award.

9. Rudy Tracks it Down, and Throws it Down (vs. Spurs, Friday, January 11th)
Rudy Gay’s massive contract and middling production necessitated a trade, and the Grizzlies have been better as a result. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have more than his share of great moments. The best this season came in what I still think was the (regular) season’s best game, a home overtime win over the Spurs.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies-Clippers Series Preview: Ten Takes, Part Two

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Playoff-tested Tayshaun Prince could have the right match-up against the Clippers.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Playoff-tested Tayshaun Prince could have the right match-up against the Clippers.

After a cover package in this week’s Flyer and a first installment of this series-specific preview yesterday, I wrap it up today with this second installment. The series begins at 9:30 tomorrow night in Los Angeles. Until then …

6. TP3: The Clippers are associated with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. The less starry Grizzlies with the trio of Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, and Mike Conley. But if Eric Bledsoe is the secondary player I see as most crucial for the Clippers’ hopes in this series, I think Tayshaun Prince could be the Grizzlies’ wild card.

Prince has been a very modest scorer for the Grizzlies since coming over at midseason, averaging only 8.8 points a game on 43/37 shooting, with his 9.1 field-goal attempts per game including only 1.1 three-points attempts.

But Prince has been a bigger factor against the Clippers. In three games this season, including one when he still played for Detroit, Prince has averaged 15.3 points on 54/57 shooting, his minutes (31.7 average for Griz, 36.3 vs. Clips), shot attempts (12.3), and three-point attempts (2.3) all up.

Though the sample size is obviously tiny, Prince’s shot selection has been less mid-range dependent against the Clippers than it’s been this season overall. And it’s easy to see why that might be the case. None of the Clippers’ small forwards — Caron Butler, Matt Barnes, and Grant Hill — are a deterrent to Prince’s post game. Meanwhile, the Clippers have proven susceptible to both wing scoring and three-point shooting overall, so if Prince spaces the floor out more than is typical for the Grizzlies — and this was happening in last week’s meeting between these teams — there will be open long-range looks.

Prince has hit the 15-point plateau only twice in 37 games with the Grizzlies, one of those against the Clippers. But with favorable match-ups, an expected bump in minutes, and so much defensive pressure on the Grizzlies’ backcourt, the bet here is that Prince does it a couple of times here if the series goes long and averages double-digits.

Prince’s ball-handling ability can also be a crucial release valve for the Grizzlies offense, giving the team a viable option outside the backcourt to advance the ball downcourt and initiate offensive sets, an adjustment the team made in the second half of the last meeting between these teams, after Eric Bledsoe had manhandled Griz guards in the first half.

The lanky Prince could also be the catalyst in another potentially key element of the series: Three-point shooting. Last spring that was — unsurprisingly — a big advantage for the Clippers, who made six a game on 38% shooting while the Grizzlies made three a game on 29% shooting. There’s good reason to think this disparity might even out this time.

The Grizzlies were an average team in terms of defending against three-point shooting before the Rudy Gay trade, but have been the NBA’s best in that department since. A more attentive Prince is less likely to surrender the kind of long-range barrage that helped the Clippers steal Game 1 last spring. Meanwhile, the Clippers have struggled to defend the three this season. In the two games between these teams since the trade, the Clippers and Grizzlies have each made 12 three-point field goals, but the Grizzlies have done so on 48% shooting to the Clippers’ 29%.

The key to threes in this series could be at the three, where the Clippers’ Butler and Barnes averaged three makes a game between them in the regular season while the Grizzlies’ Prince and Quincy Pondexter — who combined to shoot 8-15 from three against the Clippers this season — averaged a combined 1.5 a game. Winning the small forward match-up — overall but especially from three-point range — could be a quiet tipping point in the series.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Grizzlies 110, Celtics 106 — Gasol Sits, Bayless Erupts in a Weird, Wild One.

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Darrell Arthur started and stepped up in Marc Gasols absence.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Darrell Arthur started and stepped up in Marc Gasol’s absence.

The Lead: The lead story of this game is not the game itself, it’s the news that came prior to tip, that Marc Gasol would not play. This news was followed by a one-liner press release from the team:

The Memphis Grizzlies today announced that center Marc Gasol re-aggravated an abdominal tear on March 22 at New Orleans and will be out indefinitely.

That may sound bad, and it’s certainly not optimal, but I’d caution against freakouts. As the release implies, Gasol’s been playing hurt the last couple of weeks, and still playing well. There had already been signs and adjustments. Gasol was not jumping the tip in recent games to save wear and tear. And he would wince some after physical plays (such as the two charges he took against the Thunder). I wondered if the Randolph-heavy offensive game plan against the Thunder was related to that the injury.

As for sitting him now, my sense is there’s a cause/benefit aspect: How important is the remaining playoff positioning and how do you weigh that against the value of rest and treatment for an injury that won’t be going away before playoff time?

Both before and after the game, coach Lionel Hollins suggested it was a day-to-day thing. Others I talked with suggested Gasol would likely miss multiple games. But no one seems to think this endangers his availability for the postseason.

With Gasol out and Zach Randolph coming off the bench after being late to shootaround, the Grizzlies started Ed Davis and Darrell Arthur up front. The Celtics were also shifting lineups, with Kevin Garnett and Courtney Lee both out with ankle sprains.

The result was an out-of-character contest for this particular match-up. On the season, both Memphis and Boston are elite defensive teams (second and fifth, respectively) who play at a slow pace (28th and 19th) and are mediocre offensively (20th and 22nd).

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Grizzlies 91, Blazers 85 — Hollins Goes Small, Comes Up Big

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Mike Conley and the Griz finally found a groove in the second half.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Mike Conley and the Griz finally found a groove in the second half.

The Lead: After getting poor combined play from three young frontcourt players elevated by the absence of Zach Randolph and Darrell Arthur, seeing his team look sluggish and out of sync on both ends of the floor, and falling down by as many as 17 points in the third quarter, Lionel Hollins went small, bringing Tayshaun Prince back into the game for Ed Davis late in the third quarter.

At that point, the Grizzlies were down 11 points and Marc Gasol and Mike Conley were playing well but couldn’t find anyone to join them. Jerryd Bayless and Quincy Pondexter had just missed consecutive wide-open jumpers that would have cut the deficit to single digits. Nothing was working. But against the Blazers reserves, with combo forward Victor Claver at power forward, going small generated energy in the form of a furious 10-1 closing run.

Hollins stayed small throughout the fourth, even when the Blazers brought their starters back in, and the Grizzlies ended up closing the game on a 36-19 run over the final 15 minutes with Prince joining Marc Gasol up front, Mike Conley and Bayless manning the backcourt, and Pondexter and Tony Allen splitting up small forward minutes.

Prince put on a clinic for much of the game in the art of missing wide-open mid-range jumpers — when one finally dropped, he raised his endless arms to the sky in relief — but his ability to hold his own defensively and on the boards even after the Blazers brought back burly starter J.J. Hickson was a quiet key that allowed Gasol, Bayless, and Conley to make a series of game-saving plays.

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Bigs and Balance: Elevating Marc Gasol and sharing the ball will be the Grizzlies’ second-half path.

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Zach Randolph has bounced back from a rough January, but dealing Rudy Gay hasnt really changed his role so far.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Zach Randolph has bounced back from a rough January, but dealing Rudy Gay hasn’t really changed his role so far.

The Grizzlies emerged from last weekend’s NBA All-Star break still on pace for the best record in franchise history but with many questions to answer over the season’s remaining 31 regular-season games.

If the team, projected to finish fifth in the Western Conference even before the trade of longtime would-be star Rudy Gay to the Toronto Raptors, slides further than that, then jettisoning Gay will obviously be seen — fairly or not, given the preexisting downward trajectory — as a turning point. But if the Grizzlies maintain their ground or better, the correction will have begun not so much with the deal itself but with the delayed acceptance of it.

The Grizzlies, from the head coach down through the locker room, wasted a few days pouting in the wake of the Gay trade, despite the fact that the team’s slide since November had coincided with Gay’s worst season since his rookie year.

The trade itself was a reminder of something we learned with the Pau Gasol deal: that, in a lot of quarters, any deal made by the Grizzlies that includes financial motivation will be seen entirely through that prism.

Make no mistake, with new controlling owner Robert Pera acknowledging some initial cash-flow issues in the immediate wake of his purchase agreement with Michael Heisley, there are legitimate questions about the wherewithal of the new ownership group. But those questions can’t begin to be answered until we see how they conduct the coming off-season. The problem with drawing such conclusions from the Gay deal, of course, is that “financial reasons” and “basketball reasons” are becoming increasingly inseparable in the NBA. Gay is set to make north of $19 million at the conclusion of his current contract without having ever made an All-Star team. In a league with strict rules that tie player payroll to methods of player acquisition, that’s a poor allocation of resources, no matter your market.

Nevertheless, the deal was disruptive, and the team seemed very fragile in its aftermath, with head coach Lionel Hollins seemingly incapable of making public statements without generating controversy and the team’s defensive effort looking near non-existent in the first half of a road loss to the Atlanta Hawks.

But the team rallied to play a competitive second half in Atlanta, and, afterward, team leaders such as Marc Gasol and Tony Allen responded with tough-minded comments that went beyond the usual locker-room platitudes. A day and a half later, Hollins used his pre-game press availability to finally end the mourning. He didn’t pretend to approve of the deal, but he did re-engage the season’s challenge.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Grizzlies 101, Nets 77 — A Lesson in What Works and What Doesn’t

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Rookie Tony Wroten again made big plays for a suddenly energetic bench.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Rookie Tony Wroten again made big plays for a suddenly energetic bench.

The Lead: You know about the “tale of two halves,” that most cherished post-game cliché around these parts. But tonight warranted a different 10th-grade English class reference: This was about Jekyll & Hyde offense.

Two days after putting 106 on the Lakers, the ecstatic first half tonight suggested that maybe the deplorable defense of Team Turmoil wasn’t the lone reason for the Grizzlies’ suddenly fluid offense.

A day after being “snubbed” for the All-Star team, Marc Gasol came out more aggressively than he’s been in weeks. It took him three-and-a-half minutes to match his field-goal attempt total from Monday’s game against the Pacers. It took fewer than five to match the seven shots he put up against the Lakers.

The ball was usually running through Gasol and All-Star post-mate Randolph and moving with more quickness and precision than Griz fans have seen since November, while the bench — lead by rookies Tony Wroten and Chris Johnson and a rejuvenated Jerryd Bayless — entered the game with big-play energy. The result was a season-best 67-point half, with 17 assists on 32 made field goals, including 32 and 12 on a combined 16-23 shooting from Gasol and Randolph.

Then, in the third quarter, it all changed. Though I doubt this was the stated game plan, it almost looked like the team decided it needed to get Rudy Gay — 4 points on 2-5 shooting in the first half — going. Suddenly the offense grew heavy with Gay isolation plays. He went 3-8 in the quarter. Gasol and Randolph combined for two field-goal attempts. And the Grizzlies scored only 18 points, four assists on eight made field-goals. Meanwhile, an emboldened Nets squad was able to slice a 30-point Grizzlies lead down to 18.

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Early Offense — A more diversified attack has the Grizzlies looking like a contender.

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Mike Conley has been the engine driving the Grizzlies offensive improvement.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Mike Conley has been the engine driving the Grizzlies’ offensive improvement.

Even before Sunday night’s spectacular blowout of the defending NBA champion Miami Heat moved the Grizzlies to 5-1 and cemented the best start in franchise history, the boys in Beale Street Blue were already showing signs of being a potentially elite team.

What was true before the opening tip on Sunday remained true when the final buzzer sounded: The Grizzlies were one of only two NBA teams — along with defending Western Conference champs and follow-up opponents the Oklahoma City Thunder — to rank among the league’s 10 best in offense, defense, and rebounding.

The rebounding is not a mystery. The return of Zach Randolph, who currently leads the league at 14.5 boards a game, has pretty well taken care of that. Neither is the defense, which has been a constant since the Grizzlies put Tony Allen and Marc Gasol on the floor together two seasons ago.

But the offensive improvement — way up, from 20th to 9th, per possession — is a little more surprising, especially with each of the team’s frontcourt stars — Randolph, Gasol, and leading scorer Rudy Gay — starting the season shooting below their career averages, and with last season’s top bench scorer, O.J. Mayo, enjoying a bit of a rebirth with the Dallas Mavericks. Rather than individual dominance, a lot of small team factors have conspired to make this year’s Griz squad deeper, more dynamic, and more efficient on the offensive end of the floor.

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Road Recap: Grizzlies 108, Bucks 90

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Jerryd Bayless has rebounded from his pre-season shooting struggles.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Jerryd Bayless has rebounded from his pre-season shooting struggles.

The Grizzlies improved to 3-1 on the season with a third consecutive commanding win over a team with legitimate playoff aspirations. Marc Gasol continued his versatile, efficient excellence (14 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists on only 8 field-goal attempts). Zach Randolph continued to dominate on the boards (a game-high 13; he leads the league with a 15.3 average). Rudy Gay continued to find lots of shots (20) without quite connecting on enough of them (7).

But the real story last night was the performance of the Grizzlies’ bench. Marreese Speights went off for 18 points and 9 rebounds in only 22 minutes, while the perimeter trio of Jerryd Bayless, Wayne Ellington, and Quincy Pondexter combined to shoot 6-9 from long-range. Bayless has hit a three-pointer in every game so far (50% overall), which is encouraging after his poor shooting in the preseason. Assuming Pondexter’s development into a viable three-point shooter was one of the reasons I projected the Grizzlies to be a slightly better overall three-point shooting team even after losing O.J. Mayo, and the early returns are good, as he’s 5-9 from long-range through four games. Ellington hasn’t quite found his groove yet (3-9), but his sufficient defense and overall strong effort level has made him a general plus as a deep reserve.

The cherry on top of this one was three uneventful garbage-time debut minutes for rookie Tony Wroten Jr.

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Clippers 101, Grizzlies 92 — Something We’ve Seen Before

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Conley.jpg

The Grizzlies fell to the Los Angeles Clippers last night in a regular-season debut that felt frustratingly familiar.

For starters, it was the Grizzlies 12th consecutive opening-night loss, the longest current streak in any of the four major team sports, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Secondly, the game felt very much like a continuation of this spring’s playoff series between the two teams: It was an intense, physical, closely fought game decided by a big disparity in bench production and fourth-quarter execution.

The Grizzlies four-man bench unit was outscored 49-17, with the Clippers getting a game-high 29 points from new addition Jamal Crawford and bruising, efficient play from Eric Bledsoe (13-4-4 in 17 minutes). Meanwhile, the Grizzlies perimeter reserves Jerryd Bayless, Wayne Ellington, and Quincy Pondexter combined to shoot 3-17. As a team, the Grizzlies shot only 2-14 from three-point range.

Bench production and team-wide three-point shooting are big questions facing the Grizzlies this season, and the team will have to get more in both areas than they got in Game 1 to have a successful season. But, those issues aside, there wasn’t much here to get too worked up about yet.

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Game 1 Preview: Grizzlies at Clippers

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

The season begins where the last ended: With Z-Bo and Blake Griffin battling on the block.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • The season begins where the last ended: With Z-Bo and Blake Griffin battling on the block.

Revenge game? Nah. The Grizzlies can’t do anything tonight in their regular-season debut against the Clippers (9:30 p.m. tip) that would make up for those devastating Game 1 and Game 7 home playoff losses to the Clippers last spring. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be particularly amped for this one. And I do wonder if the Clippers, even in their home opener will have the same intensity given that probably half of their potential rotation — Jamal Crawford, Grant Hill, Lamar Odom, Ryan Hollins, Ronny Turiaf, Ryan Hollins, Willie Green — are new additions who didn’t participate in that series.

I probably won’t be doing many standalone game previews this season, but an opener with this kind of wattage deserves one. So here are three subplots I’ll be keeping an eye on tonight:

1. Zach Randolph vs. Blake Griffin: In last season’s Griz-Clips playoff series, an increasingly banged-up Griffin averaged 18 points on 53% shooting, while a significantly diminished Randolph averaged 14 points on 42% shooting. Given how close most of the games were, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that Randolph equalling Griffin’s offensive production would have tipped the series. So this opening night provides a very good first test for how far back to All-Star level Randolph is. For the Grizzlies to be a contender this season, they need a Randolph that’s roughly on the same level at his position as Griffin.

2. Mike Conley vs. Chris Paul: And speaking of good opening tests … Mike Conley looks fabulous in the pre-season — stronger, quicker, more confident. I was impressed enough that I tabbed him to be a top contender for the Most Improved Player award this season. So how about seeing the New Mike Conley stacked up against the best point guard in the world?

3. Jerryd Bayless vs. Backcourt Pressure: When last we saw the Grizzlies in a game that mattered, anyone not named Mike Conley was struggling to transport the ball safely up court against the defensive pressure of Paul and Popeye-armed back-up point guard Eric Bledsoe. This crippling problem, an even bigger pothole on the Grizzlies post-season path than three-point shooting, is something the acquisition of Bayless is meant to correct. Bledsoe has been even more of a beast in preseason and Paul is Paul. Bayless is likely to be checked by one of those players most of the time he’s on the floor. Let’s see how he handles it.