Tag: Mike Conley

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Game 3: Grizzlies 94, Clippers 82 — Big Trains From Memphis Get Chugging

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol tag-teamed the Clippers to lead the Grizzlies to their first win in the series..

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol tag-teamed the Clippers to lead the Grizzlies’ to their first win in the series..

The Grizzlies saved Saturday.

Needing three victories over the final four games, winning this series against the Los Angeles Clippers is still a heavy lift. But, for now, the Grizzlies have ensured that playoff weekend in Memphis, for a while at least, can be a festive one.

Around water coolers Friday morning. At bars Friday night. At the farmer’s market on Saturday and at lunch spots up and down Beale and Main ahead of Saturday’s 3:30 tip: Now the mood will be more anticipation than anxiety. The buzz you’ll hear for the next day-and-a-half around the city will be one of excitement instead of dread. Whatever else happens in the series, the Grizzlies performed a civic mitzvah Thursday night.

How did it happen, this 94-82 victory? In a classic Grizzlies grind-it-out game. With perimeter defense and offensive rebounding and two hefty All-Stars scoring in the post, high and low.

Zach Randolph had a flashback game. You could see it in the first quarter, when he pinned seven-foot Clippers center DeAndre Jordan early in the shot clock, right under the rim, and finished over him. You could see it in the third quarter, when he rose — was it a foot? — off the ground to corral an offensive rebound with one big mitt and flipped the ball back in. It was 27 points and 11 rebounds on 9-18 shooting, and if Randolph got a couple of attempts swatted, it was still the kind of performance some fans were surely doubting they’d ever see again.

Randolph’s back line buddy, Marc Gasol, was there with him. Rather than running so many plays through Gasol on the low block against Jordan, as had been the case in Los Angeles, the Grizzlies reasserted Gasol (16 and 8) in the high post, where he abused Jordan with jumpers — 4-7 from mid-range — and restored the vertical balance to the Grizzlies’ post-based offense. (Randolph was 8-14 at the rim.)

They shared the podium afterward, in victory, a moment for fans to savor given the uncertain future. “This is our game,” Randolph said.

From the Clippers’ side, coach Vinny Del Negro repeated the word “rebounding” like a mantra in his post-game presser. After destroying the Grizzlies on the boards in Game 1, the pendulum swung here, the Grizzlies besting the Clippers 17-5 on the offensive boards despite both teams shooting 39% from the floor. Randolph, with six, out-rebounded the entire Clippers team on the offensive glass.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Griz-Clips Game 3 Preview: Lessons from Los Angeles

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Its that time again.

The playoffs move from Flophouse to Grindhouse tonight, with an 8:30 tip down at FedExForum. A few things on my mind as the series moves to Memphis:

Fourth Quarter Contrast and the Unremarkable Bench Disparity: I don’t have much in the way of expectation in terms of performance or outcome tonight, but I do in terms of strategy. Based on adjustments between Games 1 and 2 and his subsequent public statements, it seems like Lionel Hollins has come around to a notion that, frankly, I wrote and talked about in the run-up to the series: That, against the Clippers, the Grizzlies likely need to tighten their rotation, lean more on the starters, and be careful with early fourth-quarter lineups.

While the details are different between Games 1 and 2 in terms of foul issues and player performance, both games ended up only one bucket apart through three quarters. In Game 1, the Clippers lead 75-69 to start the fourth. In Game 2, the Clippers lead 75-71. After that, things went very differently, with the Clippers running over the Grizzlies 37-22 in Game 1, and the Grizzlies battling to a 20-18 advantage in Game 2.

What was different? Let’s start with who was on the floor. In both games, the Clippers started with the same full bench unit, which happens to include what might arguably be three of their five best players this season — Eric Bledsoe, Jamal Crawford, and Matt Barnes.

In Game 1, the Grizzlies countered with a “throwing-stuff-against-the-wall” small-ball lineup, with Tayshaun Prince sliding to the four and three bench players on the perimeter. Marc Gasol was the only starter playing his regular position. This lineup made a couple of shots early to cut the deficit to one, but couldn’t handle the Clippers on the boards or Eric Bledsoe in the backcourt and by the time the Grizzlies started coming back with more starters the game was already beginning to slip away.

In Game 2, by contrast, The Grizzlies began the quarter with a more conventional two-starter lineup (Mike Conley and Zach Randolph) but came in more quickly with other starters when signs of trouble emerged.

On the whole, the biggest difference between the two fourth quarters for the Grizzlies came in the backcourt, where starters Conley and Tony Allen combined for roughly five minutes in Game 1 but played 23 of 24 minutes in Game 2. Perhaps this had something to do with the enormous defensive disparity between the two games.

On the Clippers end, the biggest disparity was the odd gift from Clippers’ coach Vinny Del Negro, who had played proven fourth-quarter Griz killer Eric Bledsoe for the full-fourth quarter in Game 1 and but then yanked him after five minutes in Game 2.

The good news for the Grizzlies is you can probably expect their Game 2 adjustments to carry over. The bad news is that Del Negro may not be so reliable.

In general, I shrug off worry about the bench disparity between the two teams, with the Clippers’ bench outscoring their Grizzlies’ counterparts 79-51 through two games. It is what it is at this point. The Clippers are built like this. Their strong bench isn’t just a luxury. Reserve guards Bledsoe and Crawford are more dynamic than veteran starter Billups. Starting center DeAndre Jordan is such a deplorable foul shooter that he can’t be trusted in the fourth quarter. All season, reserve small forward Barnes has outplayed starter Caron Butler. The Clippers best lineups, on the season, have tended to be bench-heavy lineups. While the Grizzlies would love to get better, more consistent production from the likes of Jerryd Bayless, Quincy Pondexter, Darrell Arthur, or Ed Davis, they don’t need to play the Clippers even bench vs. bench. Basketball isn’t played that way. The only match-up that matters is roster vs. roster.

The question for the Grizzlies is if the starters can play heavy minutes — and have their rest staggered effectively — without wearing down. Conley and Gasol played 44 minutes each in Game 2. That’s probably a bit much to expect. But with the season on the line and no back-to-backs in the playoffs, there’s no reason — beyond poor play or extreme foul problems — starters can’t play 38-40 a game.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies-Clippers Series Preview: Ten Takes, Part One

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

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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Cover Feature News

Playoff Bound!

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Saturday night at FedExForum was a troubling and likely costly bump in what has otherwise been a strong regular-season finish for this year’s Memphis Grizzlies. At 55 wins and counting heading into Wednesday’s season finale against the Utah Jazz, the Grizzlies have enjoyed, by a decent margin, the best regular season in franchise history. But they’ve had the misfortune of doing so amidst a brutally tough Western Conference landscape, which makes the record both more impressive and less effective.

The Grizzlies — the only Western Conference team located east of the Mississippi River — would have been the second seed in the East, but with Saturday’s home loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, the team will only be fifth in the West and, pending an unexpected development in the season’s final two nights, will likely begin their postseason on the road.

That’s disappointing, but according to many observers around the league, the Grizzlies never should have gotten even this far, not after trading Rudy Gay at midseason.

The Gay trade became something of a Rorschach test around the league. NBA traditionalists — invested in reputation, narrative, per-game stats, and highlights — were apoplectic and dismissive. The most notorious response came from ace Yahoo! Sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski, who took a gratuitous shot at new executive John Hollinger, called new controlling owner Robert Pera a “freeloader” for whom “winning isn’t a priority,” and concluded that the team had intentionally “bailed” on a chance at a playoff run.

Others followed. Sports Illustrated‘s Chris Mannix wrote that Pera “now wears the black hat of an owner who prioritized profits over winning, a scarlet letter players won’t soon forget.” On broadcasts, former players such as Magic Johnson bemoaned the deal while describing an imaginary Rudy Gay.

Meanwhile, commentators attuned to statistical analysis and the league’s complex salary rules were more sanguine, seeing Gay as a player making Lebron James money and getting touches and shots commensurate with that comparison, but actually performing as the team’s fourth best player. And they deemed this a bad allocation of resources, especially in the context of a small-market franchise. In this quarter of the NBA cosmos, the deal was seen as a lateral short-term move that averted long-term disaster.

At first, the trade did seem to have the potential to derail the season, with the team and its coach in a funk for several days, but sometime between a road loss to Atlanta and a home win against Golden State, there was an attitude adjustment. Holding court outside the locker room before the Warriors game, head coach Lionel Hollins asserted that he had moved past his displeasure over the deal and expected his team to do so as well. The Grizzlies proceeded to win eight games in a row and 14 of their next 15.

The Grizzlies stood at 30-18 (a .625 winning percentage) at the moment of Hollins’ “calming the waters” address. They’ve gone 25-8 (.758) since, pending the regular-season finale.

Rather than being shackled by the absence of Gay’s one-on-one shot creation, as critics suspected, the team’s offense has instead been freed. Despite a wildly anachronistic paucity of three-point shooting and the seemingly accelerating decline of leading scorer Zach Randolph, the Grizzlies offense has improved.

At the time of the trade, the team’s offense was 22nd out of 30 NBA teams in scoring per possession — the most accurate measure of offense — and trending down. An ecstatic November had been revealed as a mirage, driven by unsustainable individual shooting performances, and in December and January the offense had collapsed.

But from the moment of Hollins’ acquiescence, things began to turn around. With the new roster, the team has settled into a league-average offensive performance while holding ground as an elite defense.

There hasn’t been much change in the kind of shots the team’s taken since the roster shake-up — they still take roughly a third of their attempts from mid-range, they’re still the league’s least prolific three-point shooting team, etc. — but they have redistributed who’s taking and creating those shots, with strongly positive results. And most notably, the fourth-quarter struggles against the Clippers notwithstanding, the team’s improvement has been most dramatic in exactly the kinds of situations where critics assumed the team would miss Gay most.

With Gay, the Grizzlies had ranked 26th in “clutch” offense, per NBA.com. (Clutch defined as the final five minutes of a game or in overtime when the score is within five points.) Since then — and, admittedly, a sliver of game time taken from less than half a season is not a very reliable sample size — the team has ranked fifth in clutch scoring.

It’s remarkable just how much the team’s shifting style of play has reflected the styles of Gay and his replacement, veteran Tayshaun Prince.

Prince is not the stat generator Gay was, but the Grizzlies have happily sacrificed some individual shot creation, rebounds, blocks, and steals for surer ball handling, quicker and smarter ball movement, and more consistently attentive defense. The team doesn’t feast off turnovers the way it once did but executes its offense better in the halfcourt and guards the three-point line better. And redistributing some of Gay’s team-high touches to other players has helped Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, and sixth-man Jerryd Bayless all bloom.

For various reasons — some connected to the mid-season deals and some not — this Grizzlies team seems better equipped for the playoffs than last year’s model. The offense, while still problematic, is more functional. Gasol and Conley have improved. Tony Allen, whose knee was bothering him a year ago, seems at least a little healthier. Quincy Pondexter has become a more assertive three-point shooter since last spring. Prince won’t force bad shots or lose track of shooters the way Gay did. Bayless has matched O.J. Mayo’s scoring in the sixth-man role but with more solid ball handling. And there seems to be no way he won’t improve on Mayo’s disastrous postseason play. Off the bench, forwards Ed Davis and Darrell Arthur, while both inconsistent, are likely to give the team more than Marreese Speights and Dante Cunningham did last season (which wasn’t much).

And while Randolph’s poor play down the stretch is a significant concern, he was limited last spring too. If his heroics from two years ago seem to be gone for good, he should at least be able to match his play from last season, when he had just come back from a serious knee injury.

If there are reasons for optimism, there are also signs of concern. The Clippers are, again, the probable opponent, and this time they are likely to have homecourt advantage. They’ve had a better season as well and enter the playoffs healthier after having their two best players — Chris Paul and Blake Griffin — banged up last spring. The Clippers have won three straight games at FedExForum and have beaten the Grizzlies in seven of 11 contests between the two teams since last April.

These two teams will enter the postseason with potentially the widest range possible of any teams in the NBA. Either could make a run to the NBA Finals with the right breaks, but if they face off in the first round, as expected, one will be going home early.

What would an early exit mean for the Grizzlies? The team’s new ownership and front office — vindicated with the Gay deal — will face a decision this summer: Keep much of this core together for two more seasons (the amount of time veterans Randolph and Prince are still under contract) or embark on a more aggressive overhaul around the fulcrum of Conley and Gasol. What happens over the next couple of weeks could well determine which course to chart.

For a detailed breakdown of the Grizzlies’ first-round playoff matchup and other coverage throughout the postseason, see “Beyond the Arc,” Chris Herrington’s Grizzlies blog, at memphisflyer.com/blogs/beyondthearc.

X-Factors

Five specifics that could determine the Grizzlies’ playoff fate.

1. A More Gluttonous Gasol: Two years ago, when the Grizzlies made their deep playoff run, Marc Gasol was Zach Randolph’s sidekick. This time, the roles need to be reversed. But that requires a team-wide recognition: from the coaching staff, from Gasol’s teammates, and, perhaps most of all, from the unselfish-to-a-fault Gasol himself. While Gasol’s usage rate has shot up since Gay’s departure, it still lags behind both Randolph and Jerryd Bayless. Gasol is the Grizzlies’ best matchup advantage against the Clippers, the team’s likely first-round opponent, where he averaged 17-9-4 on 54% shooting in the season series while still taking fewer shots than Randolph, who shot 37%. Last Saturday night, with homecourt likely on the line, Gasol led the team in points, rebounds, and assists — yet had only one field-goal attempt and zero assists in a stagnant 14-point fourth quarter. This should now be Gasol’s team. It’s time for him to claim it.

2. Z-Bo’s Bully Ball: While it’s unfair to expect Randolph to be the offensive force he was two springs ago, and unwise to funnel him the ball as if he is, the Grizzlies still need him to impose his physicality. While Randolph’s shooting and scoring have declined, his elite rebounding has held steady. And his penchant for close-quarters combat doesn’t seem to suit Clippers star forward Blake Griffin, who averaged only 14 points and seven rebounds on 44% shooting against the Grizzlies this season, well short of his All-Star averages. Griffin topped 20 points only twice in seven games against the Grizzlies last spring.

3. The Conley Correlation: All season long, the Grizzlies’ fate has tended to align with Mike Conley’s performance. And with Conley having a career-best season, that connection has worked in the Grizzlies’ favor. But it could be a problem if the Clippers’ matchup holds. A bulked-up Conley’s big finish will get a stern postseason test from probably the best defensive point-guard tandem in the NBA: Chris Paul and rugged reserve Eric Bledsoe. The latter, in particular, has been Conley kryptonite, with the Grizzlies’ lead guard shooting 30% in the season series with the Clippers but even worse when Bledsoe has been on the floor. In last year’s postseason series, per NBA.com, Conley shot 25% when Bledsoe was in the game and 48% when he wasn’t.

4. 3-D: 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 Tayshaun Prince is less likely to surrender the kind of long-range barrage that helped the Clippers steal Game 1 last spring. Meanwhile, the Clippers struggle to defend the three. If Prince and reserve Quincy Pondexter (a combined 8-15 from three against the Clippers this season) find the range, this usual disadvantage could swing in the Grizzlies’ direction.

5. The Thirsty Dog & 4th Quarter Chris: As frustrating as his offense can be at times, Tony Allen defends, in his own words, like “a thirsty dog,” and that key weapon can’t be underexploited. This will be particularly interesting in a Clippers rematch, where Clips star Paul tends to involve teammates early and look for his own offense late. In the final seven minutes Saturday night, Allen got the assignment and held Paul to only one basket (a difficult step-back jumper) and zero assists.

Five in the Spotlight

For a handful of Griz figures, postseason performance could impact their future with the team.

Lionel Hollins: Hollins is not under contract for next season — maybe you’ve heard — and management has insisted it would wait until the conclusion of the season to deal with this issue. Hollins’ traditionalist approach and the new front office’s more progressive bent made for a bumpy fit initially, and, for much of the season, Hollins’ return seemed like an even-money proposition. It looks more likely now, but there’s still a negotiation to be made, and how far Hollins can take this team can’t help but impact his leverage. Could a first-round flameout — something worse than a mere series loss — cause the organization to second-guess Hollins’ return? I took a deep dive into the coaching issue at “Beyond the Arc,” the Flyer‘s Grizzlies blog, last week. You can find it at memphisflyer.com/blogs/beyondthearc.

Jerryd Bayless: Bayless has a player option next season for roughly $3 million. Early in the season, when he was struggling as a backup point guard, there seemed to be a good chance Bayless might take the option and return. But after the trades of Wayne Ellington and Rudy Gay opened up more minutes at scoring guard and more touches and shots generally, Bayless bloomed as a classic “sixth man,” playing both guard spots, sometimes finishing games, and essentially equalling the production O.J. Mayo had given the team in a similar role. Now, it’s looking more likely that Bayless will opt out. Because Bayless would have only played one year with the team, the Grizzlies would not have “Bird Rights” on him — meaning it could not exceed the salary cap to resign him without using the team’s free-agency exception. Bayless has been erratic in his career, but a couple of big playoff games could raise his profile and value this summer. That’s the catch for the Grizzlies: The better Bayless plays, the more likely he’ll be to leave. But the Grizzlies would accept the risk of that trade-off.

Tony Allen: Could we really be seeing Tony Allen’s final games as a Griz? It’s possible. Allen will be an unrestricted free agent this summer and looking for a substantial raise over his current $3.3 million salary. The bet here is that the Grizzlies are willing to give him one, but exactly how much and — perhaps more crucially — for how long could be sticking points. A two-year deal for around the mid-level exception or just under (say, $5 million) makes the most sense for the Grizzlies, but a strong postseason performance could convince another suitor to offer something bigger or lengthier, which would force the team into a tough decision. Is there life after Grit and Grind?

Zach Randolph: Unlike Hollins, Bayless, and Allen, Randolph is under contract for next season, but he may still be — once the Hollins situation is resolved — the team’s biggest question mark going into the summer. Randolph has two more years and more than $34 million on the books. (The final year is a player option but one he would be likely to take.) With Randolph’s soft decline seeming to accelerate, the Grizzlies will no doubt be taking a long look at their options if Randolph struggles in the playoffs — or maybe even if he doesn’t.

Ed Davis: Davis is an interesting case. He’s under contract for $3.2 million next season but is eligible for an extension this summer. There’s reason to believe the 23-year-old acquired in the Gay trade could be the starting power forward of the future, but the team hasn’t done much to find out, with Davis topping 20 minutes in only nine games for the Griz after averaging 34 minutes a night in Toronto in the month before the deal. Davis is a limited scorer but grades out as a better defender than Randolph or Darrell Arthur, and in those nine games he averaged 10 points, eight rebounds, and two blocks (in only 25 minutes) on 61% shooting, and the team was 8-1, including 4-0 with Davis as a starter. And yet Davis played only eight minutes in two crucial games last weekend. How significantly he’ll figure in the postseason is a mystery, as are the prospects for an extension this summer.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Grizzlies 94, Bobcats 75 — Conley Leads a Bench Brigade

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

DSC_6908.jpeg

The Lead: As a home game against the league’s worst team that was bridging both a three-game West Coast road trip and a high-wattage weekend ahead, this was likely to be a pretty subdued game. And for three quarters it was.

The Grizzlies seemed to be playing at about 80 percent intensity but building a solid lead anyway, pushing their lead to nine at the end of the first quarter off a show-off Marc Gasol baseline bucket and a power transition hoop-and-harm from Ed Davis.

Still leading by nine at the half, the team got especially listless, letting the Bobcats whittle the lead completely away. This sent Lionel Hollins looking to his bench for energy and execution and this time he found it in a big, big way.

With Mike Conley opening the fourth quarter surrounded by four reserves — Quincy Pondexter, Austin Daye, Jon Leuer, and Ed Davis — the Grizzlies went on a 15-0 run, pushing a three-point lead early in the quarter to an 18-point lead with with under eight minutes to play. A minute later, Conley’s driving lay-up gave him another 20-point scoring night, bringing the lead to 19 and Conley to the bench for good. He was the only starter to play in the fourth.

It was a particularly good night for Daye (10 points on 4-7 shooting and 7 rebounds in 17 minutes) and Leuer (11 points on 4-4 shooting and 5 rebounds in 13 minutes).

One sequence — the play of the night — symbolized the fourth-quarter explosion: A Davis block into a Daye defensive rebound, which he dribbled toward mid-court before firing a no-look pass to Leuer, on the move in the middle of the lane. Leuer caught the pass and finished a twisting lay-up for the hoop-and-harm.

In his best performance of the season, Leuer showed everything he’s got. In addition to the transition bucket, he scored on two long pick-and-pops off Conley, got a dunk off a Davis feed, was solid on the defensive boards, and forced turnovers. After all that, he even decided to drop some dimes, setting up three-point buckets on back-to-back possessions.

“I kept looking for people to have energy,” Hollins said about going deep into his bench. “We weren’t running and had lost our pizzazz. I rolled the dice a little keeping Mike [Conley] in, but I thought he could lead that group and would be able to get into the lane with the floor more open.”

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Deflections: Weekend Recap, Playoff Race, Rudy Gay Trolling

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Mike Conley continued to assert himself over the weekend, leading the Grizzlies in scoring in both games.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Mike Conley continued to assert himself over the weekend, leading the Grizzlies in scoring in both games.

Weekend Recap: The Grizzlies split weekend games against Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings — both two-point contests — to complete a 2-1 West Coast road trip. Given the franchise’s history along the Pacific that’s a good trip no matter the circumstances.

Each game was marked by a semi-controversial non-call at the rim and near the end of the game. In the Lakers game, it was Mike Conley driving in to tie and being smothered up by Dwight Howard. In the Kings game, it was Marc Gasol blocking DeMarcus Cousins’ drive. Did Howard get Conley with the body? Did Gasol get Cousins on the wrist instead of the hand? Even after a few in-game replays both non-calls looked inconclusive to me. So much of basketball officiating is about judgement calls and I thought both of those non-calls were, at minimum, defensible.

Of wider note, Mike Conley continued his recent scoring trend, notching 46 points on 18-33 shooting, leading the team in both games. As for his being featured late, we’ll get to that in just a minute.

On the other side of the ball, Marc Gasol continued to bolster his Defensive Player of the Year case. Against the Lakers, Gasol had eight defensive rebounds, three steals, and two blocks while helping hold Dwight Howard to 9 points on 3-7 shooting. In the second half, as the Grizzlies were overcoming poor early shooting to get back into the game, Gasol strung together a series of terrific defensive plays. Against the Kings, Gasol notched five blocks, with two coming in the final 20 seconds to seal the game: The first was on Cousins. On the second, Gasol swallowed up Marcus Thornton and snatched away his attempted game-winner at the buzzer.

On the downside, Zach Randolph struggled over the weekend, shooting 11-30 over two games and often struggling to finish shots over defenders in the paint. Randolph is averaging 13 points on 43% shooting over his past 10 games and seems to be creeping into the playoffs in distressingly similar form to his limited post-injury performance last spring.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Deflections: Playoff Race, Game Recap/Preview, Postseason Awards

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Quickish hits on a handful of notable Griz topics:

The Grizzlies are still trying to shoot past the Nuggets in the race for the three seed.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • The Grizzlies are still trying to shoot past the Nuggets in the race for the three seed.

The Playoff Race: To the disappointment of Grizzlies fans everywhere, the Denver Nuggets’ near-indestructible homecourt advantage held last night against the Dallas Mavericks, despite the Mavericks leading for most of the fourth quarter. Big defensive plays from Corey Brewer and a game-winning drive with two seconds left from Andre Iguodala secured the win for Denver and denied the Grizzlies a chance to control their destiny in pursuit of the third seed.

Current projections now have a one-game gap between all three teams, with Denver finishing at 56, Memphis at 55, and the Clippers at 54 wins. That would make the Grizzlies technically a fifth seed, but with homecourt advantage over the Clippers in a first-round series. The tough thing for the Grizzlies is they have to be a game better than the Nuggets due to tiebreakers, and are now a half-game back with only seven to go. That’s an increasingly thin margin of error.

Those projections don’t, however, take into account the knee injury to Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari last night. While Nuggets fans worriedly await medical tests today, most assume the injury will sideline Gallinari for the remainder of the season. Any other outcome would be a surprise. Gallinari is the team’s second-leading scorer. They’re already playing without top scorer Ty Lawson, who has a tear in the plantar fascia in his right heel, but is expected to be back for the playoffs, if not before.

The Nuggets are probably deeper and less dependent on individual players than any team in the league, but this double blow is a pretty severe one. Could it knock them off their game enough to allow the Grizzlies to sneak through to the #3?

Here are the remaining schedules for all three teams in the 3-4-5 race:

Grizzlies (51-24):
at Lakers
at Kings
Bobcats
at Rockets
Clippers (b2b)
at Mavericks
Jazz

Clippers (50-26):
Lakers
Wolves
at Hornets
at Grizzlies (b2b)
Blazers
at Kings

Nuggets (52-24):
Rockets
Spurs
at Mavericks
Blazers
at Bucks
Suns

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Beyond the Arc Sports

A Plan Comes Together: The Pillars of Mike Conley’s Breakthrough Season

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

DSC_4756.jpeg

When Mike Conley scored nine points in the final four-and-a-half minutes to complete a comeback against the San Antonio Spurs at FedExForum on Monday night, it felt like the final breakthrough of what has been — so far — a career-best campaign. Taking over a game offensively in the final minutes was something relatively new, but playing well late wasn’t. And how Conley did it — with three driving lay-ups and a three pointer, playing some off the ball alongside sixth-man Jerryd Bayless — was a microcosm of larger trends helping drive Conley’s emergence.

Organizations and coaches love it when a plan comes together. For Conley, the preseason plan was to play less while doing more — reduce his playing time some while having him become more dynamic and productive and having him hold up better late in games.

The playing time hasn’t actually changed much — Conley’s minutes per game are down very slightly, from 35.1 to 34.6 — but the better and more sustained play the team hoped for from Conley has indeed materialized.

I wrote in that season preview piece that Conley, more than his higher-paid and more-celebrated teammates Rudy Gay, Zach Randolph, and Marc Gasol, would be the key for this season’s Grizzlies. The reasoning was that the Grizzlies had, arguably, the least dynamic backcourt rotation among NBA contenders as the game is evolving to be more guard-oriented. Conley had to play at a high level to keep up, no matter how strong the Grizzlies were in the paint.

As the season’s progressed, I’ve half-jokingly been tracking what I call “the Conley Correlation,” and it’s held up:

Conley, in wins: 16/7 on 47% shooting, 38% from three, +12
Conley, in losses: 12/5 on 37% shooting, 33% from three -6
(All stats, unless otherwise indicated, from NBA.com or ESPN.com.)

No other player’s individual production has been as sure an indicator of team success. And as the Grizzlies inch toward the best regular season in franchise history, one of the biggest reasons they’ve gotten there is because Conley is also having his best regular season.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Grizzlies 92, Spurs 90 — Conley is Clutch, Griz Hit 50

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Mike Conley drove the Grizzlies home.

The Lead: For a half, this sequel to the best game at FedExForum this season threatened to be the worst. But it was saved by a frenetic fourth, a thrilling finish, and a big closing performance from Mike Conley that sealed the season’s 50th victory, tying a franchise record.

For the first 24 minutes, the Grizzlies were in the mud — and not in the good way — against a Spurs team missing three of its four best players (Tim Duncan, Kawhi Leonard, and Manu Ginobili). Even in building an early nine-point lead, the Grizzlies offense was awkward, and by the time the bench began to cycle through they looked like they’d just met up before the game, ending the half with 37 points on sub-32% shooting and a (lucky to be only) seven-point deficit.

In the third quarter, the Grizzlies played their normally super-effective starting lineup for close to nine minutes and managed to cut all of one point off the Spurs lead.

The fourth started poorly, with a Danny Green steal setting up a Gary Neal three-pointer. But then Jerryd Bayless did what sixth-men are supposed to do, giving the team a burst of energy and offense by scoring or assisting on three straight buckets to cut he deficit down to three. The rest of the way was a dogfight, with missed free-throws (3-6 down the stretch) and Tony Parker keeping the Grizzlies at bay.

Man of the Match: But with five minutes to go, Mike Conley put the team on his back. A lefty scoop lay-up brought the Grizzlies within two, then a bounce feed to Marc Gasol on the baseline sent Gasol to the line to tie it up. The Spurs rebuilt a four-point lead, but Conley sliced it in half with a jitterbugging drive down the lane. Down three with under a minute to go, Conley got a feed from Jerryd Bayless on the left elbow extended and knocked down a long one to tie the game.

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Sports Sports Feature

Memphis Grizzlies: Bigs & Balance

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The Memphis 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 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 the deal, but he did re-engage the season’s challenge.

“Have I been emotional about the trade? Yes,” Hollins said. “But I don’t want it to be taken that I can’t move forward and for my players to take it that I can’t move forward. Because I have and I will. And I expect them to.”

This “calming-the-waters” address was at once emotional, positive, and tinged with defiance. It was also effective, because an hour later, his team took the floor and replicated that tone in a rousing win over the playoff-seeding rival Golden State Warriors, launching a three-game winning streak going into the break and ushering the post-trade malaise out of the organization.

This winning streak brought the Grizzlies to 4-2 post-trade. That’s a small sample size and one made even less persuasive given that five of the six games were at home and four of the six were against teams with losing records. But these games still offer a useful glimpse of the way the Grizzlies may play after two trades that turned over more than a third of the team’s roster.

Removing Gay, who, over the course of the season, has led the team in minutes and used — via shot attempts, assists, and turnovers — nearly a quarter of the team’s possessions while on the floor, created a huge hole in the team’s offense. And replacement small-forward Tayshaun Prince was never going to — really, was never meant to — fill it.

The idea was that Prince would use his possessions more efficiently while fostering better overall team play on the offensive end. Though six games post-trade, so far so good.

There was some thought that the extra touches freed up by Gay’s departure would shift heavily to Zach Randolph, but that has not been the case so far. Randolph’s usage rate since the trade has held steady, and while he’s rebounded from his historically rough January, his still-all-star-level production this season hasn’t come with much that would convince onlookers he can still put a team on his back the way he did two seasons ago.

Instead, these extra touches have essentially been dispersed, with Gasol leading all starters in usage rate since the trade. Fittingly, exchanging an offense driven by a turnover-prone isolation scorer in Gay for one driven by the team’s most talented combo passer/scorer in Gasol has had a dramatic impact.

Prior to the trade, the Grizzlies’ team assist ratio and overall offensive production had both fallen to the bottom third of the NBA. In the six games since the trade, against a pretty solid array of defenses, the team has notched an assist ratio that would be in the league’s top five and an overall scoring rate that would be approaching the top 10. People worried about replacing Gay’s team-leading 17 points per game, but, in reality, Gay’s low-efficiency ball dominance may have been a drag on the offense.

For the past few seasons, the over-emphasized question for the Grizzlies has been: Randolph or Gay? The answer, unsurprisingly, may turn out to be Gasol.

Gasol is probably a slightly more prolific scorer on the (left) block than he is in the high post. There, he can score with rumbling hooks and short turnaround jumpers and is more likely to draw fouls. But the team’s overall offense seems to function best with Gasol stationed around the free-throw line, where he can direct the offense out of the high post or form a pick-and-roll partnership with Conley.

Here, Gasol can send bounce passes to backdoor cutters or set up frontcourt mates — namely Randolph — for low-post attempts. If that’s not there, Gasol can simultaneously deliver the ball to curling shooters — primarily Conley — while hip-checking their defender to free them up for open jumpers. And if he can’t make a play for someone else, Gasol can torch defenses with his own near-50 percent mid-range shooting.

While Conley’s individual production has not been as strong as it was in his unsustainably superb November, the team’s offensive performance with him on the floor has been nearly as good, and he’s combined solid shooting with his best assist ratio of the season.

While the early returns on the team’s post-trade offense have been very encouraging, there’s some concern on the other end, where the team’s once-elite defense has slipped a little. The post-trade defensive efficiency would still land the Grizzlies in the league’s top 10 but several spots lower than the overall second-place rank for the season.

The conventional wisdom after the trade was that the Grizzlies would miss Gay’s scoring and shot creation, but they would become even more solid on the defensive end. But Gay’s defense may have been as underrated as his offense was overrated, and exchanging Gay’s minutes on the wing for aging Prince and physically weak Austin Daye has drained the team of some dynamism on that end. An even bigger concern may be Gasol. The team’s defensive efficiency with Gasol on the floor, while still very good, has slipped each month, and the Grizzlies need Gasol, even with an expanded offensive load, to get back to the all-NBA-caliber defense he displayed earlier in the season.

Still, the balance the team has displayed before the trade is more promising going forward than the all-defense/no-offense game the team had played for much of the previous two months. And the realistic goal before the trade — not “winning a title,” which was always loose talk, but fielding a competitive playoff team — seems just as realistic now.