Nets – Memphis Flyer

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.

The Grizzlies embark on the second half of the season tonight against a Brooklyn Nets team that’s gone 10-1 in January and is pushing its way up the Eastern Conference standings.

This is likely to be a much tougher test for the newer-look Grizzlies than the Lakers provided Wednesday night.

As always, three thoughts:

LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
Zach Randolph, All-Star

1. Zach Randolph: All-Star: The Grizzlies will welcome Zach Randolph tonight as the franchise’s first two-time All-Star. It was very unclear how All-Star selections were going to shake out for the Grizzlies this year. It could have been Randolph or Marc Gasol or both or neither. Any of those outcomes would have been defensible, with the final three spots presumably coming down to five worthy candidates — Randolph, LaMarcus Aldridge, and David Lee, who all made it, and Gasol and Stephen Curry, who did not.

Prior to yesterday’s announcement, I did a quick survey of media picks around the web. Of the 11 I found, only one — CBSSports.com’s Ken Berger — had no Grizzlies on the team. Two — ESPN.com’s Marc Stein and Ethan Sherwood Strauss — picked both Randolph and Gasol. And the other eight all had Gasol making it over Randolph. Still, I wasn’t surprised the coaches went the other way. Randolph’s per-game stats (16-12-1) are a little more impressive than Gasol’s (13-7-4), and Randolph has the easily digestible pegs of “second in the league in rebounding” and “first in the league in double-doubles.” For Randolph, it’s an outside affirmation of his full return from last season’s knee injury.

Gasol’s offense has waned along with the team’s over the past month, but his chief calling card is his rock-solid but rarely flamboyant defense, where he anchors the conference’s best unit. The choices of Joakim Noah and Tyson Chandler in the East proves the coaches don’t ignore defense for the sake of scoring averages, but in Gasol’s case, with so much worthy competition, his subtle excellence on that end wasn’t enough.

Gasol will be matched up tonight with another “snub” in Nets center Brook Lopez, who is having a bounce-back season with the Nets, averaging 19 points a game on 52% shooting.