Tag: Quincy Pondexter

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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

Road Recap: Grizzlies 105, Pistons 91 — The Real Return of Quincy Pondexter

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Quincy Pondexter made a promising return last night in Detroit.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Quincy Pondexter made a promising return last night in Detroit.

After a sleepy first quarter in the which the Grizzlies turned the ball over seven times and allowed 30 points to the Detroit Pistons, the team revved up its defensive intensity significantly, overwhelming the Pistons in the heart of the game with a 62-30 run in the second and third quarters.

Fourteen steals and seven blocks helping foster 24 fastbreak points was vintage Grizzlies basketball. Twenty-nine assists on 45 made field goals and balanced shooting (10 players with between five and 11 field-goal attempts) is new-look Grizzlies basketball. Put opportunistic defense and sharp, share-the-ball offense together and you get a blowout road win. (Extended garbage time made the final score look more reasonable.)

The best takeaways from the win, though, were the performances of Quincy Pondexter and Ed Davis. Pondexter got a few minutes in the penultimate game before the break, but didn’t look good. With a little more rehab/recovery time, Pondexter came back last night in true game shape. He knocked down a corner three, notched three steals, and was probably as effective on both ends as any Grizzlies player on the way to 10 points on 4-6 shooting in 22 minutes. Pondexter is both a better corner-three threat and a more physical, aggressive defender than either Tayshaun Prince or Austin Daye. His return will be very helpful for the Grizzlies and if he plays well, I think he could become a frequent fixture in closing lineups.

As for Davis, he got his longest run since joining the team — something abetted by the blowout — and was very productive, with 14 points on 6-7 shooting, four rebounds, and four blocks in 21 minutes. Davis showed his stronger-than-he-looks physicality with the blocks and power dunks and hit two of three on short jumpers that are more effective than fluid. He brings a different dimension to the team’s frontcourt rotation and hopefully this performance can help ease him into a larger role.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

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

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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Beyond the Arc Sports

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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Beyond the Arc Sports

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.