The Memphis Grizzlies Did Their Best To Set The Game Of Basketball Back Decades All In The Span Of 40 Seconds
Listen, I don’t mean to pick on the Grizzlies, they’ve had a pretty brutal year since getting off to their 12-5 start. Seeing as how they’re 18-40 since, that’s sort of self explanatory. But things reached a new low at the end of their game last night against GS when they gave us something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. I mean the game was over so I get why the Warriors weren’t exactly giving a full effort, but can anyone remember a team getting 6 straight wide open looks like this and not coming close on any of them? At some point you would think someone would say enough is enough and just go for the layup or something out of pride. I don’t want to be a Debby Downer or anything but making a three there wasn’t going to make a difference. Instead now we all have the opportunity to point and laugh at their ineptitude.
In some ways, this was a perfect summary of the Grizzlies season. Let’s not forget this is a team that ranks 30th in points per game and 27th in Ortg. When it comes to three point shooting they aren’t much better, coming in at 27th in 3PM and 28th in 3P%. Looking at that you could make the case that this sequence wasn’t all that surprising, but these are still NBA players taking wide open shots, you would think that eventually someone would make one. I know they live by the Grit & Grind mentality but this is maybe taking that a little too far. They do deserve credit for one thing though, that ball movement was on point. If they could bottle up that unselfish style of play and combine it with players that are actually good, well then now you’re cooking.
At first I thought maybe they were just trying to over the spread but they were +11 so that doesn’t really work. I can only imagine how this made J.B. Bickerstaff feel watching this all unfold, and something tells me this will not be making their next film session.
Basketball if often times referred to as a beautiful game, but this most certainly was not a great example of that. Sick league amirite?