Next Day Notes: Grizzlies 94, Hawks 88

Larry Kuzniewski

Tony Allen’s trail of chaos and destruction was a big reason the Grizzlies beat the Atlanta Hawks Sunday night.

In what might have been the Tony Allen Game to end all Tony Allen Games (more on that later, in as many Vines as I can possibly think of to cram into this post), the Grizzlies knocked off the Eastern-Conference-leading Atlanta Hawks, 94–88, in a Sunday matinee that was even more in the mud (oh, the ever-present mud in which the Grizzlies find themselves—whether we want them there or not) than observers expected it to be.

It was a close game between two very, very good teams. The Hawks were coming off a win over the Golden State Warriors in Atlanta on Friday night, and spent the last 48 hours being The Best Team In The League, until they rolled into Memphis. I don’t think tonight’s game settled any kind of debate about which team was better (the Grizzlies’ win means they split the season series with the Hawks 1–1, with the home team winning both games) but if it all works out so that the Hawks and Grizzlies meet each other again in a 7-game series in June, I don’t think anyone would complain.

Tony Allen, though: Tony Allen was everywhere, creating chaos on both ends of the floor (most of it good), getting his hands on the basketball when no one expected it (least of all the hapless Atlanta players who had to stand around and watch the Tony Allen First Down Dance), being really smart about when to cut to the basket for a rebound whenever his defender helped off of him too far. Allen’s rebounding alone kept the Griz afloat during a second-quarter scoring drought, taking advantage of the Hawks’ lackluster defensive rebound to generate new possessions at critical moments.

And really, after the game, coach Dave Joerger talked a little bit about how coming off the bench makes Allen’s job even tougher than starting: he plays with more guys, and he has to guard more guys (and the lineup switching was all over the place last night on both sides, as both coaches tried to out-Popovich each other). So last night’s TA performance was one for the ages, and his disruptive defense (though he certainly wasn’t the only one playing disruptive defense) was a difference maker in a big win over a marquee opponent.

Game Notes

➭ Zach Randolph got his double-double despite being in a tough paint battle (in which the refs were most definitely “letting them play”) with Al Horford and Paul Millsap. Atlanta is one of the few teams in the league with a frontcourt big enough and tough enough to go toe-to-toe with the Griz, and last night the Griz came out on top. Marc Gasol got in on the double-double action, too, but he was clearly a focus of the Atlanta defense, and when the team’s scoring dried up at times he was trying to do too much, trying to carry the team on his back against an opponent very determined not to let that happen. In the end, both guys had good nights but not great ones, and that turned out to be what the Griz needed from them.

[jump]

Larry Kuzniewski

➭ Mike Conley hit some huge shots last night, deciding that he didn’t care what the situation was or how much pressure was involved. He showed a great deal of, well, fortitude and continued his reign as Clutch Conley on Sunday. Matched up against Jeff Teague, another of the league’s great point guards who ends up terminally underrated because of the glut of exceptional floor generals in the NBA right now, Conley had 21 points, 6 assists, 3 rebounds and 3 steals—but 9 of those 21 came in the 9:36 Conley played in the 4th quarter, including two big (huge, really) three-pointers he hit to keep the Grizzlies ever so slightly ahead of the Hawks down the stretch.

Clutch Conley has been a major factor for the Grizzlies this year. The bigger the game, the bigger the moment, the more important the shot, the more Mike Conley wants to take it. Back during the Bad Old Days right around the Rudy Gay trade, the question used as shorthand for “the Griz never should have traded that guy” was “Who’s going to take the last shot now?” And while some people have thought (and still think) that it’s Zach Randolph, to me, Conley was then and is now that guy: he’s the one with icewater in his veins who will do whatever he needs to do to get that last bucket, whether it’s take a 3, make a floater in the lane, or even get pummeled under the basket and earn a trip to the free throw line. Conley is that guy, and he’s becoming more and more the team’s last-shot gunner with each game like the one he had last night.

➭ Tony Allen will rightfully get a lot of spotlight today for the way he played defense last night, but there’s another Grizzly who is doing masterful work on defense right now, especially in isolation situations: Nick Calathes. Calathes has always been a little bit “thefty,” with his court vision and basketball IQ giving him a pretty high steal rate, but this season, now that he’s getting regular minutes, his all-around defense has been pretty spectacular. It doesn’t hurt that Calathes is 6’6″ and big enough to guard guys that Conley and Beno Udrih can’t.

It bears watching to see whether Calathes’ defensive performance can really be sustained over the whole stretch run from All-Star to playoffs, but he’s not doing anything he hasn’t done before—he’s just able to string a lot of these great plays together in a way he couldn’t before, probably just another sign/symptom of adjusting to the NBA game after playing in Europe for so long. At any rate, he’s doing really great stuff, and it’s fun to watch.

Larry Kuzniewski

➭ Jeff Green was not very good, disappearing for most of the game (going 3–10 from the floor) and playing mediocre-at-best defense. But one or two of the shots he did manage to hit were big ones, preserving the Grizzlies’ momentum or slowing Atlanta’s. That’s the kind of performance that Green is going to turn in on some nights; people who watched Green play before he got to Memphis already knew that. He’s not a shooter, by any stretch, so when his path to the basket is taken away there’s not really much for him to do. But, that said, because of FT’s Green had more points in the 4th (5, to be precise) than any Griz but Conley, and (though I don’t put much if any stock in this stat) was a +7 for the night in +/-. Green continues to be a mixed bag, but one that holds a few more treats than tricks.

➭ Been saying this a lot lately, so I’ll keep it brief: Kosta Koufos was great and should be playing more than 15 minutes.

➭ Last but not least, a note of personal defeat. My 10-month-old daughter (who is not named “Tayshauna,” contrary to certain recent radio reports) was a participant in last night’s Infie 500 baby race during halftime. We were thrilled that she was chosen to be a contestant, and spent a lot of time practicing at home to see which toy would be the one most likely to entice her to crawl from the free throw line to half court. Alas, when the time came, she was overwhelmed by the crowd and the noise and decided instead to stare at the (admittedly very shiny) floor and refuse to move at all. Only half the field actually left the starting line, and that’s not counting the one kid who crawled about three feet and turned around and came back. It was not our best family sports outing performance-wise, but it was still pretty hilarious. And, also, if you missed the Jumbotron video of Grizz (the mascot) running a baby-race gambling operation and getting caught, hopefully that ends up on YouTube, because it was hilarious. ^[1]

Tweet of the Night

If I’m going to say last night was an all-time Tony Allen game, the tweet of the night (which is really a Vine of the night) has to be Tony Allen related, right? It only seems fair.

Visual approximation of my dopamine receptors right now. https://t.co/U5LXrwt1Ny

— Ben Brown (@BenTBrown) February 9, 2015

Up Next

Tuesday night Lionel Hollins and the Nets roll into town for the first-ever home game where Hollins is the visiting coach—which is interesting, of course, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it (and certain other newspapers in town will probably have a lot more to say about it). Then Wednesday night the Griz are in Oklahoma City to play the Thunder on a SEGABABA right before the All-Star break, a potential schedule loss if I ever heard of one.