- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- O.J. Mayo exploded for 17 points in the fourth quarter to help down the Jazz.
The Lead: After losing in San Antonio on Thursday night, the Grizzlies were facing a closing schedule in which they’ll likely be favored in every contest. But while the Grizzlies are fighting for homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs, this home game against a Utah Jazz team fighting just to get into the playoffs was what John Calipari might have called a “danger game.”
The Jazz had beaten the Grizzlies in the two previous games of the season series. Maybe it’s their depth of size. Maybe it’s the ghost of Jerry Sloan still gumming things up. Maybe it’s that the Jazz might be the only team that chooses to start their road games with their offense on the Grizzlies’ bench end of the court. (Okay, maybe that just disorients me.) Whatever it is, the Jazz have been a tough opponent for the Grizzlies this season. And this game was no different.
The Grizzlies trailed 51-50 at the half, with the Jazz’s three primary bigs — Al Jefferson, Paul Millsap, and Derrick Favors — combining for 28 points on 14-22 shooting, and some careless turnovers negating some of the Grizzlies’ own good shooting.
In the third quarter, the Jazz built their largest lead — 72-66 — with a big lineup that shifted starting power forward Millsap over to small forward and put second-year man-child Favors in the middle next to Jefferson. The Jazz trailed by three midway through the quarter when they went to this lineup and reeled off a 9-0 run after going big, with Rudy Gay understandably struggling to check Millsap on the block.
The Grizzlies still trailed by six early in the fourth quarter, but began a 31-20 closing run with the insertion of Dante Cunningham. Cunningham played only seven minutes in the game, but six of those came in the fourth quarter when he was summoned to match-up with Millsap at small forward. And even when the Jazz went back to a conventional lineup a minute later, the Griz stayed with Cunningham against the even bigger Favors.
“Dante did a really nice job with his quickness and activity,” Lionel Hollins said. “We were able to play the pick-and-rolls better.”
Cunningham helped spur better energy defensively, then O.J. Mayo got hot, this symbolic baton handoff made literal in a sequence three minutes into the quarter when Cunningham harassed Favors into consecutive point-blank misses and then fought him for a defensive rebound that was quickly converted into a pull-up transition three from Mayo. Coming out of a subsequent timeout, the Cunningham defensive rebound/Mayo three sequence repeated itself to give the Grizzlies their first lead since early in the third quarter.
With the game tied 86-86 at the 4:27 mark, Mayo kept scoring, but Rudy Gay took the handoff for a series of big plays on both ends of the floor: Blocking Favors at the rim on one end and getting an offensive rebound off a missed Gasol free-throw at the other end that set up a Mayo lay-up. Hitting a straight-away three-pointer to bump the lead from one to four with just over two minutes to go. Stealing the ball on a possession where the Jazz had a chance to tie or take a lead and drawing a foul in transition. Finally hitting two free throws to push the lead from three to five with 11.6 to play and all but seal the game.
