Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Denver Recap 3.12.08

Memphis started out playing like a team that wanted to make a statement. The statement ended up being that the Grizzlies are a terrible team.

After opening the game 14-2 Memphis couldn't hold the lead until the end of the quarter, being outscored 8-21 the rest of the way to trail 23-22. Memphis' cold streak continued into the second quarter when the team could only score 14 points. That means that after the hot start the Grizzlies 22 points the rest of the half. Denver scored 23 pts in each of the first two quarters.

When the Grizzlies finally refound some offense the game was over as Denver scored 38 pts in the third quarter to leave the fourth quarter for the scrubs. There were two positives to take from this game. First our scrubs were better than Denver's as we outscored the Nuggets 28-24 in the final quarter.

Second, when on vacation in Colorado and people at the sports bar find out you are from Memphis and cheer for the Grizzlies they will buy you a lot of drinks in sympathy. Too bad I only drink sodas! Now I will be up all night thinking about how embarrassed I was at the bar.

If you look hard enough there were some bright spots. Hakim Warrick had three assists. Juan Carlos Navarro scored 16 points off the bench. Mike Miller, Javaris Crittenton and Hak hit all of their free throws.

The negatives were Mike Miller leading the team in rebounding with Navarro second against the big front line of Denver (Camby, Kenyon Martin and Carmello). Rudy played only 18 minutes and failed to reach double figures for the first time in a long while. The team shot 35% from the floor, 20% from the arc and below 70% from the line and their offense was a bright spot. I lost count at 10 but there were a lot of dunks by Denver last night. You probably won't see them on ESPN but there were a lot. Darko only played 9 minutes but I didn't see him get hurt. In the recap they mentioned he hurt his foot.

All in all another pathetic effort and a unfortunate outcome. Denver has been promoting that the team only has 19 games left in the regular season and they are going to give each one of them a playoff effort. It would be nice to see that type of effort from the Grizzlies in one of their remaining 18 games.

BallHype: hype it up!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

ive gotten on here before with the same question but after reading the CA recap I have to bring it up again.

why can't our team shoot the ball? what is the deal?

i can't believe that there's some major talent gap. these guys are in the NBA for a reason, right? these "professional" basketball players have been playing quite a bit to be shooting like they are. all i can think is that it's mental/a confidence factor.

i dont know- just thought i'd rant...

Anonymous said...

I certainly don't like that it ended up going down that way, but I do love how you've worded your intro.

Anonymous said...

where in colorado are you on vacation?

Joshua Coleman said...

ht said: why can't our team shoot the ball? what is the deal?

ht, I think something you have to look at in conjunction with their poor FG% is the lack of assists they average. Unassisted FG's = one-on-one play. Lack of both assists and made FG's = far too much one-on-one play.

I'm still not sure if it is a lack of familiarity between teammates or a lack of trust, but it seems that very few of them understand how to get the ball in to players in a good scoring position. That leads to players trying to break down their opponents with the shot clock running down, often resulting in challenged shot attempts.

Chip Crain said...

I'm in Aspen on vacation. Actually Snowmass if you want to be technical.

Thanks for asking and yes it is snowing like mad here and the slopes are incredible. A really great year to be skiing, at least compared to being in Memphis.