PHOENIX -- Suns fans will pay to see their team beat up on the Lakers, take on the high-flying Clippers or relive the history between their team and the San Antonio Spurs. But a Wednesday night game against the Memphis Grizzlies? That's one of those nights when the local crowd only went to the rafters because of group ticket sales.
Marc Gasol has the Grizzlies playing like championship contenders
A win against the Phoenix Suns moved Memphis to 5-0 on the year. In an open Western Conference, it only means the Grizzlies are quietly in the hunt for much more than a playoff berth.
Christian Petersen
The slow-it-down Grizzlies aren't a big sell at U.S. Airways Center even though they had won all four games against the Suns last season, the final of which eliminated the NBA's most surprising team from the postseason. The media section, though, was packed with scouts. Coach Jeff Hornacek knew his Suns weren't going to have it easy.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if when the season ends, the team that comes out of the West could be this team,” Hornacek said.
Memphis won 102-91, moving to 5-0 on the young season. While the backcourt of Mike Conley and Courtney Lee lit up Phoenix's hyped backcourt for 46 points and a combined seven made three-pointers, blame center Marc Gasol, the 2013 Defensive Player of the Year, for many of the Suns' problems.
Consider this: Memphis has gone 41-17, winning 71 percent of its games, since Gasol returned from a knee injury last January. That includes four losses from the Grizzlies' first-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Coincidence? Hardly.
Gasol's line read 18 points, six assists and four steals against Phoenix, which is good, but seems like nothing special. Yet it was his dynamic play that carried Memphis on a night Zach Randolph posted a quiet 10 points while struggling defensively against recently-extended Suns forward Markieff Morris.
"We got contributions from a lot of different places," Memphis coach Dave Joerger said."When we got stops and got rebounds we were able to get out and get some easy buckets, which is difficult for us."
Some of Phoenix’s 18 turnovers were self-inflicted, but Gasol had his hand in a number of the bad decisions.
“When you go in there and drive, Marc Gasol, he’s a smart player,” Hornacek said. “He knows when to go to you. When you jump up in the air and don’t convince them you’re going to shoot the ball, you can’t dump it off. They just hedge, they drop down, their weakside guys get on the legs of the bigs. We just had a bunch of careless turnovers.”
Gasol baited Bledsoe and the Suns into bad passes. Here, he deflected a forced pass into the backboard, leading to a fast break.
While the Suns had their focus on the boards and limiting Gasol and Randolph in the paint, Lee and Conley played well off their big men. If it wasn’t Gasol passing it out of the post straight to an open shooter, it was a few swings of the ball that got them good looks.
That, or Memphis surprised Phoenix with backcuts, like it did here. Lee briefly set a screen as the ball swung to Gasol coming up the floor, then cut toward the hoop and took a pretty bounce pass from Gasol to the cup.
Gasol is considered the smartest defensive center in the league and maybe the best passing big in the league, with all due respect to his brother, Pau. If Memphis continues to roll, it’s possible Marc could begin garnering some momentum as a darkhorse MVP candidate.
With Lee getting comfortable after being traded from Boston last season and Quincy Pondexter coming off the bench after missing most of last season, there's enough shooting to complement the big men and survive losing Mike Miller to Cleveland. Memphis has the role players to work with Gasol, Conley and Randolph.
People forget the Grizzlies have been doing this a while, and in a wide open Western Conference, maybe this is their year. Oklahoma City will be fighting to make the playoffs with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook injured. Doc Rivers was already questioning his Clippers' competitiveness after they got blown out in the Bay. Sure, San Antonio will be around by the end of the season.
Why not the Grizzlies?
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