Lakers On The Verge Of An 0-3 Road Trip
Lakers play Memphis tonight, their last game on their three-game road trip.
Letting winnable games slip through their fingers has been the norm for the Lakers on the road. They can’t seem to make the right play at the right time, and like blood in the water, the home team smells their ineptitude, seizes upon their fragility, and wrestles away any hope of success while gloating at the Lakers suffering. Tonight, the Lakers have a near impossible task of trying to solve the Memphis Grizzlies defense, best in the NBA, when they have such atrocious habits on offense.
But, the Lakers are a gutty little team that gives effort and wants to win despite not having the pieces to do so. They’ll approach this last game of the road trip the same way they approached the first game of the road trip. As Wayne Ellington said earlier in the week, “players are playing for jobs.” That alone gives them a sense of urgency to push through these last six weeks with something positive to put on the resume for when they go job hunting in three months.
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The Grizzlies are the second best team in the Western Conference but they are unique in this era of NBA analytics and small-ball. Their pace is slow, they deliver the ball to the inside, they don’t drown their opponents in three point shots, they contest all shooters and they don’t have one dominant talent that teams fear. Their defense is spectacular, very old school, which, from an aesthetic point of view, makes a lot of their games boring as hell to watch as the Grizzlies muck the game up with their physicality and hand grabbing, something the refs let no other team get away with.
The Grizzlies grab and push and slow down whoever they are playing because they have figured out that most players in this era don’t like to be manhandled, they get annoyed. So, there will be a lot of the familiar, a steady diet of their bad-boy theatrics, the we-are-here- to-win-the-fight so don’t even think of making that jump shot without me whacking you brand of basketball. It works for them. They are on pace for a 58 win season.
If the Lakers follow their script, they will compete and play hard. Jeremy Lin will have nice numbers. Jordan Clarkson will rebound from his mediocre game at Miami. Ed Davis will show Memphis they made a mistake getting rid of him. Wayne Ellington will continue to make his case for a roster spot next year. Robert Sacre and Ryan Kelly will be atrocious. And the Lakers will bungle the last two minutes of the fourth quarter.
The Tanking Circus rolls on.
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