Nearly six whole months of gamenights fill an NBA regular season. Plenty of nights are sifted through and forgotten, especially in the earlier stages of the season. It is very easy — and not terribly unreasonable — to write off individual gamenights before Christmas as random occurrences. Many will turn out to be just that: random.
Some results, in the course of time, will acquire more of a shelf life as indicators of what was developing on a roster and in a locker room. This is the point of intrigue the middle of December offers. You might very well be accurate in fingering various pre-Christmas events as random, but the possibility that a given result will unveil the future is what’s endlessly fascinating about the autumnal stages of the NBA regular season.
Friday night, while most of the league’s attention rightly went to Boston — where the Golden State Warriors barely remained undefeated on the season, in a game covered by our partners at The Comeback — the rest of the league popped as well. In several NBA cities — especially those in the South and the Mountain time zone — game results raised fresh questions about the next two months before the All-Star break.
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We start in Memphis, where the Grizzlies — coming off their prayer-fueled victory in Detroit — had a chance to register a statement-making win without need of a lucky long ball. The Charlotte Hornets are now something of a target in the league, so after Memphis received a little help from the basketball gods in The Palace of Auburn Hills, the Grizz — back in The Grindhouse — were given a stage on which to demonstrate their evolution as a team.
Friday’s game started well enough. The Grizzlies, a notoriously choppy and imbalanced offensive team, scored 35 points in the first stanza and gave the impression that they would outflank Charlotte’s steadily improving defense.
In the next two quarters, the Grizzlies failed to score 20 points and allowed the Hornets to score at least 30. Charlotte outscored Memphis in the two middle quarters by a 64-38 margin, taking a 20-point lead into the fourth quarter. Charlotte scored 30 again just to underscore (an ironic word, that) how much the Grizzlies have lost their fastball this season.
Last May, Memphis looked menacing against the Golden State Warriors and forced a 67-win club to dig very deeply on the road to a championship. That series is feeling more and more like the last stand of this franchise as we have known it over the past several years. Can the Grizzlies regain what they have so clearly lost? That’s one big question in the aftermath of Friday’s action.
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We continue to Denver, where the Minnesota Timberwolves — 6-3 on the road entering the night — appeared to be well on their way to a 7-3 mark outside their state’s borders. Coach Sam Mitchell’s team gained a 56-41 lead at halftime, and with Emmanuel Mudiay out with an ankle injury, the Timberwolves gained the added benefit of playing an opponent with a shorter bench at altitude.
Yet, while Jameer Nelson (4-7 three-point shots) and Danilo Gallinari (23 points) performed admirably for the Nuggets down the stretch, the T-Wolves lost the plot at both ends of the floor. Karl-Anthony Towns didn’t get the post touches he needed, and the ball stopped moving for Minnesota. Denver slapped a 59-point second half on the scoreboard, and after the Nuggets prevailed in overtime, Minnesota was saddled with the kind of road loss which reminded the league how young this team still is in its development.
How will the T-Wolves react to this loss, which punctured their identity as a team which closes the sale on the road, especially against inferior oppponents? That’s definitely something to watch in the coming weeks.
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In Salt Lake City, the Utah Jazz hosted the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first game of a home-and-home over the weekend, with the Thunder hosting the return engagement on Sunday. This was the back end of a back-to-back for Oklahoma City, which defeated Atlanta on Thursday night. Utah had Thursday off. Yet, the Thunder — with noted sieve Enes Kanter playing only 24 minutes — were able to find the right combinations at the defensive end of the floor. OKC managed to limit Utah to 42-percent shooting from the field, 29 percent from three-point range. When the Thunder are able to grind out a defense-dominated win on the road, it feels as though they’ve stolen something. Now at 15-8, Oklahoma City gives the appearance of a team which is steadily separating from the mediocre muddle in the middle of the West.
As for the Jazz, another scratchy offensive outing leaves them stuck near the break-even mark. They’re in a playoff position largely because the West has underperformed this season. If any team just below them in the standings gets hot (think of Phoenix finally figuring out how to win close games, or the T-Wolves making the right response to their failure in Denver), the Jazz will have a playoff fight on their hands… even in a season when the New Orleans Pelicans are not going to be in the playoff mix.
Speaking of the Pelicans…
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New Orleans defeated Washington on Friday, 107-105, thanks to 27 points from a long-bombing Tyreke Evans (5 of 6 on threes, joined by Jrue Holiday’s 5-7 shooting line on triples). The performance — and the determination which marked it — were quite admirable. Yet, while the banged-up Wizards try to heal Brad Beal (who sat out the game with a leg injury), we’re left to wonder how costly this win will be for the Pelicans.
It is widely thought in the NBA community that New Orleans’ interests as a franchise are best served by tanking. Yes, it’s a touchy subject. Yes, the idea of (further) amending the rules to disincentivize tanking remains compelling. Nevertheless, the idea that the Pelicans can make the long climb up the ladder in the West (which would require Anthony Davis to play extended minutes, more than he ought to in both short-term and long-term contexts) is tenuous at best. Saving him for the future — when he has a roster capable of making a run at the brass ring — should be part of New Orleans’s thought process.
It’s naturally counterintuitive on an immediate level, but over the long haul, the Pelicans would help themselves by finishing with the second-worst record in the league (after the Sixers). “Beating” the Lakers for “second” might take some doing, but Friday’s win over Washington does not help the cause.
