Once deemed a dark horse team to win the NBA Championship and left as the lone competition for Golden State for the top in the Western Conference, the Memphis Grizzlies have fallen off their pedestal. They started the season 37-12 but are just 12-9 since.
What’s interesting is that the Wizards defense hasn’t fallen off. They were and still are the best defensive team in the NBA, allowing just 95.7 points per game. So how come they’ve been so average over the last month and what’s holding this team back from reaching its full potential in the Western Confernce?
Mike Conley
This is the player who has to pick up his level of play if the Grizzlies are going to get where they need to go. Conley, in three of the Grizzlies’ four losses last week, shot no better than 4-of-11 from the field. He went through games in which he shot 2-for-11 and 4-of-14. He has not been a reliable three-point shooter, which is why defenses will continue to play him to shut off dribble penetration and force him to hit jump shots. The proof is in the pudding: before the All-Star break, he had been averaging 16.9 points per game while shooting 40.1% from three but since the break, he’s averaging 13.8 points while hitting 30.8% from distance.
This is part of Memphis’ larger problem as a team but Conley handles the ball so much that his jumper is particularly important to the Grizzlies’ fortunes. Conley knows where he needs to improve – it’s simply a matter of him getting back on track.
Stagnant (Fourth) Quarters
It is never good to score under 19 points in a quarter but Memphis has done so a lot over the course of this eight-game stretch in which it has treaded water at .500. The Grizzlies have scored under 19 points in at least one quarter of each of their five most recent losses. Last week in Washington, they did it twice (in the second and fourth quarters).
What’s worse is that the Griz have scored 13 points in the fourth quarter in the loss to Sacramento, 17 points in the fourth quarter in the loss to the Los Angeles Clippers and 16 in the fourth against Washington. When bad quarters hit, it’s never ideal, but awful fourth quarters will be especially devastating for a team.
On a greater scale, their offense has really tailed off. They had been averaging 100.6 points per game before the All-Star break, which was good for 15th in the NBA. However, they’ve scored just 92.9 this month and haven’t scored more than 102 points in a game since Jan. 27. While their defense continues to hold up, their offense is hurting them in the worst way. This wasn’t supposed to be the case after they acquired Jeff Green.
Three-Point Shooting
This has been the longstanding problem for the Grizzlies over the past several years. The big men, Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, have things taken care of in the paint. However, the perimeter shooters have always been lacking and until the Grizzlies get more help from this part of basketball, they’re not going to be as successful as they want to be. On the season, the Grizzlies hit just five 3-pointers per game, which is the second-fewest in the NBA. Only Minnesota has less. This month, it’s been even worse as the Grizzlies are down to 3.9 per outing.
In four of five losses last week, they hit no more than three treys, having attempted at least 11 of them in each of those games, which is part of the other problem. They’re still shooting a bunch but they’re not connecting as their 33.1% three-point field goal percentage ranks them 23rd in the NBA. It’s tough because they can’t make any more additions to the roster but somebody on this team has to step up and get them some extra points from distance.
