Warriors put Grizzlies in tough spot
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Ja Morant called it “a layup I normally make all the time.”
Jaren Jackson Jr. said, “It’s a shot he can make in his sleep.”
Brandon Clarke thought it was going in but also thought it was “a tough shot … and he would have had to be perfect.”
Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry agreed, praising how Klay Thompson came over to help, to avoid a repeat of what Morant had done to the Minnesota Timberwolves just four days earlier on this very same basket. Thompson, meanwhile, let out a sigh of relief Sunday, lingering on the court as Morant lingered underneath the basket, each one processing the Warriors’ 117-116 Game 1 win over the Memphis Grizzlies at FedExForum their own way.
“I know it’s not the championship,” Thompson said, “but it’s a pretty huge win for us.”
“Onto the next,” Morant said. This was an opening act with potential ramifications that depended on the eye of the beholder, and particularly the Grizzlies.
They were convinced this was a wildly entertaining start to a long series, a beginning that mirrors what Memphis just went through in its first-round matchup with Minnesota. But it could be a wildly entertaining missed opportunity because Golden State hasn’t lost a playoff series in which it won Game 1 since the 2016 NBA Finals, a series whose momentum coincidentally swung on a Draymond Green flagrant foul.
It was a game in which Memphis got the best postseason performance of Jackson’s career, 34 points from Morant and De’Anthony Melton’s redemptive return to the rotation. It was a game in which the Grizzlies hit more 3-pointers than Golden State. It was a game in which they played a lot more like the team that stampeded to the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference again. But it was a game they lost.
It was a game in which Golden State scored more second-chance points than the Grizzlies, scored more points in the paint than the Grizzlies, scored more points in transition than the Grizzlies, and won many of the categories the Grizzlies were expected to dominate coming into this series.
So it was a game they lost.
A game when so much they couldn’t have expected to happen did, and so much they were counting on didn’t. A game nonetheless decided by one point and one missed layup that Morant made thousands of times before, according to Jackson.
“The film will show that this team is definitely beatable,” Melton declared.
Memphis has to believe that. It should believe that. It did enough in Game 1 to believe that.
There are plenty of adjustments to make. Move Xavier Tillman Sr. out of the starting lineup. Get back Steven Adams from the NBA’s health and safety protocols to shore up the glass. Play Morant more than 38 minutes and Bane more than 32. Trim the rotation back down to seven or eight rather than nine or 10. Don’t give up so many open looks.
The Grizzlies can’t dwell on the first chance that slipped through their grasp. Not with a supersized Game 2 that will either give Golden State a commanding series lead or create the uber-competitive clash Sunday felt like, between a veteran-laden group trying to scale the mountaintop once more and a young nucleus in the midst of its first major climb.
That’s why Green’s ejection late in the first half loomed so large, beyond his theatrics leaving the court. When he raked Clarke across the face and dragged him out of the air by his jersey, it gave Memphis an opening but also the sense that this couldn’t go to waste.
The play was also subject to differing opinions.
Green said on an “emergency edition” of a podcast recorded from his Memphis hotel room – yes, you read that right – “I actually tried to hold (Clarke) up.”
Clarke had another take. “He’s been known for flagrant fouls in his career. I’ve watched him on TV my whole life it feels like, so I wasn’t really shocked,” he said. “He did hit me pretty hard twice.”
Here, though, is the conclusion that matters most, the one that determined how Game 1 played out once all of FedEx Forum chanted “Throw him out” and Green finally went to the locker room.
“Our team showed,” Green said, “we’re battle-tested.”
So the Warriors surged after halftime, and Jordan Poole exploded perhaps even more than Jackson, and then Golden State built a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter.
When Memphis took the lead back three times in the final three minutes, when Thompson missed two late free throws, the Warriors didn’t buckle like Minnesota did so often in the first round.
And when those final moments arrived, Memphis didn’t just miss one layup at the buzzer. It gave up three offensive rebounds before Thompson’s game-winning 3-pointer, and Curry blocked Morant on the possession before.
Morant took 31 shots and 11 3-pointers to get as part of another near tripledouble, and Thompson indicated that played right into Golden State’s defensive plans. Yet Morant roamed the court more freely than any game in the first round, looking as bouncy and electric as ever.
There’s solace in that perspective, in how close Memphis got. But there is also one certainty now for these Grizzlies.
They can’t leave it up for interpretation Tuesday (9:30 ET, TNT), or else this beginning will begin to feel like the beginning of the end.