Here’s a good one for your friends who think they know basketball, but maybe don’t follow the day-to-day happenings of the NBA all that closely.
The best record in basketball now belongs to the Memphis Grizzlies, as they had no trouble taking care of the previously undefeated Knicks by a final of 105-95. New York is the only other one-loss team in the league, and only the Spurs, Clippers, Bucks, and Nets have two losses at this early stage in the season.
Memphis might also be the best team in the league period right now, considering that the team’s last three wins have come over Miami, Oklahoma City, and now the Knicks, who had previously looked as solid as anyone from top to bottom. But after coming from behind to take down the Spurs in San Antonio on Thursday, asking for a repeat performance against these Grizzlies was too much.
The Memphis front line was way too much for New York in this one, with a dominant Marc Gasol finishing with 24 points on just 10 shots, and Zach Randolph scoring 20 points and grabbing 15 rebounds. The Grizzlies played a physical game all night long, and it benefited them at the free throw line, where the 10-point advantage they had there was the difference, led by Gasol’s 12-of-13 shooting from the stripe.
Things were chippy between these teams throughout the night, highlighted by J.R. Smith and Jerryd Bayless exchanging an elbow for a shove midway through the second quarter. The dreaded double technicals were called there, but Smith also was called for a flagrant foul in the third quarter for flying in to contest a layup from Tony Allen. It didn’t appear to be anything malicious, as Smith clearly was trying to make a play on the ball, but he did grab Allen’s arm on the follow-through, and the refs may have simply been trying to use that call to get some control of the game.
It probably didn’t help that the play came in the middle of a 19-1 Grizzlies run that put this game away.
It’s way too early to be crowning Conference champions and trying to figure out who would beat whom in a seven-game series come playoff time -- which, by the way, is a solid five months away. But early in the season the Grizzlies have impressed perhaps more than anyone, and if they continue to jell as the season progresses and the team remains injury-free, they certainly have the requisite pieces to compete legitimately with just about anyone. And that’s something no one was saying before the season got started.