In a fight to stay alive the Memphis Grizzlies fell to the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday for the third time in the series, 104-93. The loss ends the Grizzlies undefeated postseason home record. With a commanding 3-0 lead, the Spurs leave little room for the Grizzlies to pull off an historical upset. Can Zach Randolph release Z-Bo and get the Grizzlies a game four win?
The San Antonio Spurs overtime dominance in game three silenced the crowd in Memphis and dimmed the lights on the Grizzlies playoff future. After blowing an eighteen point lead and allowing Tony Parker to score twenty-six points, the Grizzlies allowed the Spurs to beat their younger opponents for the second time this postseason.
With Monday’s game four approaching, the Grizzlies should consider adjusting their starting lineup, and Zach Randolph needs to release his inner Z-Bo to secure a win.
Randolph finished with 14-points. If this were a regular season game, his performance could be overlooked. But when a team relies on all of its starters to perform at the championship level, Randolph has to put up bigger numbers.
Starting forward Tayshaun Prince hasn’t been performing at the championship level we know he’s capable of. As a Detroit Piston, Prince was a part of a rare championship team, a team that won the 2004 NBA finals with no superstars and no NBA leading scorers. A team similar to the Grizzlies.
The Grizzlies shouldn’t continue to put their playoff future at risk while waiting for Prince to perform better. Removing him from the starting lineup wouldn’t hurt Memphis; would they really miss his two points from game two or his seven points from game three? Probably not.
After game two, Grizzlies Head Coach Lionel Hollins wasn’t convinced that Prince or any other player should be removed from the starting lineup.
“It’s something I’ve thought about. It’s not something I’m ready to do,” Hollins said. “There’s no need at this point to change the starting lineup. We lost an overtime game and we got blown out in a game. We’ve got to play better earlier, and we’ve got to play better later.”
The Grizzlies are no strangers to comebacks; they rallied back from a 0-2 deficit in the first round against the Los Angeles Clippers and forced an upset after winning four straight. But being down 0-3 puts the series in a completely different perspective.
“We went on the road in every series and we lost, we had to come back,” Hollins explained. “We’re at home, and we want to come out and play much more aggressive, much more confident, which teams usually do at home, and as I told our team, being home is not going to win anything for us, we have to go out and play much better.”
Playing better against the Spurs means outscoring them on offense and outrebounding, two winning approaches that the Grizzlies have struggled to do consistently.
