Blazers Can’t Keep Up With Grizzlies on the Road

SB Nation

The Portland Trail Blazers fell 119-96 to the Memphis Grizzlies in a game that Memphis led since early in the first quarter. While the Blazers made a third quarter push that brought the deficit to single

digits, the Grizzlies kept their foot on the gas and managed to quell the Portland run.

The Blazers were led in scoring by Jerami Grant’s 21 points. Shaedon Sharpe and Deni Avdija followed with 17 points each. Rookie center Yang Hansen made his first NBA start and finished with a 4-point, 5-rebound 2-assist performance. There were some obvious growing pains, including 4 fouls in 8 minutes in the first half, but he was able to put together a respectable second half while playing through foul trouble.

Memphis was led by three bench contributors as Santi Aldama, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Jock Landale scored 22 points, 16 points, and 15 points, respectively.

Here are some more key takeaways from the game.

Yang Hansen

As I briefly mentioned earlier, Yang put together a pretty good showing in the second half of his first career start while Donovan Clingan (left leg contusion) and Robert Williams III (illness) were both out. The first half was a different story. The big man found himself in foul trouble early and often, and it limited him to just eight minutes in the half. His matchup against second-year center Zach Edey proved to be a difficult one. Edey, who excels at drawing foul calls, gave Yang a hard time in the first half.

It wasn’t a transcendent game or anything, but Yang had a promising bounceback in the second half. He looked renewed and like he forgot his struggles entirely, a promising trait in a young player.

Questionable Reffing

If you watched the Blazers’s broadcast late in the game, you heard Jason Benetti, filling in for Kevin Calabro, and Lamar Hurd rip on the reffing for a couple minutes straight. While Portland had 27 fouls to the 25 fouls of Memphis, the free throw disparity was 39-18 in favor of the Grizzlies. That alone is a jarring number, but the most questionable moment of reffing was not a foul called, but rather one missed.

Early in the fourth quarter, Yang drove to the basket through physical defense from Edey. He was hit in the face by Edey’s arm, lost control of the ball and fell to the ground. The ref closest to the play called out of bounds off the Blazers, and it seemed like Portland was going to challenge the call to try and get the foul recognized. Instead, the officiating crew allowed Memphis to inbound the ball while Yang laid face down on the court and had Sidy Cissoko checking on him. The result was an easy Grizzlies basket in the resulting 5-on-3 possession, and a subsequent technical foul on Tiago Splitter when he confronted the refs about the puzzling decision.

Now, that was just one play and a correct call likely still leads to a Portland loss. However, it was potentially a five-point swing when it was a 10-point game at the time. Being down 8 points with 10 minutes to play is a lot more manageable than being down 13.

Short Center Rotation

The absence of Clingan and Williams led to Yang’s start, but it also led to a healthy dose of Duop Reath minutes. Reath played 19 minutes in the game and finished with 12 points. His 3/4 shooting from deep made him an outside threat that Portland desperately needed at times during the contest.

However, the lack of Clingan and Williams was noticeable on the boards. Portland got outrebounded 65-47 and allowed 16 offensive rebounds in the contest. That led to 19 second-chance points for Memphis that helped them survive a below-average shooting night.

No Deni Heroics

We’ve gotten used to incredible games and gaudy numbers from Avdija this season. It makes a very respectable 17-point, 7-rebound, 7-assist game on good efficiency look fairly pedestrian in comparison. While it was still a good performance, Avdija was not able to single-handedly keep Portland in this game like he has at points this season. Getting just three shots at the free throw line didn’t help either. Memphis did a good job mitigating his impact in the scoring column as well as keeping him off the line.

Way Behind Early

After a pretty average start from both teams saw the Grizzlies take a 10-7 early lead, Memphis just completely took over the game. They rattled off a 20-3 run to go up 20 points nine minutes into the contest. What followed was a roughly 20-point deficit that the Blazers faced for most of the game.

Portland did make a major push with a 16-1 run to open the second half. That put them down just five points with eight minutes to play in the third quarter. However, the Grizzlies weathered the storm and retained the momentum, putting the Blazers down double-digits again with four minutes remaining in the third quarter. The lead would never fall back below ten points again as Memphis cruised to a 23-point win.