A question I’ve been asked by friends, fans, and readers surprisingly often is: going into the Western Conference Finals, did the Grizzlies lose whatever magic made them so dominant in the first two series? How did they lose their mojo?
May 27, 2013; Memphis, TN, USA; Memphis Grizzlies center Marc Gasol (33) reacts after game four of the Western Conference finals of the 2013 NBA Playoffs against the San Antonio Spurs at FedEx Forum. The Spurs won 93-86. Mandatory Credit: Spruce Derden-USA TODAY Sports
Perhaps I’m just no fun, but I personally don’t believe that “mojo” was ever involved. The Grizzlies looked really great against the Thunder because they figured out how to shut the Thunder’s offense down hard (please see: this wonderful breakdown of Memphis’ defense on Durant). Plus, as it turns out, the biggest problem for the Thunder without Westbrook was their defense. Memphis looked so good in part because they were actually scoring against the Thunder, but the biggest factor in Memphis’ scoring was the Thunder’s confusion on the defensive end, not a vague sense of Memphis finally getting in rhythm.
Offensively, the Thunder just didn’t have any real threats other than Durant, so Memphis could successfully shut them down by literally sending every man his way. It was painful to watch. OKC built its set offense around Durant-Westbrook pick and rolls, and without those, the Thunder were just left with various iso sets, which do not work against Memphis.
But more importantly, Westbrook’s athleticism gave the Thunder a fairly wide margin for mistakes on the high pick and roll: if Russ lost the opposing point guard for a moment, he could always catch back up. No big deal. That kind of flexibility on the pick and roll defense has a lot of repercussions: big men can sag off of screens, wing defenders (like Durant) don’t necessarily have to help where they normally would. Without Westbrook, the Thunder lost the ability to defend like they were used to defending, and it led to a lot of really basic communication mistakes when trying to execute a defensive set that they’d never had to execute before.
The Grizz would generally run a high Conley-ZBo or Conley-Marc pick and roll, with either Z-Bo rolling into the lane or Marc playing the elbow facilitator for a curling Conley, respectively. The Thunder got blitzed by a lot of this action: either the wing defender wouldn’t help on a rolling Z-Bo while Ibaka was trying to contain Conley, or Ibaka would focus on Z-Bo and Conley would lose Reggie Jackson for the shot, or the Gasol action would force all kinds of rotations that the Thunder were just not accustomed to.
Conley, Marc, and Z-Bo all had offensive efficiency’s greater than 96 points per 100 possessions. Not even really league average, but downright impressive for the Grizz in the playoffs.
So, if Memphis looked like they lost their “magic” against the Spurs, it’s only because the Spurs were a better team who didn’t give the Grizzlies what they would need to just plain old look good.
In direct contrast to the Thunder, the Spurs found ways to execute against even the tightest Grizzlies defense. Whereas against OKC, the Grizzlies’ defense was already good but was further bolstered by the Thunder’s poor offense, against San Antonio, the Grizz’s D was normally fantastic, but was made to look silly by the Spurs’ incredible execution.
Watch this pass off of an offensive rebound from Duncan to Danny Green:
Memphis does a great job here of recovering to defend the second chance after Duncan’s OREB. Green loses Allen on the backdoor cut, but Marc does a wonderful job of recognizing that A) Green is cutting and B) that Z-Bo has got Splitter locked up. Marc concedes Duncan a little room towards Splitter as an outlet pass, but otherwise keeps Green’s passing lane locked down.
Duncan makes the pass anyway.
That was basically Memphis’ defense against the Spurs in a nutshell. Almost everything was done right, the Spurs just scored anyway.
Then, on the defensive end, the Spurs were lockdown. I’m not going to spend too much time on this, because I’ve already talked about it extensively here, but the Grizzlies could not execute offensively against a team that was not only not bad at defense, but was in fact really good and really good particularly against the Grizz.
The reason Memphis looked so much more out of sync against San Antonio was that they were more out of sync, but not because they didn’t get enough sleep or because they were rattled or anything like that. Memphis lost not as a function of losing their rhythm, or their mojo, but as a function of simply having played a better team.