The Memphis Grizzlies 3-point defensive struggles reappear in ugly loss at Oklahoma City Thunder

The Memphis Grizzlies lost in an ugly game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, allowing a young team decimated by injuries to score 128 points.

It was the exact opposite of what most fans expected. In fact, most people would have thought this would be an easy win for the Grizzlies. No matter what the circumstances were, this should have been a comfortable win for Memphis.

Oklahoma City was bound to have some no-name players scoring at a high clip, as they were without most of their key contributors. The only top player that remained healthy was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had a great game.

The Memphis Grizzlies defense could not stop 3-pointers from falling on Sunday

But that’s something that nobody can be upset about. Rather, the upsetting part of this game was watching the Thunder putting on a 3-point showcase.

Most notably, rookie Aleksej Pokusevski was raining threes on the Grizz all night. A guy who just shot his first free throw in the NBA a couple of days ago finished the game with 23 points with 5 made threes and Taylor Jenkins didn’t seem to have an answer for him.

It brought us back to a couple of weeks ago, when the Grizzlies couldn’t defend a 3-pointer if their lives depended on it. Last time this happened, Memphis allowed the Phoenix suns to drop the same point total of 128 in a 31-point loss.

It seemed like Taylor Jenkins’ team had finally figured out their 3-point defense issues up until tonight, but it’s clearly not something that has been completely fixed. Yes, Jaren Jackson Jr.‘s return will help, but that’s not all that it will take.

Memphis has to start making in-game adjustments. The problem isn’t necessarily the 3-point defense anymore, it’s Jenkins’ stubbornness to start defending against long-range buckets.

The entire game, Memphis seemed to be overcommitting down low against a Thunder team that couldn’t match the Grizzlies talent at the power forward and center positions. In fact, the only threatening part about this Thunder team on Sunday was their 3-point shot.

That being said, the Grizzlies cannot be held accountable for allowing this team to make all of their threes. In fact, for a stretch in the 4th quarter, Memphis was playing really good perimeter defense, but everything was falling for OKC.

You could leave these players wide open and they probably couldn’t hit this many shots. It was just the Thunder’s night from 3-point range. They finished the night shooting over 50% from deep.

It’s not the end of the world, but this is a really bad loss for the Grizzlies. Hopefully this team will be motivated to get back to winning ways against the Suns on Monday.