Memphis Grizzlies show immaturity in blown lead at New York Knicks

The Memphis Grizzlies dominated the New York Knicks from start to finish on Friday night. Well, start to finish of regulation at least.

If the Grizzlies dominated, then how did the Knicks come out on top? In short, free throws.

The Memphis Grizzlies are normally a reliable free-throw shooting team, knocking down 78.2% of their attempts on the year, sitting in the middle of the pack in the NBA. The Knicks are actually a worse free-throw shooting team by a pretty wide margin, seeing themselves at the 21st spot in the NBA.

But that wouldn’t be the case on Friday.

Instead, the Grizzlies would be the team that couldn’t shoot free throws if their lives depended on it and the Knicks looked completely comfortable at the charity stripe. Here’s a comparison of their numbers.

Memphis Grizzlies: 21-34 FT, 61.8%

New York Knicks: 29-33 FT, 87.9%

That’s right, the Knicks outshot the Grizzlies by 26% from the free-throw line. If you’re a Grizzlies fan, that number should make your blood boil.

Allow me to make things worse.

On one of the Grizzlies’ worst nights of the season from the free-throw line, they had an excellent night from 3-point range, knocking down 14-30 3-pointers on the night. Here’s why I’m bringing this up.

The gap between the Grizzlies’ 3-point percentage and their free-throw percentage was significantly smaller than the gap between their own free-throw percentage and the Knicks’ free-throw percentage. Yes, I just thew a very confusing sentence toward you. Allow me to elaborate.

Basically, the general idea of what I’m saying is that the Grizzlies shot really poorly from the free-throw line and really well from the 3-point line. Generally speaking, these two numbers rise and fall alongside one another.

This leads to the primary issue that arose during this game.