The Miami Heat faced the Grizzlies in Memphis on Monday night in what looked like a surefire win. The Memphis team had something different in mind though.
The Miami Heat are one of the best teams in the NBA this season it appears, and definitely one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference.
When talking about the perceived lower level teams in ones own conference and especially when you consider the fact that contenders are supposed to win the games that they are supposed to win, that would have led you to believe that Monday’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies should have been an easy win for the Miami Heat. That’s what these things would normally tend to indicate, right?
Well, the Memphis Grizzlies had other plans. If you look no further than their first-half performance, they came out determined to shoot their way towards the set of results that they ultimately wanted.
When you look at the three-point shooting for the first half, for much of it and just right up until the end of it, the Memphis Grizzlies made everything they shot from deep. At one point deep in the second quarter, the Memphis Grizzlies were shooting 9/11 from three, which meant at a whopping 82 percent click. Unreal!
The Miami Heat never really had control of the game, as the fact that they were pounded on the offensive glass would indicate. The Grizzlies were able to secure 16 offensive rebounds off of their own missed shots, which is put into perspective by the fact that the Miami Heat were only able to secure seven of their own.
The Miami Heat were defeated in this game for two reasons over any other. They were not as focused or intense on defense as they should have been, which contributed to the Grizzlies getting off to such a monster shooting start. Secondly, they were not physical enough on the glass or in the paint( Hello, Jonas Valančiūnas), allowing the Memphis team to bully them on the boards and in the paint.
It’s safe to assume that this Miami Heat team may have been looking ahead a bit, but that is no excuse. As mentioned earlier, when you want to call yourself a contender for both the Eastern Conference and NBA titles, you have to beat the teams you are supposed to beat or the teams with .500 or below records.
If they play like this on Wednesday against the Philadelphia 76ers, they will get their doors blown off and that’s a fact. We have seen it happen before and it wasn’t that awful long ago.