Robb: Grizzlies Teach Young Celtics Big Men A Lesson
BOSTON (CBS) – The Celtics have shown flashes of brilliance during the early stages of the 2014-15 season, but Friday night they got a painful reminder of how much work they have ahead of them, in order to compete with the NBA's elite.
The Memphis Grizzlies are that kind of team right now. They are 11-2 through 13 games, the best record in the NBA and have won 21 straight home games after their 117-100 dispatch of the Celtics on Friday.
The matchup was a mismatch from the very beginning, as the Celtics simply don't have the big men to handle All-Stars like Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph on the interior. The pair combined to score 48 points and 24 rebounds, feasting on easy opportunities against the likes of Jared Sullinger and Kelly Olynyk.
"[Marc] Gasol was huge," Brad Stevens said about the Memphis center, who scored a season-high 32 points. "I thought he was the best player on the floor. He kept making plays over and over with the pass and the shot. He gets the ball in that high post with a little bit of time and space. His passing makes him special at the five."
"We can't allow those bigs to be one-on-one," Jeff Green told reporters postgame. "Tonight, we let them get whatever they wanted, so we deserved to lose."
The domination was expected in those areas, but after the game, Stevens implored his team to learn from the beatdown that Memphis handed them.
"I told our guys that, I realize we're all pros and we have all made it and we are all good players, but there are some guys out on the floor on that team that we can learn a lot from, especially our young bigs. It's great to take notes of those guys because those guys are not only really good basketball players, they're really savvy basketball players and they really know how to play and they make each other better."
Sullinger and Olynyk may never reach the heights that Gasol and Randolph currently play at, but the way both of those guys helped their teammates succeed was on full display last night.
Case in point: Reserve big man Jon Leuer had one of the best performances of his young career, posting 19 points, seven rebounds and four assists in just 22 minutes off the bench. Many of Leuer's points were setup directly by his Grizzlies teammates, as the team dished out 31 assists on their 48 field goals. Memphis scored 66 points in the paint on the night, 20 above their season average.
That kind of production was indicative of inconsistent effort from the Celtics in the early going, as the starters fell behind by double digits and were not able to recover.
"I didn't think we executed with any juice in the first half," Stevens said postgame. "Whether they took us out of what we wanted, whether we missed a couple shots and we got down on ourselves, I don't know what the reason was. But we were really stagnant on offense. Super stagnant. You know, we were over-staring at things, the ball wasn't moving. It just was not what we've been."
Despite showing some glimpses of fight in the second half, cutting the deficit to six on repeat occasions, Stevens knows he needs more from his guys, if they want to stop their 23-game road losing streak against Western Conference opponents.
"At best, we were at an inconsistently good team. You can't beat a team like this, playing like that. You have to be on your A game the whole time."
We will find out quickly whether the Celtics learned their lesson from the Grizzlies as another Western Conference juggernaut arrives at the TD Garden Sunday night in the Portland Trail Blazers.
Brian Robb covers the Celtics for CBS Boston and contributes to NBA.com, among other media outlets. You can follow him on Twitter @CelticsHub.
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