There was a 20 -minute window on Thursday evening when the Vancouver grizzles seemed to belong to the NBA qualifiers. And yes, we said Vancouver. It was the uniform they wore for it, and the name on the front of this uniform. You want to be a memphis, make a uniform that you like.
Again, maybe Memphis should stay in his vancouver. Because apart from these 20 minutes, give or take, in the first half Thursday evening, their team was released and released by Oklahoma City Thunder. That a Grizzlies team that makes their way through the playoffs would be wiped out by the seeded of the Western Conference is not a surprise, but they wiped a strange way, and the defeat of 114-108 of Thursday evening against the ‘der was the worst and the strangest of the three defeats.
It was the worst because it was the closest and the strangest because these dizzying 20 minutes featured Memphis in his sweetest, between the general intelligence of JA MORANT and the more specific shooting of Scottie PIPPEN the youngest. By losing matches 1 and 2 by a total of 70 points, including a mega-loss of 131-80 in match 1, the Grizz looked quite unworthy of having advanced the table of the children of the game tournament and therefore of geometric overmented.
On their credit, however, the Grizz jumped back on the Thunder in the first 20 minutes of match 3 convincingly. They have blitz OKC and made a highly temporary statement on the longer term future of a series that no one was looking forward to. Pippen Ty had 23, more than 15 and Five, and the Grizzlies made the Thunder look like, well, the Grizzlies of Vancouver. The NBA matches lasted 48 minutes, which even puts the 20 minutes of the most dominant basketball, but the Grizz led 69-40 at a given moment, a score so absurd even in this deeply absurd eliminatory series that it looked mostly a vision in the Graphic Department of TNT.
Then Morant was out of the game and perhaps the series in a collision with Luguentz Dort Dort by Oklahoma City – literally, in this case, while Morant landed on his style behind Jimmy Butler, and with equally disastrous results. After missing the two free throws he had won, MORANT left the game as a car that took a right when the track demanded on the left. Morant’s departure has essentially deleted reason to be in this series, and made this great feeling, finally, a little less assured. The prognosis on the left hip injury of Morant was also mainly in that his next match will not necessarily be on Saturday, as will do for his teammates. Which means it might not happen before next season.
Oklahoma City dominated Memphis from this point by a margin of 74-39, which means that they have now made a Ubermococoche of what was at the start of the series to simply be a standard mockery. Apart from these 20 minutes and changes, Oklahoma City won the 105 -point series, which, in this tortured alternative universe, makes it the most unbalanced series in the history of the NBA qualifiers. A single return from the playoffs in history has never been bigger; No team of Grizzlies has never scored fewer points in an eliminatory match than the 31 that these Grizzs managed in the second period.
We have nothing more conjugal to report on this game or the series as a whole. Memphis announced a crowd of about 1,000 less than capacity, which suggests that the good citizens of Memphis suspected how it was going to happen. However, they could not have anticipated this. The 20 minutes of valve accomplished that the Grizz and their fans have obtained are more than what had a reason to expect, and these 20 minutes were the height of the experience of Memphis’ grizzlymen, if only because the contrast between these 20 and the 124 surrounding is so austere. These 124 others return to the most absurd scanning in the history of the NBA qualifiers, with a game to play (Tip O’The Tam at the Magic-Hawks 2010 series for the previous leader). But these 20 minutes – Memphis’ grizzles disguised the Grizzlies of Vancouver, which were in turn disguised as a sparkling and cohesive team of the Grizzlies who approached the top of the classification of the Western Conference earlier this year – was also real.
And although there is even more of this catastrophe to play on Saturday evening, if it is played without more, we can suppose in complete safety that Memphis will only have these 20 minutes and that Taylor Jenkins smoked the carcass with which to remember 2025 – a season which started so rich with possibilities, and which ended. Maybe it will teach Grizz to intensify his game in uniform so that they did not have to return to the failures they wore when they were someone else. These Vancouver teams were deeply bad, but at least their kits looked clear, even in Bryant Reeves. These Grizzs have made their Canadian history without favorites by transporting them for this. Either steal these sons with pride or understand something else, guys. The chromatic wheel is your friend; Treat it this way.
It is fair to say that the grizzly groves would probably not have exploded this 29 -point lead had not been injured, and the grizzlies would not have seemed almost paralytic as when the game resumed. They did only 11 additional goals on the ground all night, and it was probably on their credit that they seemed almost capable of deceiving fate and winning until the 25 feet of Chet Holmgren with 2:40 on the left Thursday at 108. They had pulled their bolt and the retreat was an absolute bastard.
Also strange of the route Thursday evening, this result does not surprise anyone; Oklahoma City is also loaded as any potential champion since the Warriors Curry / Durant / Thompson / Green 2017. But the “potential” remains the word operating, because the Thunder did not show that they were as dominant against the whole league in spring as these warriors. Hell, this 2010 magic team which crushed the Hawks in the second round did not even reach the final. If we take testimonials, the grizzlies are ready to certify that Whitlahoma City is the real business, Times 105, and they have the footprints on their torses in Vancouverite to prove it.
