How the Grizzlies and Blazers are moving in opposite directions
As the brutally unforgiving Western Conference playoff race reaches its pinnacle, two teams represent polar opposites at the moment, as the Grizzlies continue their march up the West ladder while the Trail Blazers continue their alarming descent.
Both trends can be seen as regression to the mean, as the Grizzlies, defending Western Conference finalists, struggled to start the season under a new coach (Dave Joerger) and without their most valuable player (Marc Gasol) for a significant chunk of it. The Blazers, on the other hand, were one of the feel good stories of the Association for the first half of this season, remaining firmly in the hunt for the league's best record.
After an impressive January 18 win at Dallas, Portland sat an incredible 31-9, tied with San Antonio atop the West and just 1.5 games behind first place overall Indiana. Since then, the Blazers have gone 11-14, tied for the 10th-best record in the West and the 17th-best record overall with New Orleans. For much of the season, the Blazers' near-bottom-10-ranked defense was negated by their incredible offense, but over this 25-game slump, Portland's offense has produced at a more mediocre level, a 13th-ranked 104.6 points per 100 possessions over that span. Their subpar defense has allowed 104.7 points per 100 possessions over their last 25 games and a 19th-ranked 104.8 on the season.
The Blazers remain a good team, and a near surefire playoff team at that. But on paper, and with that defense, they were always destined to be a seven-seed type team as opposed to a team fighting for a top seed in the West. At 42-23 overall and fifth in the Conference, Portland is now 6.5 games behind streaking San Antonio for first, and their concern should now be looking behind as opposed to looking ahead. Golden State trails them by just 1.5 games with 16 games to go, and even Dallas and the aforementioned Grizzlies, 3.5 games behind, have a chance to catch them with LaMarcus Aldridge set to miss at least a couple of games.
As for those Grizzlies, after a tough overtime loss on January 8 against the Spurs which dropped them to a disappointing 15-19 and 12th in the Western Conference, they've gone an NBA-best 23-7 since then, which includes a 21-7 mark since Marc Gasol returned to the lineup against the Hawks on January 12.
Memphis' point-differential per 48 minutes and their net rating has actually been better with Gasol on the bench this season, but the reigning Defensive Player of the Year is only now rounding into form after a left knee injury robbed him of 23 games between late November and mid-January, and the team's record with him, 28-13, would put them on a championship contending level 56-win pace over the course of an 82-game season.
They're just 10-13 without him.
Whereas the regression of Portland's offense has seen them settle for mediocrity over the last couple of months, the progression of the Grizzlies' usually dependable defense has been the catalyst for their rise. From the start of the season through that aforementioned OT loss to the Spurs, a 34-game sample, Memphis allowed an uncharacteristic 105.1 points per 100 possessions. In other words, after nearly half a season, a unit that had defended at a top-10 rate in each of the last three years had an unfathomable 24th-ranked defense that was tied with the comically inept Knicks.
Since then, the Grizzlies have allowed just 99 points per 100 possessions over their last 30 games, good for third over that span, just behind stingy Indiana (98.6) and Chicago (98.5), and they once again have a top-10 defensive rating on the season. The result? Memphis now sits seventh in the West, two games clear of ninth-place Phoenix and just two games behind sixth-place Golden State.
Barring a major Grizzlies injury, you can probably expect these trends to continue in Portland and Memphis until each team settles comfortably into a seeding more representative of the teams in question. It's a reminder that while the length of an NBA season is often criticized, perhaps 82 games is actually around the perfect length to separate pretenders from contenders.
(Stats courtesy of NBA.com)