A hamstring injury has The Grindfather looking more like The Grindfather III.
The Memphis Grizzlies will have to shut down MVP Steph Curry without the services of their best defender - FIRST-TEAM ALL-DEFENSE - as Tony Allen will sit out Wednesday's Game 5 due to a sore left hamstring.
The hamstring first bothered Allen in Game 4 and he had been considered questionable earlier in the week before being called a game-time decision earlier Wednesday. Allen had also missed nine games at the end of the regular season with a strained left hamstring, so their may be some concern about the injury persisting.
For his part, Allen wanted to play through the injury, which is the least surprising thing you'll read today. Head coach Dave Joerger said Allen would have done "anything" to play, but the team wanted to be smart.
Despite his modest numbers and rumblings that Jeff Green could start to help boost the offense, the loss of Allen as a perimeter defender could be a death knell for Memphis. Allen is one of the world's toughest defensive players and did a great job in the first three games of the series to limit the space Curry had coming off of screens, limiting his breathing room and ability to fire his singularly beautiful jumper.
The Warriors combated this in Game 4 by completely ignoring Allen on the other end, daring him to shoot and forcing Joerger to cut his night short with just 16 minutes. The Grizzlies were surely planning an adjustment to combat that, perhaps by using Allen as a screener to force Andrew Bogut into paying him more attention, but they won't get the chance to counter now.
Allen averaged 8.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and two steals in 63 regular season games, shooting 49.5 percent from the floor and 10-of-29 on triples. Through nine playoff games, he's averaging 7.1 points, 5.8 rebounds and a playoff-high 2.7 steals while shooting 50 percent overall and 1-of-7 from outside.
