Celtics blow past Grizzlies

Colin Rafferty –

John Mellencamp said it best when he said, “when the walls come tumblin’ down, when the walls come crumblin’ crumblin’, when the walls come tumblin’ tumblin’ down.”

That is what happened last night as the Grizzlies dropped a big fat goose egg against the Boston Celtics in a 131-95 blowout.

There isn’t much of this game to take away from. The walls had come crumblin’ tumblin’ down.

The Grizzlies right now stink, they can’t get any shot to fall, they are bullied on rebounds, and the defensive effort on the three-point line is atrocious.

This team is hard to watch, and it is without question way harder with no Ja Morant, who was sidelined with right-ankle soreness last night.

The Grizz allowed the Celtics to shoot 50.5% from the field and 41.2% from three. That is ridiculous, especially  to a team that struggles to score the ball.

Boston had more rebounds, assists, blocks, and points in the paint.

Talk about an all-team effort from the Celtics. Can’t say that for the Grizz, unless the idea was to play as poorly as possible.

Jaren Jackson Jr. led the team with 18 points and 2 rebounds. I mean c’mon Jaren, the Celtics aren’t a huge team by NBA standards, get some boards and get this thing moving. It’s incredible to me that he can’t get close to 10 rebounds a game.

I love Jaren, but he is frustrating to watch so far and, his fouling has regressed back to his early days of picking up just inexplicable fouls.

Maybe he is frustrated, and I am too.

The Grizzlies bench has been the only interesting group in these past few games; they have come out and played well. Coward and Aldama leading the charge, with spurts of Cam Spencer hitting threes like we all wanted Luke Kennard to do.

Defensively there are not many teams in the league you can give up 33 in a quarter, while scoring 20, and still win the game.

The past two games the Grizzlies have allowed long stretches of game time run off before hitting any shot, while the other team balloons their lead.

Somethings got to give, defense or shooting needs to improve. Both cannot be this bad and expect people to show up.

Before the game Michael Wallace shared some insight on Zach Edey, saying that he had gone through some workouts on the floor prior to the game and looked good.

He expects to see him in possibly the Cav’s game on Saturday or the Spurs game on next Tuesday.

This should give some much-needed help to the Grizzlies rebounding problems and spacing issues. Ja Morant has seen an increase in defensive shading this year, and that goes to poor shooting as well as the bad spacing.

Edey should make an impact there, but is it too far gone? Time will tell. Usually, you need about 4-5 really good players to make a run for the possibility for playing in the last series of the year.

Right now, the Grizz don’t have that.

It’s been a grueling first few weeks as the Grizzlies have yet to find any stride. I might be nuts as I stated yesterday, but maybe they can turn this around slowly. It won’t be immediate, but maybe by January the team and coaching staff can find some consistency.

It is also important to note that team chemistry goes a long way for groups that make in the playoffs and get wins. This team has little of that right now, but maybe when guys are back on the floor it will help.

We all hope so, until then the Grizzlies will continue to play and hopefully get out of this funk soon.

The Grizz will have a few days off before playing in Cleveland on Saturday at 4 PM CST. You can find the game on NBA TV.