Jackson, Bane lead Grizzlies to 125-91 victory over Miami, Heat’s 7th straight loss
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Jaren Jackson Jr. had 31 points, Desmond Bane added 22 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists as the Memphis Grizzlies led from bstart to finish in a 125-91 victory over the Miami Heat on Saturday night.
Jackson shot 13 of 18 from the field as the Grizzlies won for the fifth time in their last six games. Zach Edey and Brandon Clarke added 12 each for Memphis.
Kel’el Ware led the Heat with 19 points and 11 rebounds, while Bam Adebayo added 18 points. Kyle Anderson and Jaime Jaquez Jr. had 13 points each as the Heat lost their seventh straight.
With Ja Morant, sitting out with a lingering sore right shoulder, Memphis relied on Jackson, who had 23 points at the half. The Grizzlies’ lead reached 18 before Memphis carried a 63-48 lead into the locker room at the half.
Memphis was still shooting 55% from the field midway through the fourth quarter as the lead continued to swell.
Takeaways
Heat: Miami continues to maneuver into position in the play-in postseason despite the recent losing streak. The Heat entered the night in ninth behind Orlando and ahead of the Bulls.
Grizzlies: After Friday night’s loss to Cleveland, the Grizzlies looked much better to open the game, closing the first half on a 21-9 run.
Key moment
The special moment for Memphis fans came during a first-quarter timeout when they showed former Memphis forward Tony Allen in a suite. The team retired Allen’s No. 9 jersey in a postgame ceremony.
Key stat
Tyler Herro was 3 of 12 from the field and 1 of 4 from deep for eight points, ending his string of 93 straight games in double figures.
Up next
The Heat travel to New York to play the Knicks on Monday night. Memphis opens a five-game road trip on Monday night in Sacramento.
1. There aren’t many teams in the league it feels like Miami has less history with than the Memphis Grizzlies, but there’s long been a throughline between the two franchises when it comes to premium placed on defense, style of play and the ability to find contributors up and down the line.
This season, with Ja Morant back in the lineup, there’s been a bit more separation on the style front, Memphis leading the league in pace, but with Morant unavailable tonight and both teams playing on a back-to-back it would have been fair to expect a bit more of a traditional grind-it-out affair.
Jaren Jackson Jr. sure wasn’t interested in that from the jump, following up a quick starter course from Desmond Bane to score 12 of Memphis’ first 25 points (and 23 on 9-of-12 shooting in the first half overall). Miami stayed relatively attached early on, Tyler Herro feeding Kel’el Ware over the top as rookie Zach Edey struggled to manage pick-and-roll spacing, but a 14-0 Grizzlies run – without much in the way of threes – created the first real separation of the night.
But just as soon as it started to feel like it would be one of those nights, Jaime Jaquez Jr. – hitting one of his toughest jumpers of the season to close the first quarter – came alive, the HEAT’s zone stalled Memphis out, Kyle Anderson created matchup problems and with a few threes falling, the HEAT had it back to a three-point gap.
The pattern of late has been team’s responding to Miami runs in short order and this one was no different, the reinsertion of Memphis’ starters sparking another run as the HEAT ran cold and their shot quality left a bit to be desired. Grizzlies by 15 at the half as they ran an Offensive Rating of 131.3.
While Duncan Robinson started the game – Kel’el Ware returned to the starting lineup after coming off the bench against Boston – Davion Mitchell opened the second half, but the story was Jackson Jr. continuing to make all sorts of shots as the lead ballooned to 19. Bam Adebayo’s aggression mitigated the damage, a couple of threes on top of a driving attack at Jackson Jr. keeping things within reach. Three straight turnovers from the Grizzlies helped as well, though Miami didn’t fully take advantage with their threes still running into harsh winds.
Right as Mitchell gave Miami life with a trackdown block that turned into a Terry Rozier on the other end, back-to-back Bane jumpers pushed the lead back to 18, and eventually 27 by the end of the period.
It didn’t get any prettier in the fourth, Memphis taking it, 125-91, as the HEAT’s losing streak extended to seven.
2. In a league where most players, excepting some rookies who don’t know any better, have long since learned The Lesson when it comes to Adebayo and how ill-advised it is to try and score on him one-on-one, there remain a few who appear to relish the challenge. And from that select group, there are even fewer with whom it appears to be a mutual, two-way, at times even personal battle.
Jaren Jackson Jr. (31 points on 13-of-18 shooting) fits into that exclusive club – which may have a membership of one – and it was no surprise that he was going right at Adebayo, and anyone else he drew on a switch or cross-match, from the opening minutes. To Jackson Jr.’s credit, after he often had difficulty against Adebayo in earlier years outside of three-point shooting, this is his second game in as many years where he enjoyed quite a bit of success no matter how well Adebayo was contesting his looks. In some ways Jackson Jr. scores in a similar manner to Nikola Jokic, all those unconventional flips and floaters and runners and off-hand hooks nearly impossible to fully stop but just as difficult to make consistently. There are typically only a small handful of players who can work off the dribble in the intermediate ranges, especially among those with the size to create stout positions for themselves, and Jackson Jr. has worked himself into that group.
Adebayo (18 points on 7-of-15 shooting, Miami’s leading scorer until both sides were playing out the string in the fourth) had his moments, especially early in the third, but given the way the game went you have to hand this round to Jackson Jr. with a rematch coming up in Miami later this month.
3. While Kel’el Ware had a solid night with 19 points on 8-of-14 shooting to go with 11 rebounds, there was much to mine from the positivity vein tonight, Memphis winning just about every part of the game and not needing much of an outlier shooting performance to stretch the lead as far as they did. This was about Memphis’ pace, about their depth without Morant and about the variety of ways they control the paint, their 72 paint points the number of the night and the most Miami has allowed in years.
Another look at the standings is warranted, though there isn’t much new to say. While Detroit – 7.5 games up on Miami at No. 6 – lost tonight, Atlanta and Orlando were off so there wasn’t much movement, the HEAT three games in the loss column behind Atlanta and one loss back of Orlando. Chicago, at No. 10, meanwhile, has become a real threat, as Miami remains only one game ahead of them in the loss column (Chicago lost to Houston tonight) with the Bulls owning the season tiebreaker already. Chances of falling out of the Play-In outright are still small – Toronto is five back in the loss column – it’s becoming much more possible that the HEAT could be looking at needing to win two road games in order to advance to the postseason, with only the No. 8 seed attainable. Plenty of moving and shaking left, and there’s nothing that matters as much as simply adding wins wherever possible right now.
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