Through the first half of the game the Golden State Warriors were looking good. The bench was getting involved, the starters were looking good; especially on the second half of a back-to-back. But the the Memphis Grizzlies changed gears and completely took over the game, eventually beating the W’s by a score of 110-91 at the Fedex Forum this evening.
The Warriors offense really struggled tonight, especially the starters, particularly Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry. After dropping 35 the night before on the Thunder, Curry managed only 6 points on 2-14 shooting from the floor while matching his point total with his turnovers with 6. Monta fared a little better with 16 on 7-14 shooting, but played only 30 minutes as head coach Keith Smart used his bench extensively tonight.
Besides Jeff Adrien, the entire bench saw at least 14 minutes during the game, with Vladimir Radmanovic scoring 11 points and Lou Amundson adding 7. Maybe Smart was looking for fresher legs on the back-to-back road trip or perhaps was simply tinkering and letting some guys get some minutes.
As for the Grizz it was the three headed monster of Tony Allen, Mike Conley and Zach Randolph doing a majority of the damage tonight as Allen dropped 21 and 8 boards and Conley and Randolph each scored 20. Memphis shot 56% as a team and committed only 5 turnovers the entire game.
The Warriors now head back to Oracle Arena to host the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday with tipoff set for 7:30 p.m.
For more conversation and analysis of the Golden State Warriors, head on over to our W’s blog, Golden State of Mind, to get you fix.