against James having

In the home finale Authentic Joe Mixon Jersey , the Memphis Grizzlies sent their fans home happy with a rare victory in a disappointing season.
MarShon Brooks scored 25 points, Dillon Brooks added 22 and the Grizzlies snapped a four-game losing streak with a 130-117 victory over the Detroit Pistons on Sunday.
Of the Grizzlies’ 22 wins this season, 16 were at home, a far cry from the last seven years when the final home game was just a stopping point before the playoffs.
”I understand how tough it’s been for everyone,” said center Marc Gasol, who applauded fans as he left the floor in the closing minutes, finishing with 20 points, nine rebounds and nine assists. ”For them to still show support through the bad and the worse and how bad it really got, to me it means a lot.”
Kobi Simmons matched Gasol with a career-high 20 points, converting 7 of 10 shots.
Anthony Tolliver led the Pistons with 19 points, and Luke Kennard added 18, including making all four of his shots from outside the arc. Henry Ellenson had a career-high 17 points.
The game featured 3-point sprees from the two teams – both reaching season highs on made shots from beyond the arc. Memphis made 16 from outside the arc; the Pistons made a franchise-record 23, the highest number of 3-pointers for a Grizzlies opponent this season.
But throughout his postgame comments, Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy harped on the defensive effort.
”Our defense was horrendous,” he said. ”I mean (the Grizzlies) are the next to the worst offensive team in the league, and they scored over 30 (points) in every quarter. … Our effort was bad Uchenna Nwosu Jersey , our concentration was bad. We were terrible defensively.”
Memphis led by 20 in the first half, but a late rally in the second period left the Grizzlies with a 62-56 lead at the break. While Detroit got close a couple of times in the third quarter, it could never overtake Memphis. The Grizzlies led by double digits the bulk of the fourth quarter. Detroit got closer than nine points only once in the final 7 minutes.
”We weren’t very locked in defensively,” Kennard said, adding: ”We weren’t engaged defensively from the start.”
Interim Grizzlies coach J.B. Bickerstaff said the victory was a reward for everyone involved as a season – among the worst since the franchise moved to Memphis in 2001.
”The guys are deserving, but our fans are deserving too,” Bickerstaff said. ”I think our guys understood that from the beginning of the game. Through the ups and downs, the fans have stuck with us, and they deserve the performance our guys put on (Sunday).”
TIP-INS
Pistons: F Blake Griffin missed his sixth straight game with a right ankle bone bruise. … Andre Drummond posted his 10th straight double-double with 12 points and 18 rebounds. … Ellenson’s previous career high was 15 points on April 7, 2017, at Houston.
Grizzlies: Ben McLemore started the game 4-4, including a trio of 3-pointers, and finished with 13 points. … While Gasol was one rebound and an assists shy of a triple-double, Dillon Brooks also flirted with the standard. In addition to his 22 points, he had eight rebounds and eight assists.
OH, HENRY
Ellenson Landon Collins Giants Jersey , a 6-foot-11 forward in his second season out of Marquette, collected his career-high by converting 6 of 10 shots, including 4 of 6 from outside the arc. He entered the game averaging 3.1 points. ”He’s really a good player. It’s not a secret,” Tolliver said about Ellenson, the 18th overall pick in the 2016 draft. ”There’s a reason why was such a high draft pick. He has a lot of potential. He’s just a young guy trying to find his way.”
SEASON-BEST NIGHT
The Grizzlies recorded season-highs in several categories, including points (130), field goal percentage (57.8 percent) and 3-pointers made (16). They also had a season-best 36 assists.
UP NEXT
Pistons: Host Toronto on Monday night.
Grizzlies: Hit the road for their final two games starting in Minnesota on Monday night.
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The Indiana Pacers have been winning together, losing together and fighting together all season.
Now they need to demonstrate their resilience once more as they try to save their season by rebounding from an emotional loss to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
”Nobody thought we’d be in this situation,” Victor Oladipo said, referring to the playoffs. ”It’s important for us to stick together now because we’ve seen where it can go, where it can take us and it’s great.”
The immediate problem is recent history doesn’t bode well for the underdog Pacers, who trail 3-2 with Game 5 set for Friday in Indianapolis.
Cleveland swept Indiana in the first round last year, winning four games by a record low 16 total points. James has won 10 straight close-out games and has never lost a first-round series. Indiana, meanwhile, is trying to reach the conference semifinals for the first time since 2014.
But the Pacers don’t care about stats, projections or conventional wisdom – as they’ve proven repeatedly this season.
Following last summer’s Paul George trade Tony Romo Cowboys Jersey , Indiana seemed bound for the draft lottery. Instead, general manager Kevin Pritchard cobbled together a rare combination of proven, often overlooked veterans, emerging stars, good shooters and willing defenders.
It turned out to be a perfect fit.
Indiana won 48 games, six more than it did with George last season, and is a win away from forcing the three-time defending Eastern Conference champs into a decisive seventh game.
Cleveland has learned one lesson the hard way: The fifth-seeded Pacers won’t go away. They won 12 times after facing double-digit deficits and eight times after trailing by 15 or more during the regular season.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise Indiana has erased double-digit deficits in four straight game and wound up taking the lead or having a chance to win late in all four in this series.
”That team does not quit,” James said, moments after his buzzer-beating 3-pointer gave Cleveland a 98-95 win to salvage a win Wednesday after Pacers wiped out a 12-point second half to deficit to tie the score in the final minute.
Playing hard until the final buzzer has become the norm for these Pacers.
And they’re savoring every precious second, too.
Nate McMillan recently called this one of the most enjoyable seasons he’s had as a head coach because he knows what he’ll get every day – energy from Oladipo and Lance Stephenson, steadiness from Darren Collison and Corey Joseph, leadership from Thaddeus Young and Bojan Bogdanovic and an eagerness to develop from Myles Turner and other young players.
With each player embracing their role, the Pacers have formed a cohesive bond.
Six players actually approached Pritchard before the trade deadline and pleaded with the GM not to make any moves because they wanted to close out this season together. Pritchard said it a first for him, and kept the team intact.
”It kind of is like a college team bond,” said Young, one of the six players who approached Pritchard. ”Typically you have a lot of NBA teams that don’t bond as well as you do in college when you’re living with each other and you’re around each other all the time. You know in the NBA Frank Ragnow Jersey , you spend time with your family, things like that.
”This team we all hang out together, we go to dinner together on the road. We do everything together.”
The difference has shown.
After enduring an early and sometimes uneven learning curve early this season, the Pacers finally got in sync in early January and played better than anyone, perhaps even McMillan or Pritchard could have anticipated.
From Jan. 6 through the end of the regular season, they went 29-15 and allowed 101.3 points per game and didn’t lose more than two in a row.
They moved up three spots in the Eastern Conference postseason pecking order and headed into their latest round against James having won three of the four regular-season matchups. The Pacers even routed the Cavs on their home court in Game 1.
Since then, though, the series has been all-out slugfest and James has gotten the knockout blow in three times.
Now, with their season on the line, the Pacers need to provide a unified front one more time Friday night just to keep this season alive.
They’re ready.
”Sure, we’ve still got something to prove. No one believes we can beat Cleveland,” Bogdanovic said. ”It’s about trust in what we’ve got in each other.”
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