The Weekly Grind: December 12th, 2022
Weekly Player Power Rankings plus my top thoughts and statistical discoveries
Last week the Grizzlies dispatched of a trio of opponents on their home floor. The initial victory over the Miami Heat with a depleted roster was quite impressive and showed that the team has guys on the roster who are chomping at the bit to make an impact and prove they deserve to be in this league.
On Wednesday and Friday, Memphis took care of the Thunder and Pistons respectively. Those are games where a team working towards home court advantage must take care of business and secure a dub, and they did.
Weekly Player Power Rankings - (12/5/22 - 12/11/22)
Jaren Jackson Jr.
Triple J is back and appears to be finding his shooting stroke as well. In his two games last week, Jaren averaged 16 points, 4 boards, and 4.5 blocks per game. He also converted on 55.5% of his three point attempts - in his first eight games of the season, Jackson was hitting 33.3% of threes.
It will be hard on any week to drop Morant lower than 2nd. In what was a “soft” scoring week for Morant, he contributed 20.5 points and 11.5 assists. Morant is currently 5th among point guards in the NBA in assist rate per cleaning the glass.
DB played in all three games and averaged 19 points, 2.67 boards and assists on 47.27 eFG%.
Against OKC, Brooks put the clamps on SGA, despite Gilgeous-Alexander’s final points box score. The Thunder guard’s 26 points was highly inflated by free throws.
Clarke took advantage of the weaker competition and did his best to prove me wrong in my evaluation of him in my recent quarter-season power rankings column.
He shot 80% from the field - 72% or better at the rim in each game - on his way to averaging 15 points along with 6 boards in 23 minutes of play. Clarke looked much more comfortable than he has so far this season. We will see if this breakout enhances his confidence and propels him back to being a consistent contributor.
Stones broke out of his shell last week and really carried this short-handed Memphis team against the heat with 28 points and 10 assists. This is the second time in four starts that Jones has reached double digit assists. Certainly, playing with better players helps Tyus with these metrics as he has struggled to elevate the inexperienced bench units this season.
Recently, one of my good friends and former podcast co-host pointed out that Santi has an affinity for reverse dunks. Lo and behold, the very next day, I see this video pop up on Reddit.
Aldama was Memphis’ third leader scorer over this stretch at 13.67 ppg on 50% from three. Santi is now hovering around league average as a three point shooter, which is an improvement on how he started out the season. If he continues this trend along with his impactful defense, he and Ziaire will be battling for minutes come playoff time.
Kind of a soft week on the boards for the Kiwi, who was pretty banged up and surprisingly played all three games. Hopefully the Saturday-Sunday off days will allow the big man to get some rest and get back at it against the Hawks on Monday.
Jitty failed to make a three last week but was second on the team with a plus -30 across the two games he appeared in.
Roddy logged more minutes than most of the guys ahead of him on this list, but is still searching for his niche and trying to catch up to the speed of the NBA game. He did hit three of his six 3PA.
The Miami game was the Kennedy Chandler hype game. The local Memphis product earned career highs in points (9) and assists (5).
Not ranked:
Desmond Bane
Ziaire Williams
Vince Williams Jr.
Xavier Tillman
Tweet of the Week
Sometimes, haters just gonna hate.
Self-proclaimed “the #1 social media snitch ref” @DevinInTheLab made Ja Morant a target of a recent video seeking to expose the alleged questionable ball handling techniques employed by Ja.
MVP ladder
The Grizzlies’ fearless leader has cracked the top 5 in the NBA’s recent release of their updated Kia MVP Ladder.
We’ve seen this song and dance before
Stop me if you’ve heard this one alredy.
Jackson returns to the Grizzlies’ lineup and the team significantly improves on defense immediately.
Jackson’s rim protection this season has been tremendous. In quantitative terms, opponents are shooting ten percentage points worse at the rim with Jaren on the court per pbpstats.
Jackson is averaging over 3 blocks per game and is second in the NBA among bigs per cleaning the glass with a block rate of 6.4%.
Grizzlies content with Verno and Zach Lowe
Check in at 29:52 where Grind City Media’s Chris Vernon pops onto the Lowe Post podcast and chops it up around the Grizzlies.
Lowe has always kept a close eye on the Grizzlies, dating back to his days at Grantland and it’s clear he has stayed in tune with the bears into this new iteration of the franchise.