I can now die in peace. I have seen things that I never thought were possible. I never thought I would see what I saw in the 4th quarter of the Grizz-Cavs game last night. I saw Rudy Gay play defense. It was unbelievable.
I don't know how it happened (Well, I've got an idea more on that in a bit), but somehow Lionel Hollins informed Rudy that it is ok to try and stop the guy he is guarding from scoring. Granted, the guy he was guarding dropped 43 on him. That's fine. The guy he was guarding LeBron. LeBron shot 29 shots and 11 of those were threes. If you force LeBron to shoot over a third of his shots from three, you're doing a good job. And I said force. Rudy would not let LeBron get in the lane at will in the fourth quarter or overtime, and you know what happened? The Grizz got their second consecutive victory over an elite NBA team. The Grizz won their third game in a row.
Seriously, it's kind of amazing to watch these guys right now. Everyone knows their roles and plays them well. What makes them so effective is that the starting lineup has four guys that are above average NBA players. Now, that's not that amazing. What it does for them is every night they have a mismatch somewhere they can expose. Last night it was Zach Randolph and OJ Mayo. Other nights it's Rudy. Other times it's Marc. There are very few teams in the league that have someone at every position that can deal with those guys, and the Grizz have been doing a great job of exposing those mismatches every night.
Now, I still don't think it's a playoff team, but they are a tough beat. Especially if Rudy Gay wants to play defense. Granted, some of Rudy's new found love for D could be the fact that he's in a contract year. The fact is, in the second half of the game last night he held his own with the second best player in the world. I'm not saying he was better than LeBron, but he was good enough and he was one of the few guys in the world that can compete with LeBron athletically. We'll see what happens, but maybe, just maybe, Rudy Gay is figuring this thing out. He realizes that he is in the top 5% of athletes in a league of athletic freaks. Now, maybe waving a huge contract in front of him is what's making him realize it, but maybe he'll like it.
I hope he does and I hope he keeps doing it for the Grizz. Go Grizz!!!
4 comments:
I will say (as primarily a defender myself) there's nothing more in the world of the Grizz than seeing Rudy (or anyone else on the Grizz) play exceptional defense. At a 9-12 pace that puts us at winning ~35 games this year. Evil predicted 34 so he's on target. Good job with that prediction...for now.
Drogba thinks Rudy's play comes down to "contract year". Drogba will not get his hopes. Rudy is who he is, which means somes times he is great and some times he is average.
Drogba does like that his boy OJ is starting to play ball again like Drogba knows he can.
I tend to agree with you, Drogba. I just think that if he does it for a year then maybe he'll start to get it. Probably not, but we'll see. I don't know if we can let that guy walk though. He's too good.
On OJ, I think he's doing a great job of figuring out his role on this team. He's still the killer, but he doesn't have to be all game or even every game. I think it shows a lot of maturity on his part.
Because OJ takes after his boy Drogba.
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