Report Card: Grizzlies suffer 12th loss in last 14 road games, get obliterated by the Heat

After defeating their rival Golden State Warriors and then beating the Dallas Mavericks twice, the Memphis Grizzlies headed down to South Beach to play the struggling but frisky Miami Heat, who have lost 8 of their last 13 games. 

In search of their fourth straight win and their first road victory against a team currently ranked in the top eight in their conference since December 23rd, the Grizzlies offense was stagnant, and the Heat picked them apart on offense, resulting in a 138-119 loss for the Grizzlies, their 27th of the season, officially securing a worse record than their magical regular season last year.    

Here’s how some of Memphis’s stars fared in the outing: 

Dillon Brooks: D

While he made a concerted effort to find the open man when the opportunity arose, Dillon Brooks had a poor performance against Miami. His effort on defense was consistently lackadaisical, at times he appeared too concerned with what the refs were doing, and in the first half, he led the team in fouls and had the worst plus minus out of any starter. 

In the second half, it was more of the same from the defensive end from Brooks. Tyler Herro cooked him for a midrange jumper and Kevin Love’s pump fake had the Oregon product flying as Love drained the trey. While he did look a bit more engaged in the third quarter on offense, making a few baskets it wasn’t enough to make up for the sloppy and lazy play from himself to warrant a higher grade.  

Jaren Jackson: A-

The All-Star immediately made his presence felt. Scoring 12 points in the first quarter including knocking down to threes, staying out of foul trouble, drawing fouls and consistently looking for mismatches in the post. 

With a lot of the offense struggling to get in a rhythm, Jackson made it incumbent on himself to help the team stay in the game as Miami continued to shred Taylor Jenkins’ well-respected defense and with Bane ejected.  

Jackson ended the night with 25 points and 9 rebounds, a rebound away from his 6th double double and 5th 20 & 10 game of the year. In a game full of blunders and mishaps, Jackson was one of the few bright spots in this disappointing outing for the Grizz.  

Tyus Jones: C+

With Ja Morant missing his sixth straight game and Desmond Bane ejected, it was on Tyus Jones to be the main ball handler for a lot of the contest before the match up got out of hand. While there were many times he found the open man, penetrated the paint well, and smartly took what the defense was giving him, he started the game 2/6, threw a few too many sloppy passes and uncharacteristically had three turnovers, which was only the 7th time this season he had three or more turnovers. He finished the night with 11 points and five assists.

While Jones was not the sole reason that the Grizzlies were decimated, he was not making enough of a positive impact to negate the poor play coming from others.  

David Roddy: B-

After hitting 58% of his triples in his last two contests, the first year player from Colorado State continued his red hot shooting, sinking his first 2 threes of the game, making good reads, knocking down his free throws, and aggressively contesting shots. As the game went on he started to cool down from behind the arc and was a non-factor after his solid first half. 

In his last three games, Roddy is now shooting a tremendous 53% from three.