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Spurs-Grizzlies Preview

Apr 21, 2016 - 3:41 PM It's a matchup of the Western Conference's top-rated defensive team in more than a decade against a once-adequate roster's skeleton, and it's been even more lopsided than everyone expected.

Game 3 shifts back to Memphis on Friday night, but it's going to take a lot more than home-court advantage for the Grizzlies to play with the San Antonio Spurs.

The second-seeded Spurs' 96.6 defensive rating during the regular season was the best in the West since 2004-05 NBA champion San Antonio (95.8), and it's only improving in the postseason.

After Tuesday's 94-68 final in San Antonio, the series' first two games have been decided by an average of 29 points. It was the seventh-seeded Grizzlies' lowest postseason output ever and came two days after a 106-74 loss went down as their largest postseason defeat.

Memphis is the first playoff team held under 75 points in consecutive games since Milwaukee scored 69 and 74 in a 2010 first-round matchup with Atlanta. The 1954 Syracuse Nationals - now of Philadelphia 76ers infamy - were the last to top that with no more than 68 points in three straight against the Minneapolis Lakers, though no team scored 90 points in that seven-game NBA Finals series that ended the pre-shot clock era.

At 35.8 percent, it's not hard to get on board with Matt Barnes' somewhat extreme analogy.

"We're coming to a gunfight with some spoons," he said. "We've got to do something to try to switch this up at home next game."

San Antonio, meanwhile, is resting its starters plenty. On Tuesday, LaMarcus Aldridge, Kawhi Leonard and Tony Parker sat out the entire fourth quarter, while Tim Duncan and Danny Green made brief appearances.

The Spurs are hitting 48.7 percent from 3-point range, their reserves are outscoring the Grizzlies' starters by an average of 50-34, and San Antonio is left nitpicking what it needs to do better.

"You've got to fight," repeat Defensive Player of the Year Kawhi Leonard said after the Spurs committed 19 turnovers, though only seven came from the starters. "We've got to still execute. (We) turned over the ball a lot today. They were physical. They've got hands, but there's still opportunity for us to improve. They're still an NBA team."

That's been debatable at times over the course of the season for an injury-ravaged roster still playing without two of its three top scorers in Marc Gasol and Mike Conley. What's left of the trio - Zach Randolph - has been limited to 8.5 points on 26.7 percent in the series.

"I just think LaMarcus played excellent defense (Tuesday)," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "We didn't double-team (Randolph) or anything like that. If he got in the lane, we tried to make a play I guess, but mostly L.A. gets the credit for doing a fine job on a great player."

To be fair, Randolph has little help. Memphis' starting five of Randolph, Barnes, Chris Andersen, Jordan Farmar and Vince Carter totaled 126 starts - 53 from Randolph - in the regular season, and their collective age is 175.

That average age of 35 is surprisingly the one category in which they're topping San Antonio, which comes in at 30.8.

While the Spurs have won four straight overall with opponents shooting 38 percent and never more than 40.3, the Grizzlies have now lost six straight and 12 of 13 over the past month. Four of their meetings with San Antonio this season have come in that time as part of the Spurs' seven-game winning streak in the series, and the two in Memphis coming by a 102-85 average doesn't have the Grizzlies speaking of new life at home.

"It doesn't matter where we play, we've just got to play better," Barnes said. "We can play here, we can play at the YMCA, we can play in Memphis; it doesn't matter where we play at if we play the way we've been playing, the court doesn't matter.

"It's on the players. We've got to do a better job executing."