Portland Trailblazers and Memphis Grizzlies face off in a playoff position decider
On Tuesday night at the Rose Garden, the Portland Trailblazers and the Memphis Grizzlies will take on each other for the third time this season, in a game which will be pivotal in deciding their playoff seeding in the Western Conference.
The season series between the teams is tied 1-1 and both the sides will have the potential sixth position in the Western Conference at stake, come Tuesday night. Grizzlies are one spot behind Portland in the West with 46 wins and
34 losses and a win can ensure that they eclipse the Trail Blazers for a higher spot.
Trail Blazers and Grizzlies will both be setting foot on the court with the confidence of two straight wins behind their backs. The Trail Blazers though, will have the extra perk of taking down the two times defending champions
Los Angeles Lakers in their last encounter. Although any win is good at this stage of the season but a win against the Lakers always has an extra nice feel attached to it, and the Trail Blazers will try to cash in on that feel-good factor against the Grizzlies.
Portland’s starting five were absolutely stunning in the duel against the mighty Lakers. All of the starters landed double figures to overshadow Lakers for an enthralling 93-86 victory. The leading scorer of the Trail Blazers LaMarcus
Aldridge shared a game-high 24 points with the All-Star Kobe Bryant to vanguard his team for a brilliant pull off.
With the Lakers as their potential rivals in the first round of playoffs, forward Nicolas Batum was ecstatic after the game.
"Playoff atmosphere? Hey, this WAS a playoff game. The playoffs start next week. We may be playing the Lakers next week (in the playoffs). We didn't want to get swept (in the season series, which the Lakers won 3-1). We played
small, they played big, and it worked for us tonight."
The Portland Trail Blazers holds the sixth spot in the West with 47 victories and 33 defeats. The team carries an excellent record at their own building and has won 29 games out of 40 home meetings. They will therefore have an
automatic advantage on Tuesday.
The showdown against the Grizzlies will still be a tough deal for Portland as they will be up against a team that has not only won nine of their last eleven contests, but has also gunned them down seven times in the last 10 meetings.
Grizzlies are as lethal as they get when it come to ruling the paint. The team carries the kind of players who can outperform any team on a given day, especially, when it come to dominance on the glass.
New Orleans Hornets got a first -hand experience of that dominance on Sunday night when they were comprehensively bowled over 56-28 in the paint. O.J. Mayo truly had an impressive night and clinched a game-high 18 points to spearhead
the Grizzlies to seal a comprehensive 111-89 victory.
The Grizzlies’ advance to the playoff will be the first time after the 2005-06 season and third as a whole, that they have managed to achieve the feat. They have however failed to win even a single game in the 12 attempts.
Both the teams are performing exceptionally well in their recent showdowns and it will be interesting to watch how they perform against each other before taking the action into the postseason.
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