Alex Caruso beat the Grizzlies

The box score doesn't know

It was hard to tell in real time how much the Grizzlies bench player dominated Game 3 against Memphis. So I watched again. JUSTIN FORD/GETTY IMAGES

I tuned into the Thunder game as Charles Barkley was saying “this game is over.” Somehow, the Grizzlies were beating the best team in the NBA 77-51. But there was a wrinkle.

David Thorpe is insanely busy right now. He has 13 NBA players, clients, who are in the playoffs and who are counting on his help to prepare game in and game out. He has also been on the court in Los Angeles, for long hours, prepping a handful of players for the NBA draft. And there are all those games to watch.

When we have been able to talk, one of the themes has been: all of these players must be ready to play in the reality of today’s way-more-physical NBA, where fouls are seldom called. It changes who makes the league, how to play when you get there, what offense to run, and everything.

David’s bullish on a number of prospects who are built for that. We’ve talked mostly about the positives. How to get stronger, what strategies to use. But at the end of a recent call, I asked: Who’s vulnerable? What NBA player is not built for this new reality? David was in a hurry, and our call was ending. His two-word answer: “Ja Morant.”

Indeed. It’s hard to find an injury Ja hasn’t had. The point of tight whistles is, in part, to protect the acrobatic rim attacks that make highlights. That’s what Ja does. He can fly because he’s light. He’s only safe up there with good air traffic control. This year, though, the league hasn’t felt like policing that space quite so ardently, and bad things are happening, and for the second night in a row an NBA star left a game in massive pain. By the third quarter, Morant was watching, on crutches.

The Grizzlies would play the second half with point-guard-by-committee, and the committee was pretty much Scotty Pippen Jr. and people like Jon Konchar and Santi Aldama who aren’t point guards at all.

What happened next was an uncommon NBA occurrence. It wasn’t just that the Thunder roared back from 29 down and won the game. It’s that the Grizzlies struggled with things NBA teams don’t usually struggle with, like getting the ball up the floor, and getting a shot off.

Memphis had scored 40 and 37 points in the first two quarters. In the third they only managed 18. In the fourth: 13. In the whole second half, they managed just nine made buckets. Nothing worked.

And most of the time, it seemed like what happened was: Alex Caruso took the ball away.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple, and so for fun I went back and watched every play of the second half. Then I kept score. Basically, if the Grizzlies went at Caruso in any way, who won that battle?