The season from hell continues for the Memphis Grizzlies.
The Grizzlies found themselves in quite the conundrum for Sunday’s game against the Boston Celtics. Xavier Tillman, Derrick Rose, Vince Williams Jr, John Konchar and Santi Aldama were all ruled out with injuries on the day of.
Meanwhile, Ziaire Williams and Jaren Jackson Jr. got ruled out the day before with injuries of their own. Those seven players joined the Grizzlies’ longer-term absentees — Brandon Clarke, Ja Morant, Marcus Smart, Desmond Bane, Jake LaRavia and newly-acquired Victor Oladipo.
For those keeping score at home, that is 13 (!) players ruled with injury for one game. As a result, their only two standard-contract players left standing from the start of the year (Luke Kennard and David Roddy) were essentially sent out to play against Boston with the Bad News Bears.
Tim MacMahon of ESPN noted that the Grizzlies trotted out three players on two-way contracts (Scotty Pippen Jr., GG Jackson and Jacob Gilyard) and three players on 10-day hardship deals (Trey Jemison, Matthew Hurt and Tosan Evbuomwan) to meet the eight-player minimum in order to avoid a forfeit.
The Grizzlies and head coach Taylor Jenkins deserve credit for continuing to play with pride and energy despite their season accursed.
They actually had a three-game winning streak at the end of January, and most of their recent losses have at least been competitive single-digit ones.
But having 13 players missing due to injury for a single game is something we haven’t seen since, well, the Celtics themselves a few years ago.
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