Well the Grizzlies left the arena last night feeling pretty proud of their comeback win against the TWolves. Minnesota blew a 16 pt first half lead and a 14 pt second half lead to the Grizzlies as Juan Carlos Navarro (below) and Rudy Gay had huge second halves to lead the home team to victory!

However, Al Jefferson proved to be the most dominant big man in the game last night while Randy Foye, Juwan Howard and Sebastian Telfair failed to make appearances last night. Ricky Davis was hot in the first half but never got untracked in the second half as the Grizzlies turned around the game in the second half with defense limiting the TWolves to 14 third quarter points and 18 fourth quarter points. This after surrendering 61 points in the first half against a more likely lineup for the TWolves.

It is trite to say but it appeared the Grizzlies played Fratello ball on offense and Baroni ball on defense in the first half and then reversed it to be Baroni ball on offense and Fratello ball on defense in the second half. The Grizzlies have some work ahead of them to be truly respectable.

The position battles remain muddled a bit as the point guard fight was won by Kyle Lowry because of his abiliity to play defense. Matched up against much taller opponents like Marco Jaric (6-7) and Ricky Davis (6-8) Lowry showed off his bull dog intensity. Damon was decent but was unable to run the uptempo offense the crowd (if you could call it that) came to see. Conley was ineffective in limited minutes in his first stint in front of the home crowd but made some nice passes.

The interior man to off-set Pau was equally muddled with Stromile Swift continuing his stronger than expected play (I keep forgetting this could be a contract year for Stro) and Darko Milicic settled down to make some nice plays but neither player was strong enough to contain Minnesota’s interior play. Hakim Warrick looked particularly confused but with this being his 3rd coach in less than a year that is somewhat understandable. The problem with Hakim is that at 25 he is getting a bit long in the tooth not to have picked up the game yet no matter who is coaching.

The major bright spot for the Grizzlies was Juan Carlos Navarro. ‘La Bomba’ as he is affectionately known in Spain had an early attempt at a floater in the lane blocked but continued to work on his offense and started stroking the ball with ease. Navarro hit 5 of the Grizzlies 7 three point shots.