ATLANTA — It's become a common theme in this truncated NBA season.
A team loses one of its key players and has to adapt. It sinks or it swims.
Thus far, the Memphis Grizzlies are managing to swim.
Memphis coach Lionel Hollins said on Thursday that forward Zach Randolph — the team's leading scorer a season ago at 20.1 points per game — remains on track after spraining the MCL in his right knee. Still, that means the Grizzlies (who were 46-36 last season) do not expect to get him back for another two to four weeks.
Randolph has already missed a month and played in only the first four games.
Surprisingly, the Grizzlies — 11-10 overall — are 10-7 without Randolph and are doing a capable job in his absence. Picking up the slack has proved to be a team effort.
"Obviously, it's going to be difficult with one of our key pieces out," said guard Tony Allen, whose averages are up slightly to 10.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game from last season's 8.9 and 2.7. "We have to manage to hold our heads, stay together, stick to the game plan and do the little things we need do to win ballgames: blocking out, taking charges, diving for loose balls."
In essence, Allen described traits of what Atlanta Hawks coach Larry Drew called a "very gritty team" — one that beat Drew's Hawks 96 to 77 on Thursday.
"You can never count them out," Drew said. "I was watching their last game against Denver, and I believe Denver had a 12-point lead with five minutes to go in the game; and they came back and took Denver to overtime (and won). That team has a lot of fight in them. That team never quits. They're the type of the team, if you come out with the wrong mindset, you're going to come out on the short end of the stick."
The trickiest part for the Grizzlies about life without Randolph is that it tends to change how they play. Memphis' preferred offensive style is to go inside out. Without the 6-foot-9, 260-pound scoring threat inside, that has been complicated.
"We've changed our game a lot the way we play, and some nights we don't make shots and we get beat," Hollins said.
The Grizzlies have not always been able to make shots on a consistent basis. They rank 20th in the league in scoring (93.57 points per game) and 14th in field-goal percentage at 44.5.
What's kept them in games is that gritty stuff — like defense. They are 10th in field-goal percentage defense (43.3 percent). Allen was a second-team selection on the NBA's all-defense team last season, and 7-foot-1 center Marc Gasol ranks fourth in the NBA in blocks at 2.29 per game.
The acquisition of Marreese Speights since Randolph went down also has helped. With a career average of 3.8 rebounds per game, he is pitching in at a higher rate of 5.8.
On offense, it's been a combined effort. Along with Allen, Gasol's average is up 3.2 points per game to 14.9.
Somehow, it's worked. The Grizzlies had won seven in a row until going out west for a four-game road trip. They lost at Portland, the Los Angeles Clippers, Phoenix and San Antonio. They broke that slide with the aforementioned 100-97 overtime win at Denver on Tuesday. Visiting Atlanta on Thursday, the Grizzlies were in the midst of a stretch of six out of seven games on the road.
All in all, Hollins realizes that things could be worse.
"We're over .500, so what more can you ask for?" he said. " . . . I'm not happy, but I'm not disappointed with where we are."
Allen said he thinks "the sky's the limit" for a team that finished with the West's No. 8 seed last season, upended top seed San Antonio in the first round, and then lost in an epic seven-game series to Oklahoma City in the second round.
The Grizzlies sat just 1½ games out of the final playoff spot in the Western Conference entering Thursday. Drew thinks that once Randolph comes back, the Grizzlies will have an easier go of it.
"Yeah, absolutely," he said. "He's an important part of what they do. When you watch them play, they're a little bit different, but yet they're the same. He's their go-to guy. He's the guy they can post up and you get the ball to him, and they can go to him. He can score in the low block. You try to defend him down there, and he can get to the free-throw line. . . .
"When they get him back, they're going to be ecstatic because he's such a huge piece of their success."
