Just a few minutes into the postgame locker room hubbub at Minnesota on Wednesday night, Suns guard Gerald Green changed the topic from the rally to beat Minnesota to how they needed to pay back Memphis next. After losing twice this season to a 15-19 team, the Suns do not want to guarantee losing the season series to them with another defeat tonight at FedEx Forum.
“We owe these guys,” Green said. “This is a great team we’re playing. They went to the Western Conference finals last year. They’re established. They’ve beaten us twice this year. We feel like we need to beat this team to get back on track. We want to be able to be tied with this team at the end of the season. It might be a factor. We have to rebound better and be a lot more physical than we were the first two games with them and play our game getting up and down.”
The Suns scored 91 points, 12 below their season average, in each of the losses against Memphis this season. The first one came with Memphis missing Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph but the Grizzlies got 58 points from Ed Davis (21), Jon Leuer (career-high 23) and Kosta Koufos (14) on the revised front line. When they met again on Jan. 2, Memphis had Randolph back and the Suns were missing Bledsoe. Dragic scored a career-high 33 but his teammates only made 24 of 68 shots (35 percent).
“We can’t give up any easy baskets,” Suns coach Jeff Hornacek said. “We’ve got to rebound. It’s going to be like Minnesota where we’ve got to box people out. We can’t let the bench hurt us. Their bench has hurt us both games so our bench really has to step up.”
Phoenix native Jerryd Bayless hurt the Suns in the last meeting with 17 points, including a big fourth quarter, but Memphis traded him this week to Boston and Courtney Lee was acquired.
