The Grizzlies are young, they are fast, they are athletic, they shoot lights out on a lot of nights and dare you to chase them for 94 feet. They are the highest-scoring team in the league. If you were to draw up in the workshop precisely the kind of team that is supposed to give the Knicks fits, the Grizzlies are the prototype.
And the Knicks ran them out of the gym Monday night.
Chalk this up as one more night when the Knicks can confound you and confuse you and entirely contradict what you might think about them, this 143-106 drubbing of Memphis in this matchup of No. 3 seeds — Knicks in the East, Grizzlies out West.
The Grizzlies were coming in hot, winners of six in a row. We have seen lesser models of this team — the Pistons, the Hawks, the Magic — make the Knicks look old and slow, practically glacial, trying to keep up.