MARC GASOL IS nailing a Conor McGregor impression -- flapping his arms wildly as he struts down the floor of Staples Center just like the 5-foot-9 Irish UFC champion -- and the celebration is totally justified.The Memphis Grizzlies should not have won this game. Its mid-November, and the Los Angeles Clippers, the NBAs hottest team with a 10-1 record, should have been cruising against the middling Grizzlies. After hobbling through 14 minutes of action, one of the Grizzlies best players, Chandler Parsons, has succumbed to nagging injuries and exits for good in the second quarter. Still, the Grizzlies have hung around. And with 23 seconds left in the game, they were somehow within a point.Thats when Grizzlies guard Mike Conley drove into the paint, drew DeAndre Jordan off his man and kicked it out to center Marc Gasol in the left corner. Of all the available options on the menu, this seemed like a good outcome for the Clippers. After all, coming into this season, Gasol was a career 18.2 percent 3-point shooter, never having made more than three in any of his nine seasons. No way this is how first-year head coach David Fizdale drew it up.But of course, this is exactly how Fizdale drew it up.If they help off that corner, Fizdale later explains, the read was to kick it to Marc in the corner.Sure enough, Gasols 3-pointer splashed through the bottom of the net. (By December, Gasol will sport one of the NBAs top 10 3-point percentages.) On the Clippers bench, Paul Pierce slapped his head with both hands in bewilderment -- and Gasol unleashed his McGregor routine.Thanks to miracles like that this season, the Grizzlies are now an absurd 13-5 in clutch games -- those, according to NBA.com, in which the score is within five points in the final five minutes. Meanwhile, NBA teams as a whole this season are winning less than a quarter of games they trail by one to five points in the final five minutes. The Grizzlies, somehow, are 10-5 in those losing scenarios, which is the kind of thing that could make someone wonder whether theres something in the water in Memphis.Most quants would argue this run of clutch wins is unsustainable, a random string of coin flips going in one direction. Just plain ol good luck. Except the Grizzlies have been doing this for years, defying all prevailing analytical wisdom that the clutch gene does not exist -- wisdom that John Hollinger, a pioneer of NBA analytics and the current Grizzlies VP of basketball operations, once fervently endorsed on these pages of ESPN.com.Now? Hes a clutch convert.I think theres something in the water, Hollinger says.The question is, what?AS AN EVIDENCE-BASED thinker, Hollingers work often poked holes in the idea that anything was magic. And in basketball, he explained, the idea one team had magic at the end of games plainly took a backseat to point differential. The ethos was first introduced by Bill James, who decades ago arrived at the Pythagorean expectation, after finding that the difference between runs scored and runs allowed was much better at predicting baseball games than using a teams record. Study after study across sports backed up James revolutionary principles.Based on this thinking, Hollinger then created a Hollinger Power Ranking formula that straight-up insulted close wins by ignoring win-loss records altogether, relying primarily on point differential. And from time to time, that formula created lots of uproar. In 2010, Hollinger caught flak for ranking the Dallas Mavericks, fresh off a 13-game winning streak, 13th in the NBA by his methods. Why wasnt Hollinger buying the scorching-hot Mavs?The Mavs, Hollinger argued, had freakingly good fortune in close games and the teams lukewarm point differential was a better indicator of its true talent level. This column on ESPN.com ignited a 19-page message board thread on the Dallas-Mavs.com forum with the subject headline of Behold, the idiocy that is John Hollinger created by a user named joemoeschmoe.Dallas proceeded to finish an incredible 55-27 that season, good enough for the No. 2 seed in the West. Hollinger remained skeptical. Sure enough, the Mavs lost in the first round to the No. 7 San Antonio Spurs. Turns out the Spurs point differential was much better than the Mavs. Hollinger remembers a couple of other times he sided with the unpopular opinion. He threw cold water on the 2007-08 New Jersey Nets and then again on a hot Blazers run in 2008-09. And he was right on the money. Both teams fell back to Earth.But heres the thing: In 2012, Hollinger took a job as the vice president of basketball operations for, of all employers, the Memphis Grizzlies.As he notes: It is somewhat ironic that I would create a formula only for my team to destroy it.IF YOUVE EVER seen Hollinger in person, theres a high probability hes holding a hot cup of coffee. In the stands of an Eastern European gym, inside the halls at the MIT Sloan Conference ... anywhere he is, chances are hes on the bean.But all these dramatic finishes have made him cut back on the java.Ive had to reduce my in-game coffee consumption, Hollinger says. Now Im going with the natural energy boost from all that late-game drama.He quickly takes that back.Actually, Hollinger says with a laugh, thats not possible.Hollinger admits it has been impossible for him to stay seated during this wild Grizzlies season. Of the teams 29 games, 18 of them have entered clutch time. By contrast, the Golden State Warriors have played eight such games.The question is asked to Hollinger, a long-time columnist: If the Grizzlies were doing this back when you were writing, what would you have written?I probably would have been extremely skeptical, Hollinger says.But this might be a different story, he explains. For this team, point differential isnt always the best predictor of whats to come.THE GRIZZLIES ARE 18-11 this season, despite having been outscored by 10 points on the overall ledger. This does not seem possible, but the Grizzlies have pulled it off thanks to their 13-5 record in clutch games, which is fourth in the NBA behind the past three champions (Warriors, Cavs and Spurs). The Grizzlies have a knack for this. Here is their ranking in the category over the past six seasons: fourth, sixth, third, third, fifth, sixth. To be ranked no worse than sixth is a crazy achievement once you consider that no other team is ranked in the top 10 in each of the past six seasons. Not the Warriors. Not the Heat. Not the Spurs.The Grizzlies are freakin clutch.If we zoom in even more and look at the final minute in games that are within three points (super clutch), the Grizzlies are a baffling 12-1 this season. These should be coin-flip games, but theyve won almost every single one ... the exception was Fridays tilt against, of all teams, the 10-17 Kings. Down three against New Orleans with 19 seconds left, the Grizzlies won by two. Down by two with 26 seconds left against the Clippers, they won by four. You get the point.The overall picture is even more staggering -- and confounding. Over the past six seasons, the Grizzlies are 105-46 (.695) in these super-clutch situations, which is significantly higher than the second-place Spurs over that same time span (.652). While the Spurs outstanding clutch performance is understandable -- their teams boast the NBAs best overall point differential of plus-3,146 over that same time period -- the Grizzlies point differential is plus-696, or 2,450 points fewer than the Spurs. Said another way, the Raptors are plus-739 overall during the same period, a smidge better than the Grizzlies over the past six seasons. The Raps record in super-clutch games? A measly 64-80 (.444).It makes literally no sense. And Hollinger, for his part, wouldnt believe it if he hadnt seen it with his own eyes, repeatedly. The one thing that [the Grizzlies] have defied with every other team Ive researched, they do it year after year after year, Hollinger says.So whats going on in Memphis? Does the team inject itself with vials of the clutch gene? The teams point guard has a theory.I REMEMBER IT vividly, Conley says. Right in front of the Heat bench. It happened six years ago: Rudy Gays game winner over LeBron James and the Heat in 2010.Fizdale was there, at that time serving as a Heat assistant. Its the first shot Fizdale thinks of when he catalogues the Grizzlies heroics over the years. It broke our back, Fizdale says. Right in front of our bench. Rudy Gay rose up, right over LeBron. He broke our heart.The first person to hug Gay on the court that night in Memphis was Conley, who had turned 23 that day. Two years later, Gay was traded to Toronto in a controversial move that sent away the teams top scorer and go-to threat in crunch time. The kids in Memphis would have to shoulder that responsibility.But since then, the Grizzlies have only gotten better in close games. In the four full seasons without Gay, the team has won 12 more games in clutch time than any other team -- and Conleys theory: crunch-time ball is Grizzlies ball.Were accustomed to playing slower and more defensive possessions, Conley says. Whats helped us is that weve played a slower pace in previous years and teams always have played fast.Its true. Fast-break frequency drops by a third in crunch time compared to normal play, which makes sense given that coaches try to keep risky plays to a minimum in crunch time. And this plays right into the Grizzlies hands. Over the past four seasons, the Grizzlies rank second slowest in pace, just behind Utah. While other teams have to switch up their style in crunch time, its just another day at the office for the Grit n Grind Grizz.When it comes down to the last minute of the game, youre not running transition layups ... its not transition 3s, Conley says. Its What can you run in a set? Can you execute? Those things are the things that weve had to do from the first quarter in order to score.The honed half-court game shows up in the stats in various ways -- for instance, an almost total lack of turnovers. Last season, Conley averaged just 1.5 turnovers per game and amassed the best assist-to-turnover ratio in the NBA.Fizdale says his team just executes better -- quite possibly because it has played so many years together. Hollinger notes that Zach Randolph, Gasol, Tony Allen and Conley comprise the longest-running four-man core in the NBA now that Tim Duncan has retired.If you look at our games this year, it wasnt games we won with free throws going down the stretch; its when we have to execute a play to win the game, Fizdale says. They really have a way of locking in in that moment and focusing on execution, and they usually do a very good job of it.Says Conley: Weve always had to take each possession like its our last.MANY OF THOSE?big moments for the Grizzlies start with Conley. In 53 minutes of clutch action this season, he has scored an astounding 50 points, shooting 42.9 percent from the floor, 54.5 percent from deep and 95.2 percent from the free throw line, according to NBA.com research.But exactly one week after theorizing about the Grizzlies clutchness, he suffered a transverse process fracture in his back, sidelining him for the next nine games. The Grizzlies lost their top scorer in crunch time, spelling doom for their golden crunch-time résumé.Only that hasnt happened at all.Down seven with 4:46 left against Orlando on Dec. 1, the Grizzlies won by one. Down one with 4:44 left against the Lakers, they won by three. Down three with 19 seconds left in New Orleans, they won by two (in double overtime). Down two with 1:26 left against Philadelphia, they won by five. Down 11 with 4:59 left against Portland, they won by two.That last Portland win was sealed not by Gasol, Allen or Randolph. Memphis hero was 30-year-old Toney Douglas, who, in the midst of his 10-day tenure with the team, scored Memphis final six points, including two clutch free throws with less than a second left in the game. His basket with 35 seconds left was his first clutch basket in over three years.So maybe something really is in the water.Ray Allen Jersey .Y. -- Injured Buffalo Sabres forward Marcus Foligno did not practice with the team Monday and head coach Ron Rolston said its unlikely hell play in Wednesdays season opener in Detroit. Detlef Schrempf Jersey . It was the kind of score that might make everyone else wonder which course he was playing. Except that Graeme McDowell saw the whole thing. Crouched behind the 10th green at Sheshan International, McDowell looked over at the powerful American and said, "Ive probably seen 18 of the best drives Ive seen all year in the last two days. https://www.thunderrookiesshop.com/Shai-Gilgeous-Alexander-City-Edition-Jersey/ . - Connor McDavid scored 53 seconds into overtime as the Erie Otters came from behind to defeat the visiting Guelph Storm 4-3 on Saturday in Ontario Hockey League action. D.J. Augustin Jersey . The winner Saturday will remain in the elite 10-team field next year. "We talked about wanting to be disciplined and stick with our game plan and good things will come," Draisaitl said, who had two goals for the victors. Abdel Nader Jersey . -- Golden State Warriors coach Mark Jackson asked his players a simple question during Fridays morning shootaround: How many of them had ever been on a team 14 games over .TORONTO -- Sydney Leroux showed some love for Toronto after an emotional 24 hours that saw the Canadian-born U.S. soccer international inflame passions with a cheeky goal celebration and a tweet about racial slurs. But while calling the atmosphere at Sundays Canada-U.S. game in Toronto a "positive step forward for womens soccer," Leroux revealed she had been racially abused in her birthplace of Vancouver during last years Olympic qualifying tournament. The Canadian Soccer Association, while adding its voice against racism, noted that no complaint was ever filed at the time. Leroux, U.S. Soccer said, had chosen to stay silent. But Lerouxs open-ended tweet Monday opened up the issue. The rising star, who was booed throughout Sundays match by the soldout crowd at BMO Field, scored the final goal in the 3-0 U.S. win. In celebrating her stoppage-time goal, she popped out her jersey to show the U.S. crest and put a finger to her mouth as if silencing the crowd. On Monday morning, the 23-year-old -- who was born in Vancouver to a Canadian mother and American father -- took to Twitter to explain her actions. "When you chant racial slurs, taunt me and talk about my family dont be mad when I shush you and show pride in what I represent. .america," Leroux tweeted. The timing of the tweet led many to assume that the racial slurs in question happened at the game in Toronto. Not so, U.S. Soccer clarified later in the day after the story took off. Lerouxs tweet "was not in response to anything heard" at BMO Field, the U.S. governing body said in a statement. U.S. Soccer said Leroux "has endured abuse both verbally and in social media," since switching her international allegiance from Canada to the U.S. in 2008. "The racial slurs to which she referred in the tweet occurred during the 2012 Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Vancouver in January of 2012 and revolved around her father, who is African-American," said the statement. "At the time, she chose not to address them. "Since the match (Sunday), she has received a significant number of tweets that contained racial slurs, and her tweet this morning was in response to the last year and half in which such abuse has occurred more frequently. In the statement, Leroux also offered her own explanation: "My tweet from this morning wasnt in response to anything from yesterdays match at BMO Field. In fact, the atmosphere at the stadium was a positive step forward for womens soccer," she said. "Unfortunately, the type of abuse I have received in the past and via social media for my decision to play for the United States is a step backwards. That is what prompted my response in the heat of the moment. "It is sad that people are inclined to write these incredibly negative comments, but I am not going to focus on them moving forward. Racism has no place in our beautiful game and we all need to come together to make sure no players are subjected to this kind of treatment in stadiums or on social media anywhere in the world. That said, the majority of fans have been extremely positive and I appreciate their support." Sundays game, a much anticipated rematch of last summers Olympic showdown won 4-3 by the Americans in controversial fashion after extra time, drew a BMO Field record crowd of 22,453. Leroux drew boos and chants of "Judas" during the Olympic qualifying in Vancouver. "I know that there are some people who dont respect my decision," Leroux said at the time. "And there are some people who do. And not everyones going to like you, and I feel like you have to have some enemies in life or else youre not doing something right. Im happy where I am. "Im happy to wear this jersey, and thats how it is." The Canadian Soccer Association released its own statement Monday.dddddddddddd "The Canadian Soccer Association is aware that U.S. Soccer national team player Sydney Leroux has indicated having been the target of racial abuse at the 2012 CONCACAF Womens Olympic Qualifying tournament held in Canada. At that time, no CONCACAF or Canadian Soccer Association officials were informed nor was any formal report filed by Leroux or U.S. Soccer," the statement read. "The Canadian Soccer Association is a proud supporter of fair play and respect in sports, and will not tolerate discrimination on or off the pitch. We would also ask of all Canadian soccer fans that they hold themselves to these same standards when enjoying the beautiful game." As for the goal celebration, Leroux downplayed it after Sundays game. "Come on ... how many American-born players do you have on Canada?" said Leroux, who was yellow-carded for her celebration. "I thought I dealt with it well." The seventh-ranked Canadian squad includes defender Lauren Sesselman, who was born in the U.S. Coach John Herdman is said to be examining other U.S. options. American captain Abby Wambach also spoke up for her teammate. "If you knew some of things that Canadian folks tweet at her, that for her was a special moment, and that for her was saying, Hey look, Im here, Im on the U.S. team," Wambach said. "So for her, Im proud of her to come on in the time that she had." Lerouxs mother played third base for the Canadian national softball team while her father played for the Anaheim Angels. At 14, Sydney was part of the Canadian team at the 2004 FIFA U-19 Womens World Cup in Thailand, where she was the youngest player in the tournament. She was captain of Canadas under-15 team before moving to the U.S. at 15 with an eye to earning a college scholarship and playing for the U.S. team, according to U.S. Soccer. She played at UCLA and is currently a member of the Boston Breakers of the National Womens Soccer League. Lerouxs weekend actions drew a quick response from Canadian news outlets, even before any mention of racism was introduced. "Sydney Leroux scores goal, acts boorish," was the headline on The Score website. "Canada has a meltdown over Sydney Leroux goal celebration," said the National Post. "Canadians see red after Lerouxs gesture," added The Globe and Mail. And The Voyageurs supporters group, whose section of the stadium is near where the American forward celebrated, put out a statement, "We really shouldnt need to address this, but given the firestorm created by an accusation coming from one American player this morning, a reminder to everyone: We have zero tolerance for racist behaviour," the statement read. "Anyone engaging in this type of behaviour is not representative of the Voyageurs, and is not welcome in our sections." Booing the return of players who have left for another team is common in soccer, however. And players change international allegiance around the world. But Canadians are perhaps especially sensitive to the issue given past defections from a mens team that is currently ranked 80th in the world. Owen Hargreaves (England), Jonathan de Guzman (Netherlands) and Asmir Begovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) are just some of the recent Canadians who have elected to play for another country. Canadian soccer officials are waiting on where highly touted Queens Park Rangers winger Junior Hoilett will play internationally. Canada has not shied away from snapping up players with eligibility from other countries, however. As for scoring against former teams, there are usually two approaches: wildly rubbing it in or not marking the moment at all, as former Arsenal striker Robin van Persie did when he scored against the Gunners for Manchester United this season. ' ' '