Tuomas Iisalo Claims They Will Never Play as Bad as 51-Point Game 1 Loss

The Memphis Grizzlies lost badly to the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of their NBA playoffs opening round matchup on Sunday. Well, at least they’re making an effort to make it seem positive.

The Thunder crushed Memphis 131-80, the biggest Game 1 victory margin in NBA history. In response to the game, star Ja Morant stated, “We will never play that bad again.” From a statistical perspective, he is most likely correct.

Grizzlies head coach Tuomas Iisalo tried his best to highlight the positive aspects of the afternoon’s shellacking at his postgame press conference.

Tuomas Iisalo talks about Grizzlies loss

He came up with something that really impressed me. Iisalo stated: “There’s an old saying that a playoff series doesn’t start before there’s a road win,”. “You’re expected to defend your home court. We’ll be better in the next game.”

Iisalo repeated Morant when he was asked what he could learn from the game that inspired him. He said: “Well I think there’s a few things. First one, it’s very hard to play worse than this,”

Tuomas Iisalo with an admission that things cannot get much worse:#GrindCity pic.twitter.com/nr6P6vdKbu

— Dodson (@DoingItDodson) April 20, 2025

He then brought up Marvin Bagley III’s performance, who finished 16 minutes off the bench with 17 points, five rebounds, two steals, and a block. Bagley also made every one of his eight field goals. Bagley was still minus-11 on the day, despite the fact that his performance was encouraging.

Iisalo deserves praise for acknowledging how terrible the game was while remaining optimistic about the series’ future.

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