Brooklyn Nets: DeMarre Carroll rips up Grizzlies again

DeMarre Carroll had his best game of the season for the Brooklyn Nets in Friday night’s 2OT loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, torching his 1st NBA team again.

DeMarre Carroll is in his second season with the Brooklyn Nets and it should come as no surprise that he had his best game of the season thus far against the Memphis Grizzlies in Friday night’s 131-125 double-overtime loss by the Nets.

Carroll recorded season-highs with 21 points and 12 rebounds, hitting 7-of-10 from the floor and 4-of-6 from 3-point range in 39 minutes off the bench for the Nets.

That it came against the Grizzlies fits with what he did in two games against Memphis last season, when he scored 42 points with 12 rebounds, five assists, three steals and two blocks in 67 minutes, while shooting 12-of-20 overall and 8-of-13 from the floor.

More from Nothin' But Nets

After Friday’s performance, Carroll is averaging 13.5 points per game in 11 career games against the Grizzlies — his highest mark against any opponent in his 10 NBA seasons.

The Birmingham, Ala., native has had a rocky relationship overall with the state of Tennessee in his basketball career.

He played his first two collegiate seasons at Vanderbilt University and averaged 10.8 points and 6.4 rebounds per game as a starter during his sophomore season before he transferred to the University of Missouri for his final two seasons.

Carroll was then selected 27th overall by Memphis in the first round of the 2009 NBA Draft. He was an end-of-the-rotation reserve as a rookie, averaging 2.9 points and 2.1 rebounds in 11.2 minutes per game.

Carroll went on to play nearly as many games in the NBA D-League in his second season (six) as he did with the Grizzlies (seven).before he was packaged with Hasheem Thabeet — the No. 2 overall pick by Memphis in 2009 — and a 2013 first-round selection and traded to the Houston Rockets in a deadline deal for Shane Battier and Ish Smith.

Carroll was later waived by the Rockets and the Denver Nuggets before catching on with the Utah Jazz and cementing himself a role in the NBA as a 3-and-D wing.

He became a starter with the Atlanta Hawks in 2013 and turned two solid seasons there into a four-year, $60 million free-agent bonanza with the Toronto Raptors in 2015.

Injuries limited Carroll to just 96 games in two seasons in Toronto before they dumped his salary along with their 2018 first-round pick and a 2018 second-rounder that originally belonged to the Los Angeles Lakers on the Nets in exchange for soon-to-be-waived Justin Hamilton.

But Carroll seems to raise his level of play when he gets to go against the Grizzlies. It’s never been something he’s talked about, but a player who’s been waived out of the league twice tends to play with a chip on his shoulder to begin with.

That chip gets larger and more urgent when the opponent is the team that gave up on him in his second NBA season, however.

Next. 10 best Nets from 1st NBA decade (1976-86). dark

After Friday’s outburst, Carroll is averaging 8.8 points and 5.2 rebounds in 21.7 minutes per game, appearing in the last 12 games for Brooklyn after missing the season’s first 11 games after having an arthroscopic procedure on his right ankle. His shooting is up to .372/.366/.868 as well.