Mike Conley scored nine points in the last 3:13 to preserve a late Grizzlies lead in Milwaukee, including a spinning fadeaway in the lane to keep the charging Bucks at bay with under 30 seconds to play.

It was the best Grizzlies win of the season in the best all-around Grizzlies game of the season. After seeing their own undefeated home record spoiled on Monday night against Utah, the Grizzlies paid it forward against a Bucks team that was previously spotless on its own home floor, a Bucks team that has probably played as well as anyone in the NBA so far this season.

Conley finished with 26 points on 9-16 shooting, his third straight game topping 20 points on a good shooting night, putting his alarming early shooting struggles further in the rearview.

CLUTCH. CONLEY.#GrindCity pic.twitter.com/vGD72c8kaz

— FOX Sports Grizzlies (@GrizzliesOnFSSE) November 15, 2018

Three makes a trend, right?

A year ago, the Grizzlies also carried a 7-5 record into Milwaukee. Conley scored seven points on 2-12 shooting in that game and limped off the floor, not to be seen again in game action that season. The Grizzlies lost their next nine.

This time, they left Milwaukee 8-5, rather than 7-6, and with a Conley that’s trending up. Here’s where, the Grizzlies hope, the early season deja-vu ends, where the paths diverge.

As Garrett Temple said in the locker room after Conley’s big game against Philadelphia over the weekend: “If Mike can play like that every night, we can be really good.” It’s early yet, but perhaps time to start entertaining that possibility.

This was one of those games so bursting with detail, it defies synopsis.

It was a game where Yuta Watanabe got his first NBA minutes that weren’t in mop-up time.

It was a game where Marc Gasol scored a season-high 29 and doubled his previous season-high in three-point attempts, shooting 6-12 from long range. (For the sake of the Grizzlies' offense, let that be a preview of coming attractions rather than a one-off.)

It was a game where the Grizzlies were forced into a Shelvin Mack-Giannis Antetokounmpo jump ball and somehow won the possession.

It was a game where the Grizzlies built a 15-point lead punctuated by a Jaren Jackson Jr. pick-and-pop three-pointer late in the third quarter and the Bucks came at them after a timeout with a quicker, more aggressive lineup and a 27-4 run.

It was a game where the Grizzlies took that haymaker on the road, against one of the league’s better teams, and punched right back, with their own 20-5 run in the middle of the fourth quarter.

Those two runs were back-to-back, across 11 minutes and 17 seconds of game time. “Rollercoaster” is an overused metaphor, but these were unfathomable consecutive plunges.

It was a game where the opposing coach (Mike Budenholzer) got tossed after a second technical foul and the winning road team probably has more reason to malign the refs.

That’s because young Jackson Jr. (13 points in 16 minutes) was battling MVP candidate Antetokounmpo at both ends and had his best stretches cut short by fouls, one of which was a truly unjust call. After a second-quarter drive at Antetokounmpo for a hoop-and-harm, Jackson stood his ground defensively at the other end, forcing a loose ball and hitting the ground to help dig it out. With the ball loose again back at the Grizzlies end of the floor, a trailing Jackson got there first, got his hands on the ball just before colliding with Bucks guard Eric Bledsoe. An early third foul on the kid, guilty only of being bigger and younger.

It was a game good enough that national attention turned to it even though it wasn’t on national television. We’ll end sort of where we began, with one long-distance testimonial:

Mike Conley never making an All-Star team is intermittently upsetting.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) November 15, 2018