Month: October 2008

Categories
News The Fly-By

Shooting “Shooting”

CREDIT: by Murray Riss

Photographer Murray Riss says that, in some ways, he would be the last person to shoot a book about duck hunting.

“I’m a vegetarian,” he explains. “But I wound up loving it, and I think it has been very successful.”

First Shooting Light: A Photographic Journal Reveals the Legacy and Lures of Hunting Clubs in the Mississippi Flyway, a collection of interviews with hunters and more than 200 photographs by Riss, was released October 23rd. The book was published by ArtsMemphis and documents both the passion and dedication of duck hunters and the land where the sport takes place.

Riss’ love affair with photography began at an early age. When he was 11 years old and living in Brooklyn, he delivered prescriptions via bicycle to earn money. One day, the pharmacist noticed Riss admiring a camera on a shelf and gave it to him.

“I taught myself how to take pictures and how to process them, and it was a blast,” Riss says. Soon after, neighbors invited him to take pictures for them at parties.

“I literally began making money as a photographer when I was 12,” he says.

Riss found photography fascinating, especially processing and developing his own prints.

“When the print comes out in the dark room, it’s magic … something appearing from nothing,” Riss says. “When I was a teenager, that and girls were the most fascinating things in the world.”

In college, Riss studied to be a painter. In his last year of school, however, he took his first photography course. After two classes, the professor got sick, and Riss taught the rest of the course.

“I gave myself a very good grade,” he says.

In the late ’60s, Ted Rust, then-director of Memphis College of Art (MCA), asked Riss to come to Memphis and start the school’s photography department.

“He told me, ‘Here’s the space. You do what you have to do with it. Set up the program and the curriculum,'” Riss says. “For a 20-some-odd-year-old, it was way too seductive.

“I had the best students, and I thought I had gone to heaven. It was absolutely the best time.”

Riss worked at MCA for about 20 years before starting his own studio in an abandoned bordello at 516 S. Main.

“Earnestine & Hazel’s was still a functioning [brothel] — there were women standing on every corner — so the old property around here was next to nothing,” Riss says.

Riss still works from that studio, mostly doing advertising and commercial photography. Over the years, he has worked on several Memphis-related books, including ones on Elmwood Cemetery, Mud Island, and 19th-century Memphis architecture.

“Day to day, I have no idea what’s next,” Riss says, “and I find that truly invigorating.”

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Alphabutt–Kimya Dawson and Friends

Kimya Dawson became the unlikeliest of chart-toppers after several of her songs were included on the Juno soundtrack, but this silly, scatological concept album about kids and parents isn’t inspired by the movie as much as by her own 2-year-old daughter. Alphabutt is a collection of deceptively simple sing-along acoustic ditties for, to, and about Dawson’s own kid — and maybe yours too. Front-to-back, it’s her most engaging album ever, even if it would undoubtedly be too sweet, too homely, and too messy for a lot of listeners.

With “friends” of all ages joining in to give the record a rambunctious, campfire spirit, Dawson lets songs about hungry tigers, splashing bears, and potty-training triumphs commingle with songs about pregnancy anxiety, schoolyard lessons on egalitarianism, and the ethics of food availability.

Vision of domestic utopia: “A family and four-track Radio Shack microphone/A backyard and a hammock and a paid-off student loan.” Words of hard-earned wisdom: “You don’t need to be the dog unless you like being the doggie.” Inspirational verse: “The first thing on our list of things to do is to wake up right next to you/The second thing that we have planned is to kiss both of your hands.” (“Little Monster Babies,” “Smoothie,” “I Love You Sweet Baby”) — CH

Grade: A

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

My Halloween Costume

This Halloween, instead of being frightened by imaginary spooks, Americans are shivering at the thought of foreclosures or layoffs, wondering whether the right man for the job will be elected, and if the world will soon become a better or worse place.

In a world of melting icebergs and glaciers and rapidly disappearing species, sometimes it’s hard not to feel the shiver of real fear. Will humans endure on an Earth depleted of its natural balance?

But the scariest thing I’ve seen this Halloween season, the most terrifying issue of all, is the prejudice sweeping the nation right now and the fact that so many are shrugging it off. We are supposed to be a country that accepts all religions, races, and creeds; we are supposed to be a melting pot. But the clock is being turned back at one party’s rallies with comments like, “Obama-Osama: one and the same” and “When you’ve got a negro running for president, he’s not a first-stringer.”

And what is the Republican vice presidential candidate’s response to such comments? “It’s not negativity. It’s truthfulness.”

This is by far the biggest monster under the bed right now, and it’s a scandal that more Americans are not standing up to it. Americans are not supposed to blindly judge their fellow countrymen on the basis of name, skin color, or religion. But it’s easier to blame someone, to find some reason to hate someone in order to alleviate our fears and make us feel safer.

This is the worst possible scenario for America’s future. We need to accept one another as we are, knowing we are all Americans, here to help keep the grand experiment of our Founding Fathers alive and evolving, practicing tolerance and understanding, and knowing that not one of us is above any other because of our religious beliefs, the color of our skin, or the country our family may have come from.

In these frightening times, we need to work together. Allowing hatred and bigotry to overtake us because of our fear will spell certain disaster for our country.

In the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached a dream, one that I realized as I grew up in a school system in the American South. My friends were black, white, Vietnamese, and Hispanic, and we all went to class together and learned together and loved and fought and grew together as children.

No one had any cause for blind hatred, and if they did, they were ignored or scoffed at, because the important thing was to get through adolescence and high school and make it to adulthood. Skin color or religion had nothing to do with it.

Now, hearing the shouts from the crowds at Republican rallies and being assaulted with offensive e-mails about Barack “Hussein” Obama, I recognize the new catchword for hatred is “terrorist.” It is shameful to see so many Americans toss it about so lightly.

We all have to live in America, within a functioning democracy. Being unafraid of the monsters in our lives and refusing to allow fear to grip and control us will be the only way to get through this tough era — and remembering that we are all created equal.

This Halloween, maybe I will dress myself in the costume of another culture and head out into this scary world knowing I could be hated for looking different. It would be one way of showing I still have faith that my fellow Americans can rise above hatred and bigotry to see me as their equal and not as a source of fear in these troubled times.

A native Memphian, Reilly Neill is the publisher of Livingston Weekly in Livingston, Montana.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Show Me Yours

CREDIT: From Meredith Root's Kodachrome Collection

In mid-September, the UrbanArt Commission issued a call to the “creative, interesting, and a little bit obsessed” for a show-and-tell event to be held this Saturday at the Cove.

A raw-foodist and a furniture-maker responded, as did photographers and painters, along with a handful of others, who will each have six minutes and 40 seconds to present 20 slides, detailing their particular passion. The event, spearheaded by Joel Parsons, is based on pecha kucha, a short-and-sweet approach to presentations originally used by Japanese businessmen that has since spread to artistic communities around the globe. The idea, Parsons says, is to keep the presenter “on task” and the audience engaged.

“We have one guy who makes recycled furniture from wood that he finds. We have a woman who eats only raw food, and she takes pictures and documents all her meals,” Parson says. “We also have some more traditional fine artists. There’s one woman who’s going to show her collection of Kodachrome slides. One guy is going to show found photographs. He goes to thrift stores and collects photographs and then creates narratives around the photographs. It’s a pretty good mix of people and subjects.”

According to Parsons, if the inaugural show-and-tell is successful, the commission hopes to hold the event every three or four months. “The idea is that a community will grow around this event, that people will come back time after time and bring their friends in — that it will be a great place for people in Memphis to meet other creative interesting people on a semiregular basis.”

UrbanArt Show-and-Tell, Saturday, November 1st, from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Cove, 2559 Broad.

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Tha Carter III–Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne may well be the “greatest rapper alive,” but he’s never made a wholly undeniable album, and that includes this 77-minute career-best. Wayne’s records are short on the kind of idea-man concepts that have animated some of hip-hop’s best album artists from Run-DMC and Public Enemy to Outkast and Kanye West. He’s in the pure MC tradition of Rakim and Jay-Z, and his daring stream-of-consciousness flow is rhyme-for-rhyme’s sake, full of playful vocal detours, jokes, and unexpected juxtapositions. Vocally, Wayne is Al Green to Jay-Z’s Sinatra, a contrast that comes through sharply when the two heavyweights pair up on “Mr. Carter.” Jay-Z is strong, supple, confidant. Wayne is idiosyncratic, obscure, versatile.

But just because his oddball rhymes don’t always cohere into focused songs doesn’t mean Wayne has nothing to say or that his force of personality doesn’t shine through: The object of his sexual fantasies is a female cop) not because he’s got kinky tastes but because it allows him to make a Geto Boys reference while dropping a “fuck the police” joke. He practices laconic, sarcastic surgery on sucker MCs, and his Katrina verse (on “Tie My Hands”) is both funny and righteous. (“Mr. Carter,” “Tie My Hands,” “Mrs. Officer,” “Let That Beat Build”) — CH

Grade: A-

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: by Greg Cravens

About “GOP in Ruins” by Richard Cohen:

“By the way, Democrats need folks like Bush, John McCain, and Sarah Palin like we need door mats … only to clean our boots on as we walk into the White House.” —The_Unicorn_of_Memphis

About “More Straight Talk,” a YouTube video of a McCain campaign speech, in which he inadvertently insults voters in Pennsylvania:

“Palin ain’t that stupid — she’s gotten almost $150,000 worth of fashion for just a couple months work, not to mention the deduction she’ll undoubtedly take when she gives the scraps to the Wasilla Goodwill.” — sbanbury

About “For the Kiddies’ Sake, Pitching National Baseball Day (Again)” by Frank Murtaugh:

“Baseball dead? Methinks not. Life support? Not really. Just a few blows that have left bruises and black eyes that will heal over time. All of our sports (and is horse racing a sport?) have become a slave to the almighty dollar. Sponsorship and salaries are woven into the fabric of uniforms our heroes wear.” — FlyGuy

Comment of the Week:

About “On Palin’s Wardrobe Malfunction” by Marty Aussenberg:

“McSame and Palin thought they could play a game of political Punk’d and get away with it. They thought they could wrap a big, shining, sparkling $150,000 bow around a box of sh*t and voters would buy it, just like they did with Dubya.” — rantboy

Categories
News News Feature

Half-Price Sale

A bank bailout. A once-stellar Memphis mutual-fund family takes an alarming plunge. More layoffs and less news at the daily paper. And an analysis of the upcoming 2009 property reappraisal that suggests homeowners could get the worst of both worlds.

No need to wait for those post-holiday markdowns, shoppers. Memphis companies are already selling at 50 percent off.

The Longleaf Partners mutual funds, managed by Memphians Mason Hawkins and Staley Cates, are having a terrible year. Each of the three funds in the Longleaf family is down 50 to 52 percent. And some analysts, including television celebrity Jim Cramer, say the fund’s philosophy of buying and holding a relative handful of companies that are supposedly “undervalued” is not going to work in the face of a global recession.

The Longleaf Partners Fund includes companies such as Dell, Sun, FedEx, and an especially sickening 14 million shares of General Motors. In a letter to shareholders this month, the fund managers urged investors to stay the course.

“We are confident that the Longleaf portfolios will deliver large returns coming out of the bear market because of the competitive and financial strength of our holdings, the extreme undervaluation of their shares, and the numerous and aggressive share repurchases at these discounted price levels,” they wrote.

“Said another way, it’s painful in the short term for Dell to have fallen to $15 from $21. Our long-term payoff, however, will be greater because the company is paying $15 in its massive share repurchase program instead of paying $21.”

Said yet another way, that ain’t the bottom. Dell’s stock price has since fallen to $11. And GM could be headed for bankruptcy if it doesn’t get a government bailout.

The tipping point for mutual funds is when redemptions — sale of shares — exceed inflows, or new money. Two of the three Longleaf funds have had net inflows while the third had an outflow of only 1 percent. The next Longleaf quarterly report will be released on November 13th.

Speaking of bailouts: First Horizon, SunTrust Banks, and Regions Financial are among the regional banks participating in the big deal. First Horizon, the parent company of First Tennessee Bank, is getting $866 million; SunTrust, which took over National Bank of Commerce, gets $3.5 billion; and Regions, which took over Morgan Keegan and Union Planters Bank, gets $3.5 billion.

The Memphis presence of the “Big Three” isn’t what it used to be when all were Memphis-based, but they’re still the biggest names on the downtown skyline. The “skyline index” of their combined stock price is down 50 percent since January. And the “Memphis Fortune 500 Index,” consisting of FedEx (down 38 percent), AutoZone (down 14 percent), and International Paper (down 51 percent), isn’t much better.

Another stock that is in the pits is E.W. Scripps (SSP), the parent of The Commercial Appeal. The newspaper division began trading separately from the broadcast division in July, but investors don’t care much for it, possibly because newspapers keep relentlessly reporting their own demise. Since the split, the stock is down — you guessed it — 50 percent.

So what, you say, if you’re not a stock market investor. Well, sooner or later all of this Wall Street carnage means changes in the real world of day-to-day life. Reporters at the CA told me this week that they’ve been told to expect another round of job cuts, including 16 on the news staff, and elimination of regional editions.

Finally, I talked last week with Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson and her staff about the 2009 property reappraisal. I had assumed that most valuations would be down from four years ago because of the housing slump and that the Memphis tax base could decline. But Johnson said that isn’t likely.

The reasons are complicated, and I will be writing more about them next week. Basically, the assessor uses recent sales to set values, and the state doesn’t allow assessors to use foreclosure sales as “comparables” in determining values. So if you’re a homeowner, that means your appraisal will be benchmarked against the pick of the litter — the houses that were attractive enough to sell this year or last year. The pool of such houses is the shallowest it has been in years. There are normally 15,000 to 20,000 qualified sales. This year there will be about 6,000.

Bottom line: Don’t assume your appraisal, and therefore your property taxes, will go down.

Categories
Music Music Features

Man With Guitar Plays Here

By virtue of name alone, the musical genre known as “anti-folk” sets itself up for misinterpretation. The term could be used to describe death metal, indie rock, or barbershop quartets. Because “folk music” is so often applied to acoustic singer-songwriter types rather than to its originally intended purpose, which was “music made by folks,” attaching “anti-” to the term can create aural images of just about anything.

Ironically, anti-folk is primarily associated with music made by one acoustic guitar and one songwriter. The name was coined in the mid-’80s, in the U.K. or New York City (depending on who you ask), and used to signify acoustic-based singer-songwriters who adopted an experimental approach and lyrical content of an irreverent nature. That said, a wild variety of artists exists within the genre, including Ani DiFranco, early Beck, Regina Spektor, Michelle Shocked, Kimya Dawson (as well as Dawson’s former duo with Adam Green, Moldy Peaches), and the torchbearer of the movement’s current incarnation, Jeffrey Lewis.

Since 1997, Lewis has wasted no time establishing himself as one of the more prolific anti-folk artists. He does indeed utilize an acoustic guitar as his instrument of choice and embraces the ease with which his chosen style allows one to record and release lots of music. Currently hovering at close to 20 albums and EPs, Lewis’ discography is heavy with self-releases, but he has enjoyed the support of the Rough Trade imprint, starting with the 2003 album It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines Through. Lewis’ anti-folk is immediately identifiable by a pop-cultural literacy and acute self-referentiality, evident by album and song titles such as Indie Rock Fortune Cookie, The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane, “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror,” Tapes From the Crypt, 
”The History of the Fall,” The Only Time I Feel Right Is When I’m Drawing Comic Books, and 12 Crass Songs.

The last title on that list, from 2007, is exactly what the title suggests: a collection of covers spanning the work of Britain’s most infamous political-punk, commune-dwelling, diehard group of idealistic anarchists. The album followed the critically acclaimed Jeffrey & Jack Lewis: City & Eastern Songs, which garnered praise from every nook and cranny of the music press and was recorded by Kramer, onetime proprietor of the legendary Shimmy Disc label.

The album The Only Time I Feel Right Is When I’m Drawing Comic Books is not false advertising. Lewis has generated a respectable output within the comic-book medium, one that’s dominated by his Guff/Fuff series. Just this year, Lewis provided the comic-book press kit for the Mountain Goats’ Heretic Pride album, and it could be said that Jeffrey Lewis is a name as recognizable among the indie-rock elite as it is in the Lower East Side anti-folk scene. Lewis, along with his brother Jack, supported Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks on a 2008 tour. And Lewis (solo or with his brother) has played with indie-rock heavyweights as diverse as Frank Black, Black Dice, Thurston Moore, the Fiery Furnaces, and Cornershop.

Lewis has also contributed writings for The New York Times‘ “Measure for Measure” Op-Ed section, where he’s kept company with Suzanne Vega and Rosanne Cash. Often playing with a full band, Lewis exemplifies the anti-folk trend of transcending the genre’s apparent sonic limits, something suggested by Lewis’ description of mixing “’60s acoustic psychedelia” with “the experimental art-punk of the Fall and the urban lyricism of Lou Reed, sounding a bit like if Woody Guthrie fronted Sonic Youth.”

Lewis demonstrates that sound this week with a show at the Black Lodge Microdome (located above the Cooper-Young video/DVD emporium) with local anti-folk representatives, Scandaliz Vandalistz.

Jeffrey Lewis

With Scandaliz Vandalistz

Black Lodge Video

Sunday, November 2nd

Showtime is 9 p.m., admission $7

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Baby Grizzlies

CREDIT: by Larry Kuzniewski

A little more than a year ago, Grizzlies general manager Chris Wallace inherited a capped-out loser of a team built around a core duo of well-compensated and pushing-30 post-season underachievers: Pau Gasol and Mike Miller. It was a team coming off a dreadful 22-win season with a roster divided into veterans looking for a way out (Gasol, aging point guard Damon Stoudamire) and young players itching to take over (Rudy Gay, Kyle Lowry, eventual draftee Mike Conley).

With this mixed-message roster drifting listlessly last winter toward another lost campaign, Wallace decided the time for half-measures was over, jettisoning Gasol for four prospects/draft picks and cap room in a wildly controversial move and completing the demolition this summer by packaging Miller in a bold draft-day trade to net blue-chip rookie guard O.J. Mayo.

Wallace and owner Michael Heisley have gone “all in” on a future that fans — actual or potential — might only glimpse this year. Heisley has been specific about the developmental arc to come, dubbing it a “three-year plan.” For the first time in years, the Grizzlies enter a season without Gasol and Miller as the foundation of the roster. Instead, this year’s model will belong to a different pairing: Gay and Mayo, a tandem with more raw talent and grit than any core duo the franchise has assembled.

Reaping the fruits will take time, though. The NBA is a man’s league, and young teams tend to lose — in bunches. And the 2008-’09 baby Grizzlies are some kind of young. With an average age of 24.3, the Grizzlies will boast the league’s third-youngest roster, after the Golden State Warriors and Portland Trailblazers. But even that comparison is misleading. Both the Warriors and Blazers have veteran players in the rotation and raw kids riding the pine. The Grizzlies are opposite. Over-30s Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner are unlikely to see much time. The team’s prospective nine-man rotation — Conley, age 21, Lowry, 22, Mayo, 20, Gay, 22, Quinton Ross, 27, Hakim Warrick, 26, Darrell Arthur, 20, Darko Milicic, 23, and Marc Gasol, 23 — is, by far, the league’s youngest. The Grizzlies will open the season with two rookie starters — Mayo and Gasol — and could well add a third in Arthur at some point this season.

It’s a group bursting with athleticism and upside, but there are also important qualities this assemblage lacks: experience, established track record, a balance of skills. All of the team’s guards are used to handling the ball, not playing without it. None of the team’s power forwards are proven, well, power players. There is clearly work to be done. A final product won’t take the floor until at least the fall of next year.

And inexperience isn’t just an issue on the court. Entering only his second full season as a head coach, Marc Iavaroni is tied with Sacramento’s Reggie Theus as the league’s fourth-least-experienced head coach. After a rocky first season plagued by a dismal record in close games and damaging playing-time decisions (sticking with a wildly ineffective Casey Jacobsen until Heisley intervened), Iavaroni has as much to prove as his players.

Change You Can (Hopefully) Believe In

This year’s Grizzlies roster contains only six (of 14) players who finished last season with the team. But the eight new faces are only the start to what will be a very different basketball team everywhere, except in the standings.

For years, the Grizzlies have been built around the combination of Pau Gasol’s post play and a deep core of three-point shooters. With the departures of Gasol, Miller, and Juan Carlos Navarro, this year’s team can’t depend on either of those offensive elements. Instead, Iavaroni will have to fashion his talent around a different set of offensive strategies, ones that will likely replace post play and three-pointers with more fastbreaks, more free throws, and more mid-range shooting.

Gay and Mayo will be the team’s primary scorers, and both seem capable of being Top 10 scorers in the league someday. An electric athlete with a surprisingly deft shooting stroke and improving ball-handling ability, Gay exploded in his second season, becoming the first second-year player since superstars Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, and Carmelo Anthony to top 20 points per game. He also showed signs of becoming something this franchise has never had: a go-to scorer with not only the ability but the desire to take big shots at the end of games.

by Larry Kuzniewski

Meet the new Gasol: Pau’s burly brother Marc

Mayo, who has been a hoops mini-legend since junior high, is already the team’s best pure shooter, but he may not be quite the player fans are expecting. Rather than the highlight-reel athlete Mayo’s Q-rating suggests, the rookie guard instead has looked more like a solid assassin: a player whose unspectacular athleticism could be overcome by deft shooting, tough-nosed defense, and a preternatural court presence. But as a rookie dependant on outside shooting for much of his offense, Mayo will have games this season where he rains jumpers from all over the court. He’ll have others when his shot isn’t falling, and he’ll put up some ugly box-score lines.

For the Grizzlies, one challenge will be maximizing Gay’s and Mayo’s offensive skills without devolving into too much one-on-one play. This means putting the ball in the hands of primary playmakers Conley and the burlier, woollier (if you can believe it), younger Gasol, who looks like he can replace his older brother’s passing ability if not his scoring. And it means fostering the kind of chemistry and unselfishness than can help get secondary players the kind of shots they need to succeed.

The Grizzlies will try to utilize their superior team speed — especially in the form of point guards Conley and Lowry — to maximize transition opportunities and to attack off the dribble in halfcourt sets, freeing up the team’s trio of mid-range-shooting frontcourt players — Gasol, Warrick, and Arthur — for open looks off pick-and-pop plays and kickouts.

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing lately about the team’s lack of three-point shooters, both from within the organization and among the media, but despite the presence of Miller and Navarro, one of the Grizzlies’ problems last season (albeit a minor one, all things considered) was the team’s over-reliance on three-point shooting. Last year, the Grizzlies were fourth in the league in three-point attempts per game but only 22nd in three-point percentage.

The lack of proven three-point threats will be less of a problem this season if the team has the good sense to dial back its attempts in favor of more drives to the hoop. In this sense, the preseason seems to be a pretty good indicator of shifting strategy. After averaging 21.7 threes per game last season, that number was down to 15.9 this preseason, while free-throw attempts increased from 25.6 to 30.5. (This change will not work out well, however, if the team can’t improve on its dreadful 66 percent preseason free-throw shooting.)

Another thing that should help the Grizzlies offense this season is a reduction in turnovers, something that should happen naturally after point guards Conley and Lowry played their first full NBA seasons a year ago.

by Larry Kuzniewski

Memphis Grizzlies coach Marc Iavaroni

Finally Getting Defensive

After finishing 21st in the league in offensive efficiency last season with a full season of Miller and half-season of Pau Gasol, the Grizzlies would do well to match that production despite the change in players and strategies.

That means if this year’s team is to improve, the heavy lifting will most likely come on the defensive end, where last year’s team was 28th (third from the bottom). Ordinarily, getting younger is not a recipe for defensive improvement, but this year’s Grizzlies should be able to buck that bit of conventional wisdom through a combination of increased emphasis and better personnel.

After watching the Boston Celtics march to a title with a league-best defense spurred, in part, by the hire of “defensive coordinator” assistant Tom Thibodeau, Heisley decided he wanted a defensive specialist on his coaching staff too. This led to the hire of longtime college and NBA coach Kevin O’Neill to focus on reinventing the team’s defense with an approach that’s both more traditional and more aggressive.

In this transformation, the team should be helped by a massive increase in quickness and defensive mentality on the perimeter. Last season, since-departed slow-footed perimeter defenders Miller, Navarro, Casey Jacobsen, and Stoudamire accounted for nearly 30 percent of the team’s total minutes played. This season most of those minutes will be soaked up by Conley, Mayo, and off-season free-agent find Quinton Ross, which should result in a massive defensive improvement along the perimeter, forcing more turnovers and reducing the number of times opposing guards break down the Grizzlies’ “D.” Conley is stronger than he was his rookie season; Mayo has been surprisingly solid on the defensive end; and Ross is a quick, long-limbed defender with a track record of ably guarding the league’s top scorers. If Gay can improve his effort on that end, the Grizzlies have a chance to be pretty dynamic defensively along the perimeter.

On the interior, the team is likely to have bigger problems: Power forwards Hakim Warrick and Darrell Arthur are both undersized for the position and are likely to get punished some nights by bigger, stronger opponents. At center, Marc Gasol has proven to be quite unlike his older sibling in his toughness and willingness to engage in physical play, but his lack of foot speed will make him vulnerable to big men who are able to attack off the dribble and make it difficult for him to rebound out of his immediate area.

The team’s best frontcourt defender and rebounder is Darko Milicic, who has had substantial problems staying healthy and staying focused throughout his young career. The Grizzlies will ask a slimmed-down Milicic to play both frontcourt positions and guard the league’s best post scorers. It might be asking too much, but the team doesn’t have better options. Regardless, the team’s interior defense is unlikely to be worse than it was a year ago.

by Larry Kuzniewski

O.J. Mayo

With more agile, aggressive defenders along the perimeter and a couple of live bodies in the middle, the Grizzlies have a chance to provide the kind of forceful, opportunistic defense promised a year ago. Last season, the team was 17th in blocks per game and a pitiful 28th in steals, combining for 10.8 a game. This preseason, the combined blocks-plus-steals average has been 14. If that carries over into the regular season, it will feed into more transition opportunities.

But Will Anybody Care?

That’s the biggest question for a team that has been losing fans the past three seasons. With a bad economy and a tight lease guarding against the ever-present fears of relocation and with a lowered payroll mitigating financial losses despite falling ticket sales, the silver lining is that the team seems to have time to let this current crop of baby Grizzlies grow together and win back fans. But it won’t be easy.

It would be helpful to think of this year’s Grizzlies as an unusually promising expansion team, but after three straight playoff sweeps followed by two straight lost seasons, a dwindling fan base seems to have developed a “call me when you’re good again” attitude. It doesn’t help that so many potential fans are more interested in the exploits of the minor-league team sharing the building, one all but guaranteed on-court success in a noncompetitive system.

The Grizzlies, on the other hand, can’t be expected to win much this season. But, for starters, how about a more reachable goal: an entire season of purposeful basketball? The past two seasons have been derailed by, first, an in-season change to a lame-duck interim coach (Tony Barone) and then a sea-change trade of a veteran star (Pau Gasol). In both cases, the presence of “franchise savior” prospects in the looming draft rapidly turned losing seasons into summer-focused holding patterns. No more.

At least two of those three issues are unlikely to pop up this season: There’s no veteran star to jettison, and next summer’s draft doesn’t seem to boast any quick fixes. As to the coaching situation: Who knows?

If there’s a model for this year’s Grizzlies, it isn’t the past two seasons but the 2002-’03 squad, in which Hubie Brown took over for incumbent coach Sidney Lowe and guided a young core through a season-long improvement. That team only won 28 games, but it got better, was fun to watch, and set the stage for a massive improvement the following season. That’s a realistic model the 2008-’09 Grizzlies would like to follow but with players who have even more upside. The looming question would be: Is Marc Iavaroni the Hubie Brown of this scenario or the Sidney Lowe?

For more Grizzlies coverage now and throughout the season, see Chris Herrington’s blog “Beyond the Arc” at

memphisflyer.com/grizblog.

by Larry Kuzniewski

Rudy Gay

Coachspeak

Grizzlies coach Marc Iavaroni weighs in:

On rookie surprise Darrell Arthur:

“He had a very up-and-down mini-camp and summer league, so I didn’t know what to expect from him. But I do know he was working very hard. The kid has shown a lot of spunk and ability. I think he should definitely be in the rotation.”

On shaky offensive execution in the preseason:

“Even though our primary scorers — O.J. [Mayo], Rudy [Gay] and Marc Gasol, and sometimes Hak[im Warrick] — are going to have some things called for them, they’re going to have to understand: Even though it’s your play, it might not always be your shot. We’ve got to be better passers. We’ve got to do all the little things that add up to sharp execution, and if the shot goes in, great. If the shot doesn’t go in, either we get guys to shoot better, or we have to get better shooters.”

On developing on-court chemistry:

“I think it’s a process. You’ve got a known scorer in Rudy and a known scorer in O.J., and it’s a process for them to understand that there are only so many shots in a game.”

On improved perimeter defense:

“I think we probably have more juice there and more defensive orientation. Look at Quinton Ross. Look at Greg Buckner. Rudy’s capable. And, frankly, O.J. should be a better defender than Mike Miller. But he’s going through a lot of growing pains too. He’s a rookie. He’s going to make mistakes.”

On Rudy Gay’s development:

“He’s been pushing himself to be more than just the leading scorer. He has to be the leading man. Leading men have to do more than just look good. He’s got star potential, but he will be judged on how well others play with him, and that’s a lot of responsibility for a young kid who’s not used to being in that role and who’s now with a team that’s counting on him so heavily. It’s not going to happen overnight. Those are some big steps to take.”

On finding the right role for Darko Milicic:

“I’ve got to more narrowly define his role and get him feeling good about kicking butt inside and not worry about whether it’s a good shot or a bad shot. We can’t leave him on an island with the ball at 18 feet. I think that’s where he gets himself into trouble.”

On a potentially rough start:

“What will define us is our approach. If we’re going to come off the court every night having said we worked harder than our opponent; we did not back down, then I think we’re going to be building something. But if we’re going to start making excuses, start saying we’re flat, start saying we’re young, start saying we’re new to one another, then we’ll be building in failure. And that’s something that we cannot accept.”

To read the complete interview with Marc Iavaroni, see “Beyond the Arc” at memphisflyer.com/grizblog.

Seven Deadly Predictions

Going on the record about this year’s Grizzlies.

1. The Grizzlies will finish last in average home attendance. And it may not even be close. Last season, the Grizzlies finished 29th of 30 NBA teams, outdrawing the Indiana Pacers by about 500 spectators a game. This season, with the Pacers having jettisoned more of the players who alienated a once-strong fan base, the New Orleans Hornets a legit title contender, and the former Seattle Sonics embarking on their first season as the Oklahoma City Thunder, three of last season’s other bottom-five draws should be in line for a significant bump. With the economy in trouble, things will be bad in New Jersey, Charlotte, Sacramento, Milwaukee, and Minnesota, as well. But look for the Grizzlies to be four-digits worse than anyone else this season.

2. O.J. Mayo will finish third in an unusually strong Rookie of the Year race. Mayo will trail only Miami’s Michael Beasley among rookie scorers at just under 18 points a game, but both will come up short to Portland’s Greg Oden in the ROY race. Marc Gasol, who will start all season, will be a second-team all-rookie selection, while fellow rookie Darrell Arthur, who will end the season as a starter, will just miss all-rookie honors.

3. Rudy Gay will be a Top 15 scorer but not an all-star. After finishing 26th in scoring average last season at 20.1, Gay will push his scoring average closer to 23 per game, knocking on the door of Top 10 status. He’ll warrant all-star consideration in a conference lacking great small forwards, but the team’s dismal win-loss record will keep him out — this year.

4. Mike Conley will be wobbly early but will establish himself and get some Most Improved Player votes. Few players in the league are in as difficult a spot as Conley: trying to establish himself as an NBA point guard at age 21 with two other perimeter teammates in Gay and Mayo hungry for the ball. Conley will feel his way for a couple of months before taking off, establishing himself as one the league’s best young point guards heading into next summer.

5. A trade will be made — but not a big one. Behind Conley, Kyle Lowry will bristle at his bench role while Javaris Crittenton and Marko Jaric will struggle to find minutes. Something’s got to give. Look for Lowry to rehab his trade value after a bad pre-season and be shipped to a point-guard-needy team by mid-season.

6. Marc Iavaroni will survive the season; Antoine Walker will not. A bad economy and declining revenues will make Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley more cautious about buying out one coach to hire another, giving Iavaroni a longer leash than he might otherwise have, and the team will show enough improvement for Iavaroni to last the season. Despite a reluctance to take less money in a buyout, unneeded vet Walker will find some way to exit Beale Street Blue before the season ends.

7. The Grizzlies will finish 28-54. After a rough early start, the young guys will gel and improve enough for the Grizzlies to play competitive basketball down the stretch, setting the stage for a bigger leap forward next season. — CH

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Retro soul revisited.

From new-jack to neo-soul, from Tony Toni Toné to a solo career, Raphael Saadiq has been modern R&B’s truest, most talented, least self-conscious link to glory days-tradition for nearly two decades. But he outdoes himself on this career-peak solo triumph — the best blend of modern and vintage R&B since Tony Toni Toné’s 1996 swan song, House of Music.

With so much recent retro soul focused on funk and Southern grit, Saadiq’s version is more in the tradition of early Motown and ’60s Chicago soul like the Impressions, with little dabs of doo-wop and ’70s Stevie Wonder tossed into the mix. This is a pristine, painstaking evocation of classic soul down to the handclap percussion, sleigh-bell downbeats, spoken interjections, and call-and-response exchanges. Saadiq’s vocal style is smooth and urbane but strong — Smokey Robinson falsettos, Ben E. King-worthy phrasing, soaring Sam Cooke-style vocal flights. But what puts the whole package over the top is its consistently first-rate songwriting.

Saadiq’s previous solo record was called Instant Vintage. He should have saved the title for this one. (“Sometimes,” “Big Easy,” “Keep’ Marchin'”)

— Chris Herrington

Grade: A