I found myself at City Hall yesterday with no ride in pretty relentless rain, so I decided to find somewhere close to eat and wait both out. I’m not one to splurge on impromptu lunches, so I was happy to run across Joey’s New York Deli, whose menu boasted lunch specials under $5.
I got the massive chicken sandwich and yummy German potato salad you see here, plus a soda, for $5.50, and they’ve got a sizeable list of other lunch options. Thumbs up!
A couple of weeks ago, I enthralled my half-dozen readers (yes, I’m talking about you) with photos and a few words about the odd Japanese Garden that once stood in Overton Park. Surely you remember what I said? If not, scroll down and read it again. Better yet, gather your children around you as you do so; reading the inspiring story aloud to them may deter them from a life of crime. It certainly can’t hurt.
Anyway, I was rummaging through my old postcards archived in the Lauderdale Library, searching for other images of that garden, when I came across these two cards, and thought I’d share them with you. Why? Because they actually pay me to do this. Hard to believe, but it’s true.
After they — and I don’t know who, exactly, “they” were, since I wasn’t around at the time — but as I was saying, after “they” demolished the Japanese Garden after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “they” were left with a little empty island in the middle of the lake, so “they” put a rather bleak little fountain there. And here’s an image of it, below. Oh, I could stare at it for hours!
But at some point, “they” erected a cute little log cabin on the island, as you can see in the top image. I have no idea how large (or small) this structure was; somebody should have stood beside it when they snapped the photograph, to provide a sense of scale. What were you thinking, cameraman? And I also don’t know what purpose it served, or where it came from, or what happened to it, so please don’t ask me about any of that.
What I DO know is that this is not the present-day Rainbow Lake in Overton Park. This lake, as I’ve said before, was filled in when they constructed the Memphis Academy of Arts complex.
And that concludes today’s history lesson on Overton Park.
As usual, I ran out of time to do all the season-preview posts I’d hoped to do. (Damn you, Indie Memphis!) As a result, I had several mental or recorded notes that I never got into any posts or my print-edition preview. So, with a few hours until the Grizzlies regular season begins, I’m emptying the notebook here:
The Importance of Gasol: If you want to find one common denominator for team success or failure for the Grizzlies last season it was this: They were a good team with Marc Gasol on the floor and a bad team without him. Gasol was the one player on the floor who seemed to have a positive impact on both ends of the floor and the player who seemed to have the most tangible impact on his teammates. This was all a factor of both how well Gasol played and how poor the team’s center situation was behind him. With Hasheem Thabeet not looking much, I’m not sure if things will change much this season. (Though perhaps an improved Darrell Arthur will allow the team to play more effective small-ball lineups.) Which means Griz fans should hope that Gasol’s current ankle injury doesn’t linger and there aren’t many more health problems ahead for him.
The Thabeet/Gasol Combo: My first season preview piece looked at five-man lineups from last season, illustrating the big gulf between how the team played with all five starters on the floor and how they played with any other lineup:
Full Starter Lineup: +7.3
All Other Lineups: -6.7
An interesting exception to that trend? Lineups that paired Gasol and Thabeet together:
Gasol/Thabeet Lineups: +5.0
John Branston has some thoughts about the housing market — who gets what, and who gets screwed.
Some economist suggested a year ago that the solution to the housing crisis was to bulldoze a million new houses. The corollary to that might be including 10,000 or so of those from Memphis.
Sen. Bob Corker and a panel of housing experts came to Rhodes College Wednesday for a give-and-take with 150 or so guests. It lasted two hours, which is usually an hour too long. But this one could have gone three hours. Hot topic, good host, wise panel, and an audience that was clearly engaged.
You could feel the excitement in the Plaza Club on that warm afternoon in March 2001, when the mayors and members of the NBA pursuit team announced that Memphis was going to get a real professional sports team at long last.
“A new beginning in the history of Memphis,” Mayor Willie Herenton said. “It will be amazing how much we will have for this community,” Shelby County mayor Jim Rout said. FedEx would buy the naming rights for a new arena. Not one but two NBA teams applied to move to Memphis.
What? You say the Plaza Club no longer exists? So it goes. The important thing is that the Grizzlies are still around and open their 10th season in Memphis Wednesday night. Pro sports is a gamble. Some things about the Grizzlies and FedExForum turned out well, some not so well. How did it work? Here’s a 10-part answer to the NBA’s ten-year run.
Memphis is major league. After 30 years of futility, the goal of NBA Now was to get a team. To ignore the magnitude of this is to forget all those Memphis teams in the ABA, WFL, and USFL. The Flyer‘s story on the March 2001 announcement ran next to a half-page ad for “Memphis Maniax Fan Appreciation Weekend” and the big XFL battle featuring Tommy Maddox and Jim Druckenmiller. Instead we got Pau, Kobe, Shaq, and Lebron. Enough said.
FedExForum is a big-time building. And, so far, property taxes have not gone into it. Downtown developer Terry Lynch calls it “a shining example of a public/private partnership. It’s a phenomenal building. I wish we could do more like it.”
The financial indicators are troubling. The recession took a billion-dollar bite out of First Horizon, Regions Morgan Keegan, and FedEx, three of our local sports sponsors, ticket buyers, and corporate big hitters. As an exercise in masochism, I compared the 2005 and current stock price of First Horizon ($33, $9.50), Regions Financial ($33, $7), and FedEx ($104, $89). We are not as rich a community as we were when the arena was built.
The attendance trend is troubling. In the financing plan, the average attendance was pegged at 14,900 and the “worst case” at 10,700. Grizzlies attendance peaked at 16,862 in 2005, bottomed at 12,745 in 2008, and rebounded to 13,485 in 2009. Those are tickets sold and distributed, not butts in seats. Not for nothing do the legal documents address attrition, buyout, relocation, and termination payments.
The Pyramid is a major-league headache. It will cost at least $50 million to reuse. Some say its debt should have been rolled in with the cost of FedExForum, but it wasn’t, and now we have an empty monument at the north end of downtown that is going to be hard to retrofit.
Tiger basketball: good for FedExForum, bad for Grizzlies. John Calipari came to Memphis in 2000. From 2000 to 2009, the Tigers won an average 27 games a year, went to three straight Elite Eights, and had a .750 winning percentage. From 1990 to 1999, the Tigers won an average 18 games a year and their winning percentage was .592. The Tigers routinely sell out, and fans have gotten to see Rodney Carney, Derrick Rose, and Tyreke Evans.
The ripple impact was disappointing. Phil Jackson may have been harsh in his comparison of downtown Memphis to Dresden, Germany, but the fact is Union Avenue between Danny Thomas and the Peabody is bleak, and we still have a bus station, not a new convention center. Beale Street got a bump from the Westin Hotel, but Peabody Place is essentially closed.
FedExForum is a good casino fighter. At 13,000 a game for 41 pro games and 17,000 a game for 16 Tiger games plus concerts, that’s a lot of money that stays in Memphis instead of Tunica.
Bonding is bull. A Final Four run by the Tigers or a playoff win (yet to come) from the Grizzlies would create excitement and warm feelings, but sports is not civics. The consolidation vote will show how “One Memphis” we really are.
The best may be yet to come. In 2001, nobody foresaw the arrival of Jerry West and Hubie Brown. If Dirk Nowitzki misses that jump shot or Chucky Atkins makes that layup, the Grizzlies break the playoff jinx and maybe things are different. It could still happen.
Opening night! I’ll be on hand for tonight’s opener, tweeting during the game and filing a post-game blog at some point after the action. Until then, here are a few thoughts in advance of tonight’s game:
If Gasol Can’t Go: When fully healthy, the Grizzlies (Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol) and Hawks (Josh Smith and Al Horford) boast two of the most productive frontcourt tandems in the NBA, but the contrast is stark. It’s match-up of power (Grizzlies) against speed (Hawks). And, last season, despite the Hawks winning both games against the Grizzlies by double-digits, the frontcourt match-up seemed to be pretty much a wash.
But what happens if Gasol, as expected, misses tonight’s opener due to his recently sprained ankle? Obviously, this hurts the Grizzlies, as Gasol was arguably the team’s most important player a year ago. But, more specifically, how does this impact the match-ups?
The obvious response would seem to be moving Hasheem Thabeet into the starting lineup. But, given how Thabeet is unlikely to be able to exploit his size advantage over Horford on the offensive end, it might be better for the Grizzlies to go small, shifting Randolph to center and starting Darrell Arthur — who is coming off a strong preseason — at forward opposite Smith, who is perhaps the most athletic power forward in the league. And it might make sense for the Grizzlies to go even smaller at times, with Arthur at center and/or Rudy Gay (or even DeMarre Carroll) checking Smith.
Chris Herrington talks with Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins about the team’s outlook for this season.
Excerpts from this interview appear in the print edition of this week’s Flyer. Note: This interview was conducted last Thursday, before Marc Gasol suffered a sprained ankle on Sunday.
Beyond the Arc: Looking back over these 10 years, it seems like the good Grizzlies teams have had a clear identity. Hubie’s playoff team was about the 10-man rotation and a scrappy, opportunistic defense feeding the break. Fratello’s playoff teams were about surrounding Pau Gasol with shooters and running a halfcourt offense through him. Do you think this team established an identity last season with the Marc Gasol/Zach Randolph combo?
Lionel Hollins: I would say that. That’s where we hung our hat last year and where we made our improvement. We were 30th in rebounding the year before Zach came and last year we were fourth. We were first in offensive rebounding and first in points in the paint and first in second-chance points. So I think that’s definitely our identity. We want to play hard-nosed defense, rebound the ball, and run. But get it inside to our post people in our halfcourt offense, and even in early offense.
Obviously that frontcourt duo is surrounded by some talented and high-profile perimeter players. Do you think they’ve bought into the notion that emphasizing the inside game is what this team needs to do to win?
Well, obviously they did [last year]. But we posted Rudy a lot and other guys have the opportunity to do their thing. That’s the balance we have. If we have to slow it down, we go inside. But if we have the opportunity, we’ll run — and I hope we have more opportunities to run this year because we’ll be a better defensive team.
