Frank Murtaugh waxes philosophical on the end of the Grizzlies’ season.
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Month: May 2012
The late Bart Giamatti — commissioner of Major League Baseball at the end of his life — described his favorite game as being “designed to break your heart.” Giamatti was a wise man, and he was right about baseball. But doesn’t the same hard truth wrap itself around all professional team sports? Forced to say goodbye to the 2011-12 Memphis Grizzlies, aren’t we victims to precisely the kind of heartbreak Giamatti described in poetic form?
There are 30 NBA franchises. If the only pure form of joy is winning a championship, then the fan bases for 29 teams must endure the offseason with at least a degree of disappointment, if not utter heartbreak. Every year. (Let’s add the fan bases of NFL and MLB teams to the mix, and you have 89 of 92 legions of towel-wavers forced to dry the tears of also-rans one year after another.) There’s a cold permanence to a season-ending loss, even though we know our favorite team will suit up again, share our optimism of a new season, and fight toward the same challenge we had to concede most recently. But the offseason, as it begins, feels like the first day of school.
Had you suggested through the din at FedExForum during Game 1 of the Grizzlies’ series with the Los Angeles Clippers — Memphis up by more than 20 in the fourth quarter — that L.A. would win the series despite the Grizzlies taking a game in California, you would have learned the taste of a brand-new “Believe Memphis” growl towel. Looking back over the last two weeks, this is the heartbreaking element of the games Memphis fans will be reviewing (teeth grinding) over the next six months. There were so many chances for the Grizzlies to seize control of the franchise’s first series with home-court advantage.
Even with the collapse late in Game 1, Rudy Gay had a shot to win the opener and cure a bad-loss hangover before it could even take hold. Had but one errant shot in Game 3 found its mark, the difference would have been a Memphis win and a 2-1 series lead. Any game that requires an overtime period could go either way, but Game 4 went to the Clippers. That close to a four-game sweep, and today’s column being a forecast of a Grizzlies-Spurs rematch.
The NBA belongs to its superstars. The formula has long been securing a star worthy of an ad campaign, adding a big-name sidekick, and making sure the supporting cast gets out of the way as the trophy is being shined. Which makes the Grizzlies’ loss to Chris Paul, sidekick Blake Griffin, and the Clips so much more disheartening. Because we know the superstar formula doesn’t always hold. It didn’t last spring when the Grizzlies took down four-time champion Tim Duncan and San Antonio. It didn’t in last year’s Finals, when Dallas upset LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and a Miami team that seemed to take the formula to its ugliest, most expensive extreme. Match up the Grizzlies’ starting five with the Clippers’ starting five and the edge belongs to Memphis. Still. But it was the Clippers who somehow took control of the final quarter of Game 7 … with their superstars combining to score two points. Ouch.
Just as teams evolve, so do fan bases. Memphis NBA fans didn’t know the thrill of a playoff series win until last year, the franchise’s 10th here in the Bluff City. And honestly, Memphis fans didn’t know real playoff disappointment until Sunday afternoon, when Mother’s Day got all too gloomy because of a basketball game. The faces we’ve made familiar over two playoff runs now — Tony, Z-Bo, Rudy, Marc, and Mike — will hardly fade from our consciousness. But they won’t be smiling, screaming, gritting, or grinding for a summer suddenly too long.
Late Sunday afternoon, my family took a walk around our neighborhood. It was entirely pleasant, my wife the center of our attention (a championship mom). We rounded a corner and I heard a basketball being dribbled at the end of a driveway. A boy — looked to be about 10 years old — was shooting on his own, his shadow longer than his actual height as the sun managed to split a few clouds. He was wearing a number 9 Tony Allen jersey. Enough to make you believe.
And I thought the Grizzlies-Clippers game, to which in a hopeful mood I took three of my adult offspring on Sunday, was something dismaying.
But that doesn’t touch this whole development regarding comments appended to articles, and people wanting to ban each other’s comments and bugging Flyer editor Bruce van Wyngarden about it and his reacting in ways that I think, upon reflection, he’ll have second thoughts about – nay, seems to acknowledge already having second thoughts about, if I read him right.
But perhaps not. I will leave such second thoughts, if there be any, to him. The one thing I won’t do is second-guess him or any other colleague, any more than I would appreciate being second-guessed in my turn.
But one thing I want to reiterate as strongly as I possibly can. The issue of school merger in Shelby County is now, as it was at the end of 2010 when it came out of nowhere, the most significant circumstance facing those of us who live in this larger community. As such, it is still the biggest news item going.
How could it not be? It involves politics, education, commerce, society at large – all in very large ways. And to turn one’s back on it, either as newsperson or as citizen, would be irresponsible in the extreme.Yes, I too get annoyed at some of the turns taken by commenters — to Flyer items, to CA items, to TV stories,to each other, whatever.
But I understand their passion, even their exhibitionism. From time to time one of the commenters even comes up with a real nugget of insight or information.
Two things I can assure you of.
One is, I don’t write news items or analytical pieces about the merger issue or any other subject –nor does John Branston or any other colleague or news competitor — in order to throw these folks any red meat. It’s rhe subject itself that arouses them, for good reasons, bad reasons and everything in between. Tired of it all? Blame the subject, and the never-ending incidents and major developments – many, many of them crucially important – that accrue to the subject.
Believe me, if we in the news business didn’t make an effort to try to keep up with this story, and to separate the wheat from the chaff, the essential from the inessential, the reality from the deceits, etc., etc., we – the whole community – would really be up a creek. I appreciate the compliments paid me and John, but all we’re doing is doing our job.
Parenthetically, Bruce, I do know this for a fact (and no, I’m not guessing): If we at the Flyer flagged even slightly in our coverage, our friends on Union Avenue, who also are doing their conscientious best to stay up with the story (and, yes, with us, as we with them) would shout hallelujahs and light cigars.
The other thing is I’m certain of is this: There is no law nor coercive power that can make anyone read a line of a news article in the Flyer or CA or anywhere else, nor can anyone be forced to read a jot or a tittle composed by any commenter.
We have articles on all kinds of subjects, thanks be to God (as well as to the First Amendment), and people are free to comment on any and all of them. Or to disregard them. At no offense to me, I can assure you.
It’s a free country.
- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Marc Gasol scored 19 of the Grizzlies’ 72 points, but the Clippers’ bench made the decisive plays in Game 7.
A good season came to a bad end for the Memphis Grizzlies at FedExForum today. In the first homecourt Game 7 in franchise history, the Grizzlies took a precarious one-point lead into the final quarter but were out-worked and out-executed by the Los Angeles Clippers, as has been the case for so much of this series.
Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins declined to respond to a question about fourth-quarter performance in his post-game press conference, calling the issue “far-fetched,” but in a seven-game series where the teams seemed to be so evenly matched, the issue is unavoidable. The Grizzlies out-scored the Clippers 640-635 on the series, but the Clippers won the fourth quarters and overtimes 183-146.
The Grizzlies have often been able to build leads early in this series, but not today in an ugly first quarter that saw teams shoot a combined 13 for 47 and the Clippers take a 16-13 lead through the first 12 minutes. The Grizzlies responded to a 10-point Clipper lead midway through the second by closing the half on a 15-6 run that featured the kind of energy and intensity that eluded the Grizzlies for most of the game. But when the Clippers built another lead with an 11-2 run in the early minutes of the final quarter, the Grizzlies couldn’t respond, as the Clippers’ bench led a 27-16 fourth quarter.
And that was another series-long trend that became more prominent in this game. The Clippers entered this post-season with the reputation as a pretty, high-flying team. But, in the playoffs, hard-nosed, defensive players like Eric Bledsoe, Kenyon Martin, and especially Reggie Evans emerged into bigger roles, especially in the fourth quarters, transforming the character of their team.
The Grizzlies’ season ended with a whimper, an 82-72 home loss to the L.A. Clippers. The Clippers used an 11-2 run to begin the fourth quarter to break open what had been a back-and-forth one-possession game for three quarters.
Read Chris Herrington’s report at Beyond the Arc.
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Lighten Up
Editor Bruce VanWyngarden has some words of advice for those who like arguing about schools.
Regular visitors to this website have by now gotten used to the endless, 24/7 debate over the school merger situation. Back and forth it goes, day after day, like an eternal game of badminton between six or seven players. Nobody’s really watching the game any more and no one cares about it except the players, but occasionally, things get a little testy and one or more of the combatants steps over the perceived line and the squawking to the referee begins; “Ban him. Ban him.”
This weekend was one such situation. A couple of people complained about an OTP post on the site, and I got one email demanding that I deal with the situation. Pulling myself away from my, you know, life, I looked at the posts in question and decided to take them down, though to me they didn’t seem much different than numerous other insults that have gone back and forth over the past six weeks. But whatever.
Hard as it is to believe, monitoring this silly debate 24/7 is low on my list of weekend activities. You folks have made the choice to engage each other, to argue back and forth every day, to believe somehow that you can change each others viewpoints if you just argue long and hard enough. You may also believe in the tooth fairy, I dunno. I mean, you could ignore each other. You could comment on other subjects. You could take a break for a day or two. It’s up to you. If debating on a website brings you angst, there is a solution.
But listen, guys, if I banned people from this site on the basis of reader emails and complaints, you’d all be gone. I won’t do that, because there’s plenty of room on the website for all kinds of folks, including the half-dozen of you who enjoy debating the school mergers day after day. And I will continue to monitor for posts that are personal attacks, overtly racist, vulgar, etc. and remove them. But I ain’t going to referee this silly squabble. I have better things to do. And if you didn’t enjoy arguing with each other, you wouldn’t do it day after day, right?
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Happy Mothers Day!
Happy Mothers Day to all our motherly Flyer readers. If you haven’t made plans (beyond watching the Grizzlies), here’s a list of brunch options.
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Trace Atkins at the Orpheum
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Grizzlies Beat Clips, Force Game 7
The Grizzlies came back from an 8 point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat the Clippers in L.A. Friday, 90-88. Chris Herrington has the story.