Author: Kevin Lipe

Larry Kuzniewski

James Ennis has had a breakout year for the Grizzlies after being cut last year.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the Grizzlies have traded forward James Ennis to the Detroit Pistons for Brice Johnson and a second-round pick:

Memphis has traded James Ennis to Detroit for Brice Johnson and a second-round pick, league sources tells ESPN.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) February 8, 2018

Grizzlies trade James Ennis to Detroit for Brice Johnson, pick

More on this as it develops. Ennis has been inconsistent but also underutilized since coming to the Grizzlies for the second time under David Fizdale (after not playing at all under Dave Joerger before being cut so the team could sign Ryan Hollins for the fourteenth time). I like this pickup for the Grizzlies if they’d decided to move on from Ennis: it gives him a shot to impress another team and maybe help them make the playoffs, and the Grizzlies get an asset back instead of losing him.

No word yet on other trades brewing for the Grizzlies, but rest assured, the phone lines are busy league-wide.

Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

Tyreke Evans

The Grizzlies did not beat the Utah Jazz Wednesday, but compared to the beatdown they caught the previous night after a long layover in Atlanta (certainly not the first team to meet that fate), last night’s effort was much better. Utah is better than Atlanta, and the Griz barely fell short of beating them. But that’s not really what matters this morning: today is the NBA trade deadline.

The Grizzlies have already kept Tyreke Evans off the court since last Wednesday’s game at Indiana—an unusually long “don’t get hurt before we can trade you” sabbatical but not an unreasonable one. Reports continue to trickle out that Boston, Philadelphia, and Denver are all interested in Evans but don’t want to part with a first round pick. So what can we expect to see from the Grizzlies between now and 2PM Central, when it’s pencils down for the whole league?

★ There’s a path for the Grizzlies to keep Tyreke, but they shouldn’t settle. The extension Lou Williams signed with the Clippers shows how tight the free agency market will be this summer. The main reason the Griz have been so reluctant to take back additional salary for next year in an Evans deal is that they want to keep the full Mid-Level Exception open for next season, allowing them to sign a player somewhere in that $8M range. Evans came to the Griz with no Bird Rights, meaning Memphis is unable to go over the cap to sign him this summer, but they’d be available again if he signed for a two year deal or the “early Bird rights” would be available after only one more year. (So, for example, a two year deal with a player option after next season.)

All that is to say, if the Grizzlies think Evans will be available at the MLE this summer, keeping him isn’t crazy.

But. All it takes is a team with a better offer and he’s gone for nothing. Or, if he does have to take the MLE, which is certainly possible, there could be a team offering the same salary that he might rather play for. Keeping him at the deadline is by no means a sure way to keep him in free agency. So, assuming talks progress to the point that one of these teams (I think the Sixers and Nuggets seem more likely than the Celtics, and there may be other teams entering the fray today) is actually willing to return a first rounder and/or a second rounder and a good young player (Emmanuel Mudiay from Denver, for example, or Luwawu-Cabarrot from Philly), the Grizzlies should take that deal. They’ll still have the MLE to offer Tyreke this summer no matter what they do.

The Grizzlies have a storied history of letting guys walk for nothing. I’d hate to see that be what happens here, again, but after all this talk about how it’s imperative that they trade Evans, this Williams deal with the Clippers may have changed the thinking a little.

★ Brandan Wright is almost certainly gone if someone offers an asset. Wright has fallen out of the rotation, because the young guys need minutes. The Wright experiment in Memphis was a great idea at the time, but he’s been so hampered by injuries while here that it’s hard to say it’s been anything approaching a success.

The second someone offers a second round pick, or a young player, or a really nice set of encyclopedias, I expect Wright to be on his way out of Memphis. He can add value to another team needing frontcourt depth, and it would clarify the depth chart here—a win-win for the player and the team.

★ My assumption is the Grizzlies would like to do more than two deals. Evans and Wright are the obvious trade bait, but the Griz have other players that might interest playoff teams looking to add depth. What if the right offer comes in for JaMychal Green? Or if someone offers a late second for Jarell Martin? I expect the Griz to pursue those sorts of things, and also to see what it would cost them to move Ben McLemore (though I think they’ll probably be stuck with him, realistically).

All in all, this is an interesting day for the Grizzlies. How they handle the Evans situation will tell us quite a bit about how they think this summer will go, and if they can manage to pull off these other ancillary deals without giving up anything else of value, they’ll be in a much better spot flexibility-wise heading into next season. We can only hope that, unlike the fabled OJ Mayo-to-Indiana trade that was turned in to the league too late to go through, this time, the fax machines are working properly.

This week on the show, Kevin and Phil talk about:

• Watching the unwatchable loss to the Hawks, for some reason
• Rookie year inconsistency from Wayne Selden—worth keeping an eye on
• Losing lots of post-2011 fans who have only known the Grizzlies to be good
• The Trade Deadline, the decision to sit Tyreke Evans, and where he might end up
• Will JB Bickerstaff be the Grizzlies’ coach next year? Phil throws out an interesting name
• The upcoming week of (probably not great) games

The Beyond the Arc podcast is available on iTunes, so you can subscribe there! It’d be great if you could rate and review the show while you’re there. You can also find and listen to the show on Stitcher and on PlayerFM.

You can call our Google Voice number and leave us a voicemail, and we might talk about your question on the next show: 234-738-3394

You can download the show here or listen below:

This week on the show, Kevin and Phil talk about:

• The Grizzlies are 18-31. How hard should they try to keep losing?
• Do we trust the Grizzlies’ front office to handle the tank? Or to make a top-5 pick?
• Phil thinks the Grizzlies should explore taking drastic measures to keep Tyreke Evans
• How will the Grizzlies keep fans interested while they’re bad?
• The developing young guys—even Jarell Martin has had spots where he’s played really well.
• Should the Grizzlies shut Parsons down just to save wear and tear?
• Who will be on the Grizzlies’ roster after the trade deadline?
• Is JB Bickerstaff going to be the coach next year? Should he be?

The Beyond the Arc podcast is available on iTunes, so you can subscribe there! It’d be great if you could rate and review the show while you’re there. You can also find and listen to the show on Stitcher and on PlayerFM.

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You can call our Google Voice number and leave us a voicemail, and we might talk about your question on the next show: 234-738-3394

You can download the show here or listen below:

Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

The Grizzlies announced this afternoon that Mike Conley will undergo surgery on his injured heel and will miss the remainder of the 2017-18 season. From the press release:

Conley will undergo surgery to smooth a small bone protrusion in his left heel that continues to cause pain and soreness. He will be unavailable for the remainder of the 2017-18 season but is expected to make a full recovery prior to 2018-19 training camp.

It’s not surprising that Conley will be out the rest of the season—all signs were that he was unlikely to see the court anyway—but it is a surprise to see a season-ending surgery. One hopes that this surgery will (finally) correct the issues Conley has had with this for so many years.

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Conley remains under contract for three more seasons. Chandler Parsons and Marc Gasol both have two years remaining on their current contracts. Parsons is now “day to day” and “making progress” alleviating his knee soreness, and JaMychal Green and James Ennis are expected to return within the next week.

Larry Kuzniewski

The Griz lost to the Spurs on Wednesday night,
but Memphis had five players who were out.
Though youth and hunger they brought to the fight,
their offense—nothing to write home about.
This season moral vict’ries are the norm,
but last night fell short even in that way.
Some nights they never cohere, never form
into a thing resembling winning play.
One cannot yet say if they’ll truly tank,
or whether winning’s clarion call’s too strong,
but even if by accident, they stank
for forty-some-odd minutes. That’s too long.
     When Tyreke leaves town at the deadline’s bell,
     the Grizzlies’ record truly goes to hell.

Larry Kuzniewski

This photo will never not be weird to me.

The Grizzlies beat the Sacramento Kings in blowout fashion last night, 106-88, despite being tied at 40 at halftime due to a 10-point scoring effort from the home team in the second quarter. The Grizzlies have now won three games in a row (and four home games in a row), breaking several of the ten commandments for the second half of the season I set out for them earlier in the week. But, despite the fact that rookie Dillon Brooks set a new career high with 22 points, and despite the fact that Ben McLemore played for the first time in a while and scored 21 points off the bench, and despite the fact that the Grizzlies won going away over what is almost unquestionably the (real) worst team in the Western Conference, the outcome of the game last night wasn’t the story. This was the story:

Thank you for believing in the color of our collars. For embodying the soul of a city. And for never bluffing.

All Memphis all heart. #50Forever pic.twitter.com/z8nVWuUXqD

— Memphis Grizzlies (@memgrizz) January 20, 2018

Grizzlies 106, Kings 88: Return of the King

Zach Randolph’s return to Memphis for the first time since signing with the Kings over the summer was the story. The return of the Grizzlies’ greatest era’s most important player, the return of a Memphis folk hero in the flesh, a civic fixture and adopted Memphian (warts and all) who somehow finds himself on the other end of the continent wearing purple for the next couple years.

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Emotions were high in the building all night—Randolph was announced last in the Kings lineup to a roar from the crowd—but once the tribute video was on the big screen, the place fell totally silent until it ended, at which point the crowd erupted and “Z-Bo” chants broke out.

If the Grizzlies were going to be good this year and make a run at the playoffs based on a Big Three core of Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, and Chandler Parsons, it makes sense (at the basketball level) that they would move on from Randolph. His game is so different from the “modern” NBA (as though 2011 and 2013 and 2015 are so far removed from us… I guess in a way they are) that it’s understandable that a new coach with a new system and three younger guys around whom to implement it would be less than enthused about a 36-year-old big who lumbers like a ’71 Chrysler but also runs over and crushes smaller men like a ’71 Chrysler and looks as good as a ’71 Chrysler doing it.

The observers of this team were too optimistic coming into the season. I, and people like me, didn’t want to believe the ESPN projections and the other stat-based predictors that had been so wrong so many seasons before. We now know that the guy who was responsible for the inaccuracy of those predictions is currently starting for Sacramento. If the Grizzlies were always going to be bad, you can make the argument that Z-Bo would have been one more vet soaking up minutes that a younger guy should take. But would you rather have Zach Randolph soaking up 20 minutes a night on your bad team, or Mario Chalmers? Zach Randolph, or Ben McLemore? (I guess McLemore’s not soaking up minutes if he can’t get off the bench, but I wonder if Randolph could’ve been re-signed by the Grizzlies for something closer to McLemore’s deal than what he got from the Kings.)

Bottom line is: sitting there in the arena watching the tribute video last night, I realized I was wrong about Zach Randolph. I don’t think the Grizzlies meant to be bad, so I still understand why they decided to move on, but knowing what I know now, and being reminded of how much Randolph meant to this team and to this city—it’s easy to forget playoff games from five years ago. Time fades away. Sometimes we have to be reminded what’s in front of us, and sometimes we let go of things we should hold on to. Zach Randolph was never going to heal the city of Memphis, or solve all of our challenges, or take our brokenness and put it back together. But he was going to put on a jersey with our name on it, our city’s name, and pulverize people on our behalf. Sometimes that’s enough. He probably deserved better than he got in the end.

Larry Kuzniewski

Deyonta Davis was happy to welcome the basketball into his warm embrace.

Tweet of the Night

Speaking of young guys who aren’t bad, Dillon Brooks had a career high, and after the game JB Bickerstaff said he hit the dreaded Rookie Wall and seems to have bounced back from that. The numbers support that assessment:

Dillon Brooks is having himself a terrific game. Shooting over 50% from the field and almost 50% from 3 over the last two weeks. Career high* scoring game tonight

(*vs the Kings)

— Peter Edmiston (@peteredmiston) January 20, 2018

Grizzlies 106, Kings 88: Return of the King (2)

(Also, the asterisk there is probably necessary but also hilariously rude.)

Tank Watch

Larry Kuzniewski

Dillon Brooks returned to form with a career night against the Kings.

The Grizzlies have won three in a row, which is not great for their lottery odds, but they’ve seen some real growth out of the young guys. Wednesday against the Knicks it was Ivan Rabb. Last night it was Dillon Brooks. It’s hard to stay bad when your players are actually, y’know, figuring stuff out.

Tonight against the Pelicans, I expect Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins to eviscerate every Grizzlies big not named Gasol, and he might not have a great time either. (Though he should be rested, since he spent most of his time on the floor last night chatting and laughing with Zach Randolph and then elbowing him a little bit so it would look like they were playing hard.)

Beyond that, who knows what’ll happen against the Sixers, but the games against the Spurs and Clippers are probably not going to end well if you’re in the “try to win” camp.

I’ve mostly resigned myself to the fact that the Grizzlies are going to pick somewhere around 10th in the draft, and it seems unlikely to me that they’ll be able to pull off some sort of magic to find a Kawhi Leonard-level talent there, so… while I think they should tank, I’m not convinced that they will and so I remain unconvinced that they’ll be drafting a franchise-altering talent this summer. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I also believe that past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior.

The fact of the matter is the Grizzlies aren’t really bad enough to be at the bottom of the West without severely limiting their young players’ minutes. The Grizzlies’ developing talents may not be first-rounders, and none of them will be All-Stars, but they’re mostly replacement-level players at worst, and that’s better than some other teams (cf. Sacramento Kings). It’s hard to scrape the bottom of the barrel when your players aren’t actually the bottom of the barrel.

Except McLemore.

Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies are hanging out at the halfway point of the season. (See what I did there?)

Technically the halfway point of the season came before yesterday’s MLK Day game, in which the Grizzlies beat the Lakers 123-114 in front of a sold-out crowd while wearing the new and very attractive “City” jerseys honoring the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike. But we’re still close enough to the exact halfway point that it makes sense to stop and take stock of where the Grizzlies are, and of what the rest of the season should like from here.

Needless to say, it has not been the season Grizzlies fans expected, or the one that most observers predicted. It has been pretty close to the statistically-based projections people like myself scoffed at back in October, when the excitement about the depth of the roster started to take hold. If Conley and Gasol had both stayed healthy and the rotation had set in the first couple of weeks, maybe that optimism would’ve seemed justified. Instead, the season promptly fell off a cliff, and the team has only recently (after Christmas) started to look like they might know how to play basketball. With that in mind—along with the fact that the Grizzlies have their own pick in the upcoming draft, after not having a first rounder last year and before giving up next year’s first to Boston (for Jeff Green. Remember how great that was? Remember how well that worked out?)—I thought it was worth setting out Ten Commandments for the Second Half, creating a decision-making framework for the 40 remaining games of the season that will steer the Grizzlies toward the best possible outcome.

The Ten Commandments for the Second Half

I. Thou Shalt Not Try To Make The Playoffs

I’ve been saying this a while now, and so has everybody else. The playoff streak is dead. It was fun while it lasted, and in some ways permanently altered the trajectory of Memphis as a city (though, of course, one has to be careful to avoid the hyperbole that the Grizzlies have healed all of our various divisions. They’re a salve, not a cure-all). Faulkner famously said “the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” Faulkner also didn’t live to see the 2017-18 Grizzlies.

Surely the Grizzlies organization realizes the mode they’re in, right? Surely they realize that losing games this year helps them secure a better future, and maybe even a better 2018-19 season? The worst thing they could possibly do is win 37 games and finish 9th in the West. Give up on being good, if just for a year. Be like Queen Elsa and let it go.

II. Thou Shalt Sell at the Deadline

Larry Kuzniewski

Tyreke Evans has been too good not to trade.

If the Grizzlies do not manage to flip Tyreke Evans for an asset at the trade deadline, it’s probably time to contract the franchise. He’s having one of the best seasons of his career, and he’s been the best player on the team most nights, and even if he were only going to sign for the mid-level this summer—which I doubt—the Grizzlies still probably wouldn’t keep him. This is a textbook example of a must trade player. I’m not sure a first round pick is out there to collect, but even if it isn’t, there has to be something out there that could be considered a good/fair return for Evans.

Evans isn’t the only guy the Grizzlies should be looking to trade and/or dump at the deadline. Brandan Wright is a good player on a cheap expiring deal, and while expiring deals aren’t nearly as valuable as they used to be, and Wright’s skill set means he’s only a great fit with a few teams, he’s still another good player unlikely to be back next year. JaMychal Green’s deal is acceptable, and he’s underperformed a bit for the Grizzlies this year. Maybe there’s a team who has a need they think he fills, and who thinks he could be a part of what they’re doing longer than the end of his current two-year deal?

Then there are the “dumpables.” 42 games in, Ben McLemore’s new contract is probably already too bad to be dumped without giving up something too precious. Maybe he could be pawned off on some abominable team for the Tony Wroten Special (a.k.a. the second round pick with so many protections that there’s no way it will ever convey). But Mario Chalmers could probably be flipped for a trade exception or some other CBA-related curiosity that would allow the Grizzlies to sign Kobi Simmons for the rest of the year (thus also freeing up a two-way roster spot). If the Grizzlies aren’t sure what to do with James Ennis, he’s a decent enough player on a cheap deal that he will find a spot somewhere. If they’d like to have a fire sale, the Grizzlies certainly have the pieces. I think they should. They need to be in extreme asset-collecting mode, both at the deadline and probably this summer as well.

III. However, Thou Shalt Not Trade Gasol at the Deadline

Asset-collecting has its limits. No matter how frenzied the rumors get—and I fully expect them to get as crazy as they were in the run-up to the Rudy Gay deal, if not worse—I don’t think the Grizzlies should deal Marc Gasol at the deadline. Gasol’s a little harder to trade than I think most of the “Trade Marc” crowd is willing to admit, and because of that, I don’t think the Grizzlies would be able to make that sort of a deal at the deadline. I think there’s too much pressure at the deadline to get something done—pressure that makes it easy to get ripped off.

Patience is the highest virtue here. It seems unlikely to me that the Grizzlies would be able to make a Gasol deal at the deadline that wouldn’t be a better deal if they waited until the summer. I don’t even think they’re willing to trade him then, not assuming Robert Pera remains in control of the team. But if the Grizzlies are looking to make such a move, they’re not thinking clearly if they do it at the deadline. And if they’re not thinking clearly at the deadline, this down year could very well last a lot longer than anyone wants to admit.

IV. Thou Shalt Play Thine Young Players

Larry Kuzniewski

Who cares how inconsistent Deyonta Davis has been? Play him anyway.

Repeat after me the mantra The Grizzlies Internet has been screaming for years: The only way basketball players get better is by playing basketball. This is especially true of young players. So, unless interim coach JB Bickerstaff has determined that he needs to lose games and that the best way to do that is to play his older guys, there’s no excuse for Brandan Wright to play minutes at the expense of Deyonta Davis (especially when Davis is playing poorly; isn’t the point to be bad?).

The Grizzlies’ roster isn’t exactly loaded with youngsters who are sure shots to be rotation players. But Wayne Selden and Dillon Brooks seem to be, and Deyonta Davis will be if he can learn how to be more consistent. Andrew Harrison is a heady player who has several valuable skills, but his lack of speed and his inconsistent shooting mean he’s a work in progress. Jarell Martin plays well when the pace picks up and he doesn’t have to operate in the halfcourt, but that’s probably not good enough.

Still: the only way to get value out of these guys, even if the goal is to trade them and move on, is to play them and let them learn the ropes. The only reason not to do that is if doing so will cause the Grizzlies to play their way into the nightmare scenario (38-44, 9th or 10th in the West) described above, and while the Grizzlies’ young guys are starting to figure some things out, I highly doubt they’re that good.

Play ’em. Don’t play the veterans trying to win and still lose; that’s a loss on more than one front.

V. Thou Shalt Not Let Mike Conley Play

Larry Kuzniewski

Remember Mike Conley? Save him for next year.

This is (1) the easiest path available to the Grizzlies for staying bad and improving their draft status and (2) the best way for Conley’s Achilles injury to actually heal. The only way that injury goes away is to rest it, and even if Conley wants to get out on the floor and play through pain and be the hero, there’s no upside to it at this point. Better to save him for next year (when, I suppose, the Grizzlies will try to be good one more time with a Conley/Gasol/Chandler Parsons core, which is starting to seem more quixotic by the day) than mess up a golden opportunity to get a high draft pick and then bring back three healthy good players to lead the team next year.

VI. Thou Shalt Honor the Sabbath (On Back to Backs)

Rest. Parsons is already missing time with knee soreness (or tightness, or season-tank-itis, or whatever you want to call it), but before that he was being held out of one night of every Grizzlies back-to-back. Do that with Marc Gasol, too. He’ll hate it, and he’ll complain about it, but who cares? If attempting to reduce mileage on old guys during a meaningless season makes them so mad they want out, that shouldn’t be the Grizzlies’ problem. Rest guys. Rest young guys. Do whatever it takes to be bad and also not incur any more injuries. Play McLemore 40 minutes on the second nights so the Grizzlies are guaranteed to lose. Seems like a good idea to me.

VII. Thou Shalt Release Ivan Rabb From His Bench Prison

This one goes in tandem with some of the other roster-clearing options, but Rabb has been killing it for the Memphis Hustle and I think it’d be prudent for the Grizzlies to see what he looks like in real NBA game action. Maybe they’ve seen enough of him in practice to know that it’s not going to go well, but I’d like to get a look at him, too. Play him. See what happens.

VIII. Thou Shalt Do Likewise with Kobi Simmons

See also commandments III, IV, V, and VII.

IX. Thou Shalt Hire a New GM Once The Ownership Situation is Settled

Larry Kuzniewski

Is JB Bickerstaff the Grizzlies’ coach for the long term?

This deserves its own series of posts, and will probably get that treatment farther on down the line, but this seems obvious. The Grizzlies need a change of direction (or else they’d have won more than 14 games), and it’s probably time to instill that change from the top. Whether the controlling owner next year is Robert Pera or Steve Kaplan, this much seems imperative: bring in a new GM and let that new GM hire a coach. The Grizzlies have had coaches not hired by the GM in charge (Hollins, Joerger) and it never ends well. Don’t do anything rash. I’m not even opposed to promotion from within, if ownership feels like Ed Stefanski or John Hollinger is right for the job. I just think we’ve seen enough of Chris Wallace’s work to feel uncomfortable with the idea that he can build two successful playoff cores in a row here. I remain extremely unconvinced that his model of team-building is one that will work a second time for the Grizzlies.

X. Thou Shalt Not Kill (Marc Gasol)

Marc Gasol is playing 34.6 minutes a game, which is his highest total since the 2012-13 season if Basketball Reference is to be believed.

Marc Gasol is a 33-year-old big man not far removed from a broken navicular bone who has played international basketball almost every summer since he was a teenager.

These two facts do not square with each other. There is no reason to put this kind of workload on Gasol, even if the Grizzlies are worried that he’ll be mad and demand a trade. I understand that Gasol is a player and wants to play—that basketball is his whole life’s work as of yet, and that he wants to play every minute that he can because he knows someday he won’t be able to play anymore. He’s specifically said that much. But this workload doesn’t make sense in the context of a lost season, one in which it’s clear that the playoffs aren’t likely and shouldn’t be the target anyway.

Through the second half of the season, the Grizzlies’ medical staff needs to be much more mindful of Gasol’s minutes. Don’t put him back in a 16-point game in the 4th quarter, as Bickerstaff did down the stretch of yesterday’s game. There’s no reason to subject Gasol to these minutes, no matter how badly he wants them. It’s bad for his longevity, which is bad for Marc Gasol and bad for the Grizzlies at the same time.

Larry Kuzniewski

Marc Gasol is playing too many minutes.

Conclusions

These commandments all seem pretty straightforward. Failure to adhere to them will net the Grizzlies a worse draft pick, worse development of their young players, shorter careers for their max contract veterans, or some malignant combination of all three. If the Grizzlies are willing to live the next 40 games—a curious parallel to 40 days and 40 nights, since we’re already in this Old Testament frame of mind—abiding by these commandments, the 2018 draft may bring manna from heaven in the form of a future franchise cornerstone. The rest is up to them.

After a rough holiday game week, the Memphis Hustle needed to bounce back with a few strong performances. Unfortunately, they came up against two teams with hot hands and emerged with two losses.

Away to the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, the Hustle didn’t necessarily have a bad offensive game, putting up 134 points. However, they still lost by 23, with the Vipers putting on a shooting clinic to rack up 157 points. A big part of that was Memphis’ inability to shut down Vipers’ guard Demetrius Jackson, who led scoring for both teams with 26 points.

Against the Vipers, the Hustle were always trailing. Rio Grande scored the first bucket of the game and didn’t look back from there, taking a 33-27 lead into the second quarter, where the Vipers then scored fifty points, essentially making it game over. On the Hustle side, Jordan Crawford had another standout game, leading the Hustle in scoring with 24 points. So far, though, Crawford’s high point totals have only come when his teammates struggle. Other than Chance Comanche’s 22 points and Vincent Hunter’s double-double, the Hustle didn’t have much to show for their performance. On the night, they just couldn’t stop the Vipers.

It was five days before the Hustle took to the court for their next matchup against the Lakeland Magic. It was a much closer affair, but the extra time off didn’t seem to help. The biggest kicker was that hey let the lead slip late in the fourth quarter when the Magic embarked on a 21-7 run to emerge 117-108 victors. A theme of the Hustle’s season has been their inability to close out tight games, and this was no exception.

Leading the charge on the night was Austin Nichols, who had a great night with 23 points on 10-14 shooting and nine rebounds. His partner in crime, Vincent Hunter, had another good game with 19 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists. Again, though, beyond that, the Hustle didn’t have anyone really step up. Kobi Simmons, on his return from the Grizzlies, played only 12 minutes and went 0-3.

The two losses mean that Memphis have now lost four on the spin. Three of those have come during the G-League Showcase. With performances like this, many Hustle players aren’t exactly endearing themselves to scouts. Perhaps, though, that added pressure has contributed to their poor run. Either way, something needs to change. If the players want to impress some scouts, they’ve still got another chance: the Hustle’s last showcase game comes on Saturday against the 12-12 Maine Red Claws.

Larry Kuzniewski

Last night, the Grizzlies got their first win of 2018 in a tight one at home against the New Orleans Pelicans, 105-102. Both teams have their own injury problems—the Grizzlies are still without Mike Conley, and the Pels are without oft-injured franchise centerpiece Anthony Davis. Neither team is performing to the best of their respective abilities at the moment, but the Pelicans are at least .500. The win was the Grizzlies’ 13th of the season, putting them at 13-27, currently 7 games out of the playoffs and at the bottom of the West with the Lakers and Kings. The question that I’m left with is, of course, should they have won the game last night? Did they even want to?

The Game

It started out badly for the Grizzlies, who scored 29 in the first quarter but gave up 38, allowing DeMarcus Cousins and Rajon Rondo to get off to hot starts. From there, things started to tighten up (the Pelicans only led by 1 at the half), as the Grizzlies found a bit of an offensive rhythm and the Pelicans’ offense started to sputter, partly because of the Grizzlies’ defense but also because of their own issues.

With Kobi Simmons sent back down to the Memphis Hustle for a spell, presumably to save his two-way days, the Grizzlies played a shorter (“shorter”) rotation of 11 guys. Ben McLemore, the Five Million Dollar Man, racked up another DNP/coach’s decision. Mario Chalmers and James Ennis got major minutes off the bench (though in Ennis’ 25 minutes he attempted and made only one shot, further proving the theory that the guy has to start to be any good). It was a game that the Grizzlies were clearly treating like a “must win,” at least on some level, and yet they almost didn’t. New Orleans, in the end, was crippled by poor execution while the Grizzlies got a few stops when it mattered, once they’d gotten a lead and kept it.

It’s also worth pointing out that this was JaMychal Green’s first really good game in ages. Green has been mostly invisible on the floor for weeks, fouling a lot, looking angry, and mostly not getting the job done. Last night he was aggressive on both ends of the floor, and while he was still pretty mad about a lot of stuff the whole time, he put it into action on the offensive and defensive ends. Green’s struggles have been a big reason why the Grizzlies have been so bad defensively lately, and if he can get back on track, they should improve (and/or be able to get more for him if they try to trade him, which seems like it might be the right move if they’re really trying to be bad this year).

Should They Have Won?

Clearly, no.

At this point, there’s not really anything good that can come from the Grizzlies winning games. If they hit a hot streak in January and start climbing out of the basement of the Western Conference, they’re only going to end up finishing in the 10th or so spot and wrecking their chance at acquiring a very good young talent early in a top-heavy draft.

However. There’s also the morale standpoint, and the standpoint of the home fans, though. Even in the midst of tanking a season, for a fanbase that’s used to winning at home and competing in the postseason, I think these small victories are probably important from time to time to keep the home fans from letting go of the thread. Memphis is, notoriously, a front-running town, unwilling to support a bad team. Whether or not this is tenable long-term for a professional sports city is something we can talk about later (spoiler alert: it probably isn’t), but facts are facts, and if the Griz don’t win a home game every now and then, the already-lighter crowds are going to start thinning out fast.

Also, given Marc Gasol’s statement that he doesn’t have seasons to waste, and that he is only interested in winning and trying to make the playoffs, maybe there’s a morale element. He certainly hasn’t played at his highest level lately, but if you win a game every now and then it makes it easier for everyone to pretend that’s what they’re still trying to do. (At least I hope they’re pretending to, because failing to face the fact that the Grizzlies are Not Good this year is a feat of cognitive dissonance on par with, I dunno, pretending Manhattan portrays a totally normal dude that people should definitely keep making movies with.)

Did They Really Want To?

Larry Kuzniewski

You could make this case either way based on last night. The biggest piece of evidence that the Grizzlies weren’t trying to lose on purpose is the DNP-CD next to McLemore’s name in the box score. Generally, when he and Chalmers both play major minutes, I assume the fix is in. However: Deyonta Davis barely played. Wayne Selden barely played. The young guys who are the future of this team didn’t really get a chance to shine last night, while Chalmers and Brandan Wright and 32 minutes of Tyreke Evans carried the day.

Playing the vets and trying to win instead of playing the young guys and seeing what happens seems like a strategy to deploy when you’re trying to win. With this team, though, I think the vets are probably worse than the young guys. Think about the 128-point night against the Warriors. When the young guys on this team have it going, they’re not anywhere near as bad as they were, say, three weeks ago. It’s hard to lose games on purpose when your streaky developing talents start hitting hot streaks.

All of that is to say: I really can’t tell at this point whether the Grizzlies are trying to win every game or whether they’re just trying to look like they want to win every game. That, in itself, is a pretty damning indictment of the way this team is put together, but if you’ve been reading this season you already know how I feel about that.

The Grizzlies should not want to win games, period. They have everything they need to develop young talent, make the games close and interesting, score a lot of points, and still lose, and I think that’s exactly what they should do from here until the end of the regular season. Shut Conley down. Parsons seems to be floating out in the “who knows if he’s really hurt” ether, as well, because judging from his workout before the game last night, there’s not much wrong with him, either. Ride the season out like this, trade Evans and Wright for whatever valuable assets you can get for them, and see if you can dive so deep that you scrape your forehead on the bottom of the Western Conference swimming pool. Gutting out games like the one last night may help you in the short term, and it may keep the locker room from turning toxic, but ultimately it only hurts your ability to reload the team on the fly and bounce back quickly.

Tweet of the Night

Tweets like this let you know your season has gone off the rails somewhere:

Omer Asik and Mario Chalmers are engaged in an epic plus/minus battle. So far, Asik's minus is winning.

— Matt Hrdlicka (@theRealHrdlicka) January 11, 2018

Grizzlies 105, Pelicans 102: The Grizzlies Won? On Purpose?

Up Next

Friday the Grizzlies travel to Denver for a schedule loss game against the Nuggets, and then they return to Memphis for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day game against the Lakers. The Grizzlies are going all-out on the MLK Day symposium this year; more on that to come later this week.