Author: Kevin Lipe

Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies lost again Sunday night, falling to the Brooklyn Nets 98-88. After that loss, the Grizzlies have now lost eight games in a row, their longest losing streak since the 2008-09 season (when they had a 12-game skid). At this rate, given that their next two games are against the San Antonio Spurs, it seems possible (only because I’m reluctant to say “likely”) that the streak will extend into the double digits. It’s been a long time since this fanbase was exposed to such an extravagant display of basketball suffering, and it seems like the end is not yet in sight.

Naturally, this has been taxing on the fanbase in general, and especially on the fans who have only ever known the Grizzlies to be a playoff team. There’s a subset of folks who are nonchalantly dusting off their Drew Gooden water bottles and Juan Carlos Navarro jerseys, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. Times are tough in Grizzlyland, and the fans are out for blood.

But who’s fault is it? Who is to blame for the Grizzlies’ current woes, and how long are they going to continue? The answer to the first question is everyone. Let’s share the blame among all parties who deserve it, shall we?

It’s the Front Office’s Fault

This is true on some level. Mike Conley is hurt, and Chandler Parsons is recovering still (and all we know about his injury against Brooklyn is that he felt tightness and didn’t return as a precautionary measure). Wayne Selden is still hurt. Ben McLemore’s on the floor but missed all of camp with an injury.

But part of the reason the Grizzlies are struggling right now is that too many of the guys playing major minutes just… aren’t very good. Jarell Martin played his way onto the roster over Rade Zagorac, but he can’t defend and doesn’t rebound, and his offensive game is still mostly upside. Andrew Harrison made the 15-man over Wade Baldwin, but Harrison’s been terrible and Baldwin seemed like the least likeable guy the Grizzlies have ever drafted.

I was challenged by one of my colleagues before the Nets game to come up with the Grizzlies’ best defensive lineup, with Conley/Selden and without. Neither of the five-man groups I came up with was satisfying. Couple that with an offense built round scrappy second-round picks, Tyreke Evans’ ball-stopping scoring explosions, the slow/creaky crescendo of Parsons’ return to action, Mario Chalmers’ continued bravado in the face of diminishing physical ability, Marc Gasol’s predictable post possessions and unpredictable mental state, and you’ve got a team that just doesn’t fit together very well.

Larry Kuzniewski

Dillon Brooks has played well, but few of the Grizzlies’ other young guys look ready to play.

The Grizzlies had to have all of their injury-prone guys play well all season to be good. They also needed some (if not all) of their bets on young guys to pay off. They’ve been more fortunate than not in both areas, given that only Conley is hurt, and that Dillon Brooks and (only recently) Deyonta Davis are playing well. But what happens when Parsons or Gasol or Evans, all of whom have big injuries in their pasts, miss a chunk of time? What happens when Brooks hits the rookie wall? When Brandan Wright goes out for three months, again? Who fills in those gaps?

Given how many times—practically the whole Joerger era—the Grizzlies tried to run it back with the Core Four, and how many times they eschewed going younger to bring in veterans who the dang coach would actually play would push them over the top, it’s a minor miracle that they even have as many halfway-decent young players as they do. But at the end of the day, halfway-decent young players are still only halfway decent. And therein lies the rub.

And there are fit issues even in that area. How well can Tyreke Evans and Marc Gasol ever really coexist in an offensive system, given how dramatically different their concepts of the sport of basketball are? Just how badly did the Grizzlies gamble on whether Mario Chalmers would be able to play just like he did before his Achilles injury (which happened 18 months ago, causing him to miss over a full season of basketball)? What’s Ben McLemore’s role, and how quickly is he expected to stop being Sacramento Ben McLemore and start being Platonic Form of Ben McLemore? Because that’s not something that happens right away, and shouldn’t have been expected.

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The way this team is constructed is the same way a lot of teams nearing the end of long playoff runs are constructed: trying to use whatever is left in the bare cupboard to reload a young team on the fly and hope it hangs together for a couple of seasons. It works, to varying degrees of success. But right now, with Conley out (which was always going to happen at some point, because it always does), there just aren’t enough good rotation players to go around. (And I didn’t even mention the Chandler Parsons contract, which was already regarded as a sunk cost before the laser toner set on last year’s Playoff Media Guides.)

It’s the Coach’s Fault

A question that can be answered for almost every good basketball team: what kind of offense do the Grizzlies run? What are the principles of their offensive system? However many games in, and I’m not even sure the Grizzlies themselves have it down. Sure, JaMychal Green and Ben McLemore missed training camp and now they’re playing major minutes, but the rest of the guys didn’t. There’s no chemistry at all on offense without Mike Conley, and when he was playing, it only existed with Conley and Gasol. No one looks like they know what they’re doing, or like they can predict how anyone else on the team is supposed to move without the ball. There’s a lot of waving, a lot of questioning eye contact, and not a lot of slick movement.

Larry Kuzniewski

Fizdale has seemed as lost as the players at times, with a disjointed offensive look and strange lineup decisions.

This is an exceedingly bad halfcourt offense this year. If it’s not Conley/Gasol pick and roll (hard to run without Mike Conley), everything the Grizzlies generate is an open three, Tyreke doing whatever Tyreke’s going to do, a Gasol post-up, or maybe something in the midrange between defensive players. There’s no easy way for this team to get a bucket once the defense is set.

Speaking of defense, there are only ever two or three guys playing the same defense at the same time. Communication seems to be a constant issue, with Marc Gasol sometimes going all out only to find no one backing him up, and other times playing disconnected and tentative because he doesn’t know whether to trust the guys out in front of him. If they’re not getting easy baskets by getting stops, the offense doesn’t work, and when the offense doesn’t work, the defense goes quickly, too.

And even if the players looked organized, Fizdale has struggled—especially during the losing streak—to actually put his best players in a position to succeed. Against Dallas last week, Deyonta Davis played a huge first half and then only saw 3 minutes in the second. James Ennis has moved from starting to coming off the bench, but with no clarity about his role (and that move from starter to bench has historically thrown him totally out of rhythm). Andrew Harrison gets point guard minutes that should probably just go to Tyreke Evans, even though he’s not a good facilitator. Jarell Martin and Ben McLemore both get lost on defense and cost the team dearly, and yet they’re left on the floor in lineups together while the game gets away. It doesn’t seem like Fizdale has a good feel for which guys to play where, and it doesn’t seem like he’s developing a feel for it, either. Instead, he coaches by feel, the Lionel Hollins method—the same method that saw Hamed Hadaddi and Dante Cunningham on the floor together in the close fourth quarter a home Game 7 in the playoffs.

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But what, exactly, is Fizdale telling these guys about getting shots and staying confident? After the Dallas game, in which Dallas intentionally left Griz shooters wide open knowing they’d brick the uncontested shots, Fizdale said before the Denver game that he’d reviewed the film and was happy taking all of the open shots. “I’d rather have that than have them drive into traffic,” he said. But when the three point shot isn’t working, why keep taking shots you can’t make and keep getting killed, when you could at least get into the lane and get to the foul line? Is “shoot through the slump” the Grizzlies’ entire offensive philosophy?

In the fourth quarter of the Brooklyn game, while letting a lineup of young guys attempt to bring the Grizzlies back, Fizdale benched Gasol for the entire fourth quarter, either to teach Gasol a lesson or not realizing that it would look like he was teaching Gasol a lesson, something that I believe was a grave miscalculation. After the game, Gasol seemed baffled by the move, was frank about how angry and frustrated he was by the move, and seemed genuinely hurt by it to boot. On a team where communication seems to be a constant problem on both ends of the court, what kind of communicator is the guy running the show? Is the communication problem coming from the top, or from the bottom? Why doesn’t anyone on this team seem to know what they’re doing or why?

It’s the Players’ Fault

Larry Kuzniewski

Mario Chalmers has struggled to run the team in Mike Conley’s absence.

I’ve made this a bulleted list because there’s plenty of blame to go around, and this is only a brief overview (I’m sure I’ve left guys out who deserve a demerit):

• Mario Chalmers has lost confidence in his ability to get to the rim, for good reason, but he’s settling for bad shots and pulling up his dribble in the pick and roll instead of trying to facilitate around it.
• Marc Gasol frantically alternates between trying to do everything, and doing none of it well, and trying to do nothing, because trying to do everything doesn’t work either. It’s hard to blame him for being frustrated, but on a night like Sunday when he only has 1 assist, he’s clearly off his game and not with it mentally.
• James Ennis has been a non-factor since moving out of the starting lineup, whereas before he was a decent defender and got tons of putbacks on Conley and Gasol plays.
• Ben McLemore has very few moments where he looks like a good basketball player, and more typically looks like a guy who looks like a good basketball player. He’s got the Jeff Green “if this guy ever plays to his potential…” vibe. He ain’t playing to his potential.
• JaMychal Green has actually been pretty OK since returning from injury.
• Jarell Martin shouldn’t be playing because as hard as he plays and as much real progress as he’s made on the offensive end, he cannot be on the floor much if any because he can’t defend at all. By no stretch of the imagination should he be playing 10 minutes in a close game, because he’s just not there yet.
• Tyreke Evans has been the Grizzlies’ savior on offense, but when he’s not scoring he’s a black hole. It’s easy to see why teams on which he’s the best player have never been good: how do you run an offense when the ball is almost always in the hands of the guy who can’t/won’t pass? It’s not 2009 college basketball. Evans has to learn how to function within an offense rather than being the sum total of the offense.
• Andrew Harrison is still only ever going to be a low-tier 2nd or 3rd point guard. That’s a fine ceiling, but we should all agree by now that that’s his ceiling. His floor is depressingly far below 2013 Keyon Dooling, and he spends a lot more time performing at his floor this season.

Larry Kuzniewski

There are more, but I only have so much pent up frustration, and so much time to actually write this thing.

You should get the picture right now: the front office put this team together, the coach and his staff are responsible for implementing the principles they deploy in the game, and the players themselves are responsible for executing those principles. At every level, there are flaws with the 2017-18 Grizzlies, and that’s why they’re in a tailspin right now.

Where’s the Bottom?

So let’s tackle the second part of the question: how bad are things going to get?

In the short term, with two games against the Spurs coming up, it seems likely that the Grizzlies will lose at least 1 of those, so they’ll come into next weekend at 8-13. Beyond that there’s a road game at Cleveland, a home game versus the Timberwolves, a road game at the Knicks (who are, for some reason, not terrible). By the end of next week, they’ve also played home games against the Thunder and the Raptors. Things could get dire. It’s totally possible that they can’t beat a single one of these teams, or may only beat the Spurs once because Gregg Popovich decides to rest the whole team and play the Austin Spurs for the Memphis half of the home-and-home. In a more generous scenario, the Grizzlies still only win three or four of these games.

Grizzlies may very realistically be 11-18 or 10-19 in a couple weeks. https://t.co/1bvWORVWzv

— Kevin Lipe (@FlyerGrizBlog) November 27, 2017

The Grizzlies’ Losing Streak: Where’s the Bottom?

Beyond that, the next stretch of December sees them take on Miami, play a road game in DC (the Grizzlies seem to always lose in DC), home against the Hawks and Celtics, and then away at the Warriors and Suns.

I think I feel good about, like, four of the games I’ve mentioned so far? And that’s being generous, because right now, this Grizzlies team can’t beat anybody if they can’t close out the Nets or the Mavs. It’s entirely possible that the Griz get to Christmas 10 games under .500, at which point all hell breaks lose with Gasol trade rumors, for better or for worse.

Larry Kuzniewski

And what happens if Conley misses two months? What happens if Parsons misses serious time with the knee tightness he felt against Brooklyn? What happens when Tyreke finally tweaks something and has to sit a while? If the Fizdale/Gasol relationship starts to get more frayed as a result of the coach’s desperation benching on Sunday night? There’s not much to trade for. There’s not much to be done. This team is headed to a dark place very rapidly unless they start figuring things out on the fly.

But they need the coach to figure out who his best players are and how to deploy them. They need to get it together while he gets it together, and it’s hard to spring forth with the chicken and the egg at the same time.

Things are going to get worse before they get better for the Memphis Grizzlies. There is no path forward to a better future that does not lead downward through this period of strife; if anything, that path forward won’t even be revealed until Conley returns from injury and the Grizzlies see what they’ve got. By that point, if they continue this skid, it’s possible that they’ll be out of touch with the 7 and 8 spots in the West and those 35-win predictions from ESPN that were so unpopular in the preseason turn out to have been the right ones all along. I still believe they’ll figure it out, because I still think if the right guys are healthy and playing well this is a good team, but if this team is going down a 2008-09 path and a 2008-09 timeline, it might be 2020 before we reach it. Break out the Darko throwbacks.

Correction: The 2008-09 Grizzlies’ biggest losing streak was 12 games, not 9 as previously stated.

Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies’ losing streak continues, as last night they lost (on a gut-punch of a banked-in buzzer beater 3 by Harrison Barnes) to the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas is now 4-15 on the season, which means fully half of their victories have come against the Grizzlies. After running up a 17-point lead at halftime (mostly on the strength of a 27-12 first quarter), the Grizzlies then seemed to lose all interest in (1) playing defense and (2) actually running plays, instead attempting to trade 3-point baskets with the Mavs by shooting over the defense early in the shot clock.

That strategy might work for, say, Houston, but it was clear that after the half the Griz found themselves wide open from long range by design (they’re 29th in the league in 3PT%), and they fell right into the trap laid for them, giving up 35 points to Dallas while only scoring 16 of their own.

There’s a lot to take away from this game that’s emblematic of the Grizzlies’ bigger problems during this losing streak, and on this Turkey Day I have, of course, Five Thoughts about them:

★ The end of the game should never have mattered. JaMychal Green had a great putback to put the Grizzlies up 94-92 with .5 seconds left, but even though Dillon Brooks had a great closeout on Barnes, Barnes banked in a gamewinner over him. Granted, the Griz should’ve kept Barnes from being able to get to that spot, but that’s not really the issue. If the Grizzlies had even pretended to play well in the third quarter, the game’s a blowout and none of it happens. So, sure, for fans, the end of the game was exciting and then it was extremely not exciting. But to chalk up the Grizzlies’ loss to a last second “Hail Mary” (Fizdale’s words in the postgame presser) instead of the 12 minutes where they played completely disorganized, garbage basketball and let an inferior opponent rack up 35 on them. It wasn’t the last play that lost them the game, period.

★ Mario Chalmers was bad. He was one of the chief offenders settling for bad shots after halftime (as was Marc Gasol), and even though he’s got an impossible role to play as “replacement Mike Conley,” his willingness to shoot first and run the offense second has hampered the Grizzlies more than it’s helped. It’s like he knows at the start of the game whether he’ll be able to get to the rim or not, and if he can’t, he’s content to just never venture inside the 3-point line. Chalmers is an OK backup at this point, but mostly that’s only the case because Andrew Harrison has been a disaster and they determined Wade Baldwin was so hopeless they had to cut him. Chalmers won by default, and his limitations are such that he’s not able to carry the Grizzlies in Conley’s absense in the same way he did in 2015-16.

★ Marc Gasol cannot be that passive for three quarters against a bad team. With Conley out, Gasol’s got to be willing to carry the team and not just facilitate. I’ve said this so often over the last seven years of writing about this team that I’m sick of it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Through the first three quarters last night, Gasol was 2-9 with 4 points, which is unacceptable. When he sees that the team is settling for bad shots, he should be going to the rim and trying to get to the line, and instead, he did not attempt a single free throw until the final frame, in which he also scored 10 points. That’s too little, too late. And he’s right that the Grizzlies’ defense has been lacking, but to call out what the team is doing as “embarrasing and sad” and then not be willing to put in the work on the offensive end to keep a lead over a crappy team is yet another example of Gasol’s peculiar basketball philosophy getting in his (and the Grizzlies’) way. He’s just got to be better in these games. There’s no one else to do it.

Larry Kuzniewski

David Fizdale, as the game slipped away, probably pondering why he didn’t play Deyonta more in the second half

★ Deyonta Davis had a great first half and should have played more in the second. Davis had 14 point in 11:53 in the first half, played great defense, and altered the game in the Grizzlies’ favor. There’s no reason for him to play 3 minutes in the second half—that’s on Fizdale. When a young guy is doing that well against a bad team you leave him out there. Maybe he would’ve provided some of the defensive intensity that the Griz were lacking in the third quarter?

At any rate, if Davis keeps playing like this—and he plays noticeably better when he gets involved in the offense early, which keeps him engaged—he’s going to make the Grizzlies forget about Brandan Wright and capitalize on some of his untapped potential. Some of that relies on having a coach who recognizes when he’s playing out of his mind and lets him get more run. His absence when things were going wrong, after the first half he had, was inexplicable.

★ The Grizzlies cannot settle for bad shots or they will lose. Period. You remember when Tony Allen would be wide open in the corner because teams weren’t guarding him, and Gasol would kick it to him anyway because it was the “right” play? Teams are starting to leave the entire Griz roster open like that, and they don’t have many guys who can capitalize on it right now. If they aren’t smarter about it—if they try to shoot through the slump instead of getting better shots—they’re going to keep losing games.

Tweet of the Night

Dennis Hopper was equally baffling in this film, but the tweet still works:

Folks if I wanted to be disappointed watching Mario I'd just watch that 1993 movie with John Leguizamo

— De'Aaron Star Fox (@BallFromGrace) November 23, 2017

Mavericks 95, Grizzlies 94: Five Grumpy Thanksgiving Thoughts

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The Grizzlies’ losing streak may not abate yet. They’re traveling to Denver for a one-game road trip Friday night, at altitude, the day after a major holiday; it’s a textbook “schedule loss.” After that, Brooklyn comes to town on Sunday, and the Nets aren’t good, but they are young and fast, and if the Griz don’t play defense they’ll lose to the Nets, too. (They did it last year.) Things are not looking good in Grizz-land, and conditions may continue to deteriorate in Conley’s absence.

Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies played a much better game Monday night against the Portland Trail Blazers than they did against Houston on Saturday, but the ultimate result was the same: a 100-92 loss. The Grizzlies are now 4-6 in their last 10 games, and they sit tied for 8th in the Western Conference with a 7-9 record. This current homestand has not been kind to the Grizzlies; they’ve lost five games in a row going back to the road loss in Houston on November 11. Last night showed some glimmers of hope, but the Griz also fell victim to some recurring problems. Here are five takeaways from last night:

★ The defense and offense were both improved, but neither was consistent enough. Portland is one of the many competitors for the last couple of West playoff spots this year. I’d put them roughly in the same quality tier as the Grizzlies, so this was a pretty evenly-matched game last night. When the Grizzlies were able to play defense well and get stops, they kept up fine, but outside of transition baskets—the thing the Grizzlies have lived by all season long—the halfcourt offense wasn’t there.

Larry Kuzniewski

On the other hand, when the offense was working—usually with Marc Gasol taking it to the block against Jusuf Nurkic and bulling him Z-Bo style for a bucket down low, or with Tyreke Evans carving through a scattered Portland defense for a transition layup—it was like the offense took so much focus and effort that the other end of the floor, the arguably more important (for this team) defensive end, nothing came together.

Unless the Grizzlies can somehow get back to getting stops defensively and using that as the point of initiation for the whole offense, they’re just not going to beat anybody halfway decent. You can’t be a winning NBA team and only concentrate on one end of the court or the other. (Maybe the 2012 or 2014 Grizzlies would beg to differ, but even they had Zach Randolph to just dump the ball to when the offense broke down, which happened regularly.)

★ James Ennis is not good right now. Griz coach David Fizdale said as much at the presser after the game last night: Ennis is struggling. It’s been a common occurrance during his tenure with the Grizzlies; he’s really only able to play well when his role is defined very concretely. When the lineups start to shift and it’s not extremely clear what Ennis’ minute load will be or what type of expectations he’s carrying, he struggles to find his place in the offense and in the defense, and that showed last night. Ennis only played 7:47 and didn’t make a shot, and got blown by several times on the defensive end.

Even with Chandler Parsons moved to the starting lineup, that’s not enough production from Ennis. It can be hard to operate within constantly changing parameters—trust me, I work in the newspaper business—but Ennis has got to be able to find some sort of internal anchoring to be able to play well no matter what role he’s playing or for how long. Otherwise, I’m not sure he’ll even be able to stick in this rotation, the way things are going.

Larry Kuzniewski

★ Deyonta Davis made me forget about Brandan Wright last night. Wright’s been having a good year, but Davis, who was previously getting minutes for the Hustle after an unimpressive summer, came in and played 13 and a half solid minutes last night. His defensive instincts are still top notch, and while he only notched 3 rebounds and 2 steals (the Grizzlies’ rebounding in general was atrocious last night), Davis had a positive impact on the game for the Grizzlies, something that seemed unlikely even a couple of weeks ago. If he can step in and play better defense than Wright, that clears up some problems rotationally for the Grizzlies, though Wright’s ability to make baskets appear out of nowhere in pick-and-roll situations is certainly missed. Davis may turn into a real NBA player yet, which would be a big win for the Grizzlies and would justify how much time and energy I spent constructing this giant Deyonta Davis International Super Bandwagon™ last season. (You’re all welcome to hop back on.)

★ It’s cool that Chandler Parsons is starting, but I miss the good bench. Injuries have dictated the situation, for sure, but I can’t decide whether I’m excited that Parsons—whom I was told straight up by a Grizzlies executive was not a small forward anymore—is now starting in that spot and getting good minutes, or whether I’m sad that the magic of the Chalmers-Brooks-Evans-Parsons-Wright bench unit is no longer with us. Probably the latter. Parsons struggled to find his shot last night, and clearly needs to spend some more time in the lab developing some chemistry with this starting unit sans Conley, but… any good thing Parsons accomplishes this season is mostly a win, considering that the contract to which he’s signed is a sunk cost either way, one that it looked like they might have to write off last year.

The chemistry of the Grizzlies is totally out of whack right now, as could reasonably be expected with Conley injured and Green, McLemore, and Selden all returning from injury (though Selden was back out last night). The units that started the season playing well together are not the units being rolled out right now, because with Green back in the starting lineup and McLemore out there as a bench wing, everything is shifted around to accomodate, and all the while Mario Chalmers is out there trying to do his best Conley impression (which maybe would have been more convincing in 2013 or 14). Parsons’ move to the starting unit is part of that; it’s yet another variable being tweaked on the fly. Green and McLemore, you’ll remember, didn’t even participate in training camp. It’s a work in progress, and that’s a big part of why they’re so uneven and frustrating through this stretch.

Larry Kuzniewski

★ Sitting around .500 probably shouldn’t be as frustrating as it is. I just keep telling myself that we knew this was going to be the season: shuffling guys in and out of rotation spots trying to find a good match, dealing with whatever injuries happen to Conley and Gasol (and they always end up missing time with injuries), trying to figure out what this team is going to be in the future with a coach who’s still only in his second year on the job and a locker room full of personalities that don’t necessarily mesh at first blush.

So why is it so frustrating to watch them struggle, when we all knew coming into the season that they were going to struggle? It’s impossible to complain about their hot start, but that’s definitely a factor here: they found some early chemistry when some of the good teams they played were still feeling some things out. Now the Grizzlies are the ones trying to adjust on the fly while everyone else is starting to settle into what they’re going to be this season, and it looks like they’re falling apart when really, they’re just in the situation we all already knew they’d be in.

It’s hard to explain, and this is certainly not an argument for pretending everything is fine when it’s clearly not; there are definite long-term issues that this team has to figure out in order to be any good this season and beyond. But maybe some longer-term thinking is needed here. If you’d said in August that the Grizzlies were two games under .500 at Thanksgiving and asked whether that was a positive or a negative, I’d have said they were overachieving my expectations. That that’s not true anymore says more about how well they started the season than about my expectations going into it.

Tweet of the Night

Let us never forget that Marc Gasol is always going to pass the ball to the open guy in the corner, no matter who that guy is and how well he shoots:

Chandler Parsons hockey assist to Marc Gasol with a great kick to the corner, yes!

To Mario Chalmers… pic.twitter.com/vCsBCaAvhe

— Grizzly Bear Blues (@sbnGrizzlies) November 21, 2017

Blazers 100, Grizzlies 92: Five Thoughts

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A rematch against Dallas, who have played the Grizzlies better than they have any right to. (I blame Rick Carlisle’s warlock and magic excellent coaching acumen.) After that, it’s a one-game trip to Denver for a Friday night matchup against the Nuggets at altitude (also known as “a schedule loss”) and a home game Sunday against the Nets (also known as “maybe another loss if they don’t play hard). The Grizzlies are only going to break their losing streak if they show up for these games focused on both ends of the floor, which is something that hasn’t happened in a couple of weeks (to the point that Gasol issued those “embarrassing and sad” quotes). At this point, whether they’ll figure it out in time is anybody’s guess.

Correction: this column originally said the Grizzlies were 7-6, which is incorrect. They’re actually 7-9. The NBA standings page has outdated data and I didn’t catch it while I was writing. We regret the error.

Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies did not win last night, and the fact that they didn’t lose by fifteen or twenty points is something of a minor miracle. The 116–113 final score doesn’t reflect the fact that without Mike Conley, the offense was stagnant and ineffective for most of the game, that the starting lineup continues to be a black hole while the second unit carries the team, or that the Grizzlies spent the first three quarters of the game utterly disinterested in playing defense.

The score doesn’t reflect those realities because of a furious attempt at a fourth quarter comeback, led by Marc Gasol (who had a great game that was swamped by the team’s difficulties, similar to that of Tyreke Evans in Monday night’s loss at Milwaukee), Mario Chalmers (kinda) and, of course, a still-rolling Tyreke Evans. But what happened? Why did it take three quarters? You know the drill by now; I have five thoughts about that:

★ Adding three injured guys back to the rotation at the same time is a little too much too fast. They don’t have a choice, but with Ben McLemore, Wayne Selden, and JaMychal Green all coming back at the same time, the Grizzlies have three new guys on the team, one of whom didn’t even go through training camp and preseason. It makes for some interesting chemistry-on-the-fly experiments. Green’s the only one who has seen the floor in a regular season game, and that was only a few minutes on opening night. It showed on the court. The Grizzlies played several lineups that haven’t been seen at all this year, and there were times when it looked exactly like that: guys who haven’t ever played together. Fortunately, it’s still November, so there’s plenty of time for them to work it out, but hovering around .500 after their hot start applies some pressure that maybe shouldn’t be there (and wouldn’t be, if they’d started the season out beating bad teams instead of good ones).

Larry Kuzniewski

★ Marc Gasol had one of the quietest “great” games I’ve seen. Gasol finished the night with 35 points, 13 rebounds, 5 assists, and 5 blocks, and until the fourth quarter it didn’t really seem like he was doing that much. Gasol was doing his part to get the Grizzlies back in the game, but they were having such a hard time gaining any traction that it just didn’t seem like it. After the game, he was fuming to Wayne Selden about the team’s defensive mistakes, and then repeated the same rant to assembled reporters—cleaned up for television, of course. The whole team was unfocused defensively, and because they lost in that way, Gasol wasn’t in any way happy about the stat line he put up.

★ Mario Chalmers wasn’t bad. This is newsworthy, because he has been bad lately, and with Mike Conley out for now (and from the sound of his injury, out for a good stretch of time while the Achilles heals, but that’s not the official prognosis) he’s going to have to carry a lot more of the team’s minutes at point guard. Tyreke Evans has been scoring so well that moving him to be the primary ball handler seems like a mistake, and Andrew Harrison has already shown that he’s just not any good this year so far. If Chalmers can step up his play, the Grizzlies should get by OK without Conley. If he struggles the way he was a week or two ago, things will not be good.

★ Defense generates everything for this team. And, as a corollary, when they don’t play it, they’re not good. The offense was stagnant last night because the Griz weren’t getting stops. When they get stops, they can get out and run and use their newfangled youth and athleticism. They’re just not a half-court team anymore, really; they’re not built to play the old Hollins-style ground-and-pound game. But they only way for them to avoid getting stuck in immobile half-court sets waiting for Gasol or Evans or Parsons to bail them out is to generate offense in transition, and they can only do that when they’re focused on defense.

Larry Kuzniewski

Gasol made an interesting point after the game last night: on defense, a lot of what observers read as “effort” issues are actually focus and awareness issues. If you’re not paying enough attention to where your man is going, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying really hard, he’s going to get away from you—but from the stands it looks like you just weren’t trying to keep up with him. I think that’s an interesting note, because it recasts the Grizzlies’ problems on that end of the floor. It’s not a motivation issue (most of the time), it’s a focus issue. If you’re playing hard but you’re distracted, it looks like you’re just not playing hard enough. Whatever the Grizzlies need to do to encourage that level of focus and awareness on defense, they need to do, sooner rather than later, because otherwise nothing much about this team works well.

★ Tyreke Evans and Marc Gasol are a weird fit together. This point is pretty much lifted wholesale from a conversation I had with Peter Edmiston during last night’s game: Marc Gasol and Tyreke Evans play basketball so differently that they’re essentially playing different sports. Gasol is obsessed with each possession, and with Playing The Right Way on each possession, making each pass neatly and quickly, facilitating before looking to score, moving the ball and probing the defense. Evans is an improvisational layup genius, able to slice through defenses all by his lonesome and contort his body to make layups in traffic very few other humans can make, but he’s not looking to facilitate unless he can’t make the basket himself. (That said, he did finish with 9 assists last night, and made some great drive-and-kick plays down the stretch). Gasol is the human embodiment of Pass First. Evans is the human embodiment of I’m Gonna Get To The Rim And See What Happens. It’s a strange mix, and it’s going to be a while before they get comfortable together, if ever.

Tweet of the Night

This about sums it up:

Griz have allowed 30+ points in 17 quarters this year (at least 1 in every game except Portland)
Tonight was the 7th time they’ve allowed 30+ in the 1st quarter (3 straight games
Griz have also allowed 60+ points in 1st half of last 3 (60-62-67)

— Rob Fischer (@thefishnation) November 16, 2017

Pacers 116, Grizzlies 113: Five Thoughts (2)

Up Next

With any luck, the rhythm the Grizzlies found during the comeback attempt carries over into the four-game home stand they just started. Saturday sees their last (!) matchup against the Houston Rockets, Monday the Trail Blazers are in town, and Wednesday they play the Mavericks (and noted basketball warlock Rick Carlisle will attempt to slap-chop Fizdale’s game plan all to pieces again).

It remains to be seen how long Mike Conley will be out. It was a fait accompli that he’d miss some time with an injury at some point this year; if anything, it’s fortunate that it’s happening now and not later during a more crucial stretch. The Griz are .500 now, and frankly with all of the things they’re figuring out on the fly, it’s hard to see how much better than that they can get without a healthy Conley on the floor. I say that, but this team seems to get better when they’re missing players—maybe because it eliminates the focus issues Gasol was talking about. Who knows. At any rate, they’ll do well to go 2–2 on this home stand given how the Rockets are playing, and that would keep them right where they are: .500.

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

• The Grizzlies’ loss to the Bucks, and the bad vibes on their road trip
• How Tyreke Evans is the Grizzlies’ best player so far this year
• My first haiku recap of the year
• Seriously, though, what’s wrong with Conley? What about Gasol?
• Should Chandler Parsons start? (No.) Should the Grizzlies buy him out? (Phil thinks so, but no.)
• The Kings look bad, and somehow Phil’s Knicks don’t.
• The upcoming week: home against Indiana, Houston, and Portland
• Is it good or bad that the Grizzlies won’t play the Rockets with Chris Paul?

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:

Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

Mike Conley will be good again someday, right? Right?

The Grizzlies lost to the Bucks last night. They usually lose in Milwaukee–they haven’t won there since 2014–but last night’s version was especially frustrating, since they did it on the backs of lethargic, scattered play from Mike Conley and Marc Gasol, while wasting another very strong (to the tune of 27 points on 69% shooting) bench performance from Tyreke Evans.

Sometimes, prose isn’t up to the task of conveying the reality of human emotion. Sometimes the only appropriate vessel for the most intensely human experiences is poetry.

---

1.

Conley is garbage
The fall leaves are turning red;
So is his shot chart.

2.

The birds migrate south.
Marc Gasol against the East:
So does his effort.

3.

A deer sprints through trees–
He cannot be stopped, nor slowed.
Tyreke in the lane.

4.

The bench has stood tall.
The starters sleep as though bears
Hibernate early.

5.

Marc and Mike are bad
Until they return to life
Fall will turn colder.

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

• How Phil said Jeff Green was decent for the Cavs, but Kevin is not having it
• Whether Andrew Harrison can really keep starting if he’s going to struggle like this
• Fizdale got outcoached by Rick Carlisle and probably by Steve Clifford too—but roster limitations limit his ability to adjust
• A comparison of Dave Joerger and David Fizdale
• Fizdale’s epic rant after the Orlando loss
• Mario Chalmers’ meltdown against Orlando, and whether it was a fluke. (It probably wasn’t.)
• Tyreke Evans’ huge (huge) game against the Magic
• How long can the injury histories of the Grizzlies be kept at bay?
• Should the Grizzlies pick up Jahlil Okafor if he becomes available? Why did he have so many problems in Philly?
• The Grizzlies’ upcoming road trip to LA and Portland this week
• Why do teams always play poorly in NYC and LA matinee games? Phil knows because of JR Smith’s Twitter activity.
• Whether there will be a show next week, given Phil and Kevin’s proximities to their respective deathbeds

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:

Larry Kuzniewski

Tyreke Evans scored 32 on 65% shooting in last night’s loss.

The Grizzlies lost to the Orlando Magic last night, 101–99, and they just flat-out shouldn’t have. Orlando is playing well—they rolled into town as the #1 team in the Eastern Conference—but not so well that the Grizzlies could afford to make the careless mistakes and poor plays that they did last night. It’s their second straight loss, and the second of the season in which they sabotaged themselves rather than just being outworked. (I’m counting the Charlotte loss in that latter category, because Charlotte as an excellent defense and put the clamps on the Griz in the second half. There were no clamps last night.)

I have five thoughts about what went wrong for the home team last night, and though most of them are similar, the subtle differences roll into one slightly cranky narrative of a team that just didn’t do many things right.

Five Thoughts

★ Mario Chalmers played like hot garbage in crunch time. After Marc Gasol came to life and tied the game at 97, and then immediately put the Grizzlies on top by 2, Chalmers had three of the most bone-headed possessions I’ve seen from a championship player to close out a game. He turned the ball over on the base line; he blew a fast break layup by anticipating contact instead of, y’know, trying to make the layup (which I can only assume was a wayward tribute to the departed Tony Allen); and then in a pick and roll with Marc Gasol on a play that could have put the Grizzlies ahead, he went around the screen and immediately pulled up his dribble, sat there a few seconds with it, and launched a bad three.

To be fair, Chalmers owned his mistakes after the game, and said he felt like he cost the Grizzlies the game. I find it hard to disagree. I was reminded of all those Heat championship years when everyone always seemed to be yelling at Chalmers.

Grizz nation tonight was on me……I promise I won’t let y’all down again. We gotta b better as a team and I gotta b better.

— Mario Chalmers (@mchalmers15) November 2, 2017

Magic 101, Grizzlies 99: Five (Cranky) Thoughts (2)

Larry Kuzniewski

David Fizdale looked like this most of the night.

★ David Fizdale put his team on blast after the game, and then told us everything he said. It wasn’t just Chalmers who caught hell from the coach after the game. In the press conference, in what I can only assume was a G-rated version of the rant he’d just unleashed on the players, Fizdale said “We didn’t deserve to win this game. Our huddles were a joke, our communication was ridiculous. No one owned anything tonight.” Asked about Chalmers’ handling of the end of the game, he said “Mario made a ridiculous play.”

His frustration was apparent. He praised Marc Gasol’s leadership and his efforts to get the game back on track, but other than that, he seemed very frustrated by the team’s demeanor from moment one of the game. He went on to stress the teachability of these kinds of games, that he was going to watch it a couple more times and make the team do it too. He also pointed out that the Grizzlies were trying stuff like lobs off the backboard (Tyreke Evans’ missed connection to James Ennis) with the game on the line.

Fizdale’s bluntness has gotten him in a little bit of hot water with players before, but last night there’s no way they could have disagreed with his assessment. Nothing was working for the Grizzlies on either end of the floor for long stretches of last night, and even though they built up a double-digit lead at one point that only made them even more casual and even less willing to dig in and communicate. It’s worth monitoring what the team chemistry situation is as they leave town for a long pair of road trips; these issues could get worse before they get better, and if they do, batten down the hatches.

Larry Kuzniewski

Andrew Harrison

★ Andrew Harrison is barely able to stay on the court. Harrison made some nifty plays last night when the game tightened up, but for the most part, he was not good, and without Mike Conley the Grizzlies’ starting lineup was even worse than it has been, which is no mean feat. Single game +/- is not often instructive, but it can point you in the right direction, and last night Harrison was –18 in a 2 point game, in only 20 minutes of play. (And Jarell Martin, the other young guy currently starting because of injuries, was –23 in 19 minutes. Whether or not these numbers are very meaningful, they’re not not meaningful.)

The bottom line is that the sooner Ben McLemore and/or Wayne Selden return from injury and push Harrison back down towards the bottom of the rotation, the better. His defense is good, but he still lacks any other distinguishable NBA skills, and he’s just not good enough to carry major minutes as a starting shooting guard. There’s no one else to start if Fizdale wants to keep the bench unit of Chalmers, Evans, Brooks, Parsons, and Wright together, but he may be forced into further experiments while awaiting Selden and McLemore. It just doesn’t seem like this bad of a starting lineup is in any way tenable.

★ The longer these guys stay hurt, the worse the Grizzlies will get. With Conley out, an uncertain injury situation became a bad one. One hopes he’s just taking it easy because it’s early in the season. JaMychal Green’s absence is certainly felt on the defensive end. And Selden was never supposed to have been hurt this long in the first place, and was expected by many (including me) to be the starting 2 guard until McLemore returned from his foot injury to challenge for the spot. The net result is a Grizzlies team that has about seven players who play well together but needs to play ten guys to make it through a game. If guys don’t start coming back soon, I don’t see any way they do more than tread water, and headed out on the road for a couple of weeks, that has the potential to get very ugly. Because:

Larry Kuzniewski

★ This group of personalities has not gelled completely yet. There are young guys, brash characters like Tyreke Evans and Mario Chalmers, whatever you want to call Chandler Parsons, the quiet solid guys like Ennis and Wright, and Conley and Gasol’s still-evolving leadership roles. There are a lot of opportunities for the chemistry on this year’s Grizzlies team to go south, and they may be coming up on one of those opportunities with this road trip.

Fizdale seems to have a handle on what’s going on, but he can only do so much, and with the injuries taking a toll on what the team is capable of, the Grizzlies, this early in the season, are already in a bit of a pressure cooker, having so outperformed early expectations. I think things might get weird.

Tweet of the Night

If I’d had six thoughts instead of five, the bonus one would have been that Tyreke Evans scored 32 points last night, and shot 65% from the floor. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him shoot as well as he’s shooting so far this year, which bodes well for how the Grizzlies can use him. But last night wasn’t just about shooting jumpers:

Tyreke is lighting up the Bluff City Classic out here.

— Chris Herrington (@HerringtonNBA) November 2, 2017

Magic 101, Grizzlies 99: Five (Cranky) Thoughts

Up Next

The road awaits. A pair of games in LA this weekend, one a Saturday matinee against the Clippers (and the Grizzlies almost always lose road matinee games, same as every other team who goes out on the town in LA the night before—which is to say every team in the league). Then it’s up to Portland, before coming home and heading back out on another road trip without playing a home game.

The chemistry is the thing to watch. Can the Grizzlies correct the issues they’ve developed in these two losses, or will the added isolation of a road trip only intensify and deepen their issues? That’s the story of the next week.

Larry Kuzniewski

Mike Conley continues to struggle.

The Grizzlies finally lost a home game on Monday night, falling 104–99 to the Charlotte Hornets after leading by as many as 13. A lot of things combined to take down the home team on Monday night but the biggest story is that the struggles of Mike Conley and Marc Gasol finally caught up with them. Conley and Gasol shot a combined 8 of 33 (that’s 24.2% for those of you keeping score at home) and the rest of the offense went cold as they tried to chuck any and every three point opportunity that came their way so the Grizzlies could keep up. That’s never really worked for this Memphis team, and it’s not about to start working now.

Here are five takeaways from last night:

★ The Grizzlies can’t pretend they’re a 3-point shooting team. Totally restored vintage Chandler Parsons or no, the Grizzlies have yet to win a game when they’re shooting threes at the expense of initiating any other offense. Last night, the shots weren’t falling, and in the third and fourth quarters, the Grizzlies refused to compensate by taking the ball to the rim. A good deal of credit for this, obviously, goes to Charlotte’s defense—but certainly not all of it. The offense stagnated when it started trying to shoot over the Hornets’ defense instead of working through it. The Grizzlies took thirty five threes last night and only made 8 of them. That’s never going to be a winning formula, especially if they’re all coming in half court sets instead of in quick offense generated off of defensive stops.

Larry Kuzniewski

★ The starters are bad. Period. The bench has bailed out the team in every win so far, and with Conley and Gasol both struggling now in addition to Andrew Harrison and Jarell Martin (maybe “because of” rather than “in addition to” but I haven’t rewatched enough game tape yet to say that), there’s no relief in sight unless (1) Selden or McLemore and JaMychal Green return to the starting lineup or (2) Gasol and Conley miraculously pull themselves out of the slump they’re in. Given that Selden’s injury was supposed to be a short thing—Fizdale even said at one point during the preseason that they were targeting an opening night return—I’m not sure what his timetable is anymore. But the sooner the starting lineup can be filled with slightly less marginal NBA players, the better.

★ Dillon Brooks finally looked like a rookie. He hesitated to take shots last night, defended well but also got burned a few times, didn’t shoot well even when he got good looks. The whole rest of the team looked like that too, but last night was the first time I’ve seen Brooks look so tentative, like he’s still so young and pure of heart that he was shocked when Gasol kept feeding him the ball instead of trying to drive. Those of us who have watched this team a long time know better. Speaking of which:

★ The offense got some great looks for the wrong guys. Ball movement is meaningless of Jarell Martin is the guy you’re hoping will hit a bunch of crunch time 3’s, or that Dillon Brooks will somehow save you. The Grizzlies, and Gasol especially, were overpassing down the stretch of the fourth quarter, kicking out to guys who were open for a reason. I’d be more upset about it if Gasol hadn’t been doing that since about 2009. (Remember all those times he fired a beautiful skip pass to a wide-open Tony Allen instead of taking it to the rim?)

★ Charlotte is good. This was not a loss to a bad team. The Hornets are #7 in the East, but I think they’ll rise in the standings as the season grinds on. The Grizzlies are somehow still in first place, having only lost one conference/division game and only two games overall.

Larry Kuzniewski

Tweet of the Night

From happier times in the first half when it looked like the Grizzlies were rolling, fueled by another big scoring night for the bench:

That delicious smokey applewood aroma wafting through FedEx Forum is Tyreke cooking Dwayne Bacon in his sneakers over and over and over and

— Matt Hrdlicka (@theRealHrdlicka) October 31, 2017

Hornets 104, Grizzlies 99: Five Thoughts

Up Next

The Grizzlies, #1 in the West, take on the Orlando Magic, #1 in the East before the Celtics finally pushed them down to #2 yesterday. No one expected either of these teams to be anywhere near as good as they’ve been to open the season, so this should be an interesting test game to see how good they really are.

Historically, this is a game that the Grizzlies would not get up for, so it’ll be interesting to see what kinds of effect that has on the starting five. But Orlando, like the Grizzlies, does not look to be a bad team that’s randomly hot; they look like they’re legitimately better than people expected. Should be a good one.

Also, when these two teams played in preseason, Jarell Martin did this to Bismack Biyombo, so Orlando has to play with four players. I think that’s how that works.