- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Movin On: The Spurs to the Finals; the Griz to a summer of big questions.
A couple of hours before tipoff at FedExForum Monday night, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich held his usually curt pre-game press conference in the arena’s media room. It was longer than Game 3’s two-plus minutes, but not by much. He had somewhere to be. A few minutes later, Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins held court in the hallway outside the Grizzlies’ locker room, talking for what felt like 20 minutes or more in front of a gradually shrinking gathering of reporters, veering — on request — from questions about this series to back history on his Grizzlies’ tenure and his general leadership philosophy, a not-unusual dissertation that, given the circumstances, bordered on the valedictory. Nowhere to go.
Happenstance proved prophetic by the end of the night, as Popovich’s Spurs move on to their fifth NBA Finals and the Grizzlies stay home to contemplate an uncertain off-season that only begins with questions about Hollins’ future.
If this Grizzlies’ postseason was a revenge tour, then perhaps it came to a fitting end. In the opening round, the Grizzlies beat the Los Angeles Clippers, avenging a bitter first-round loss from the previous spring. The next round, the Grizzlies overcame the Oklahoma City Thunder, avenging a second-round loss from two springs prior. And it ended where this team iteration’s three-year playoff run began, this time with the Spurs avenging their own 2011 upset first-round loss to the Grizzlies.
Losing to the Spurs in four games after having won eight of their previous nine playoff games was a shock to the team and a bitter reminder for longtime fans of the Grizzlies’ playoff past: Before Lionel Hollins was the head coach. Before Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol patrolled the paint. Before Tony Allen transformed NBA culture in Memphis. When sweeps were the norm and they didn’t come in the conference finals.
But this was no collapse. The Spurs earned this.
