The Grizzlies ended their season Wednesday night with a 98-90 win over the Atlanta Hawks to finish 24-58, tied with the Minnesota Timberwolves (who folded to the Kings — boo!) for the fifth worst record in the league.
I’m excited to get into the offseason stuff, but my plate is extraordinarily full on my other beats the next two weeks. So I’m going to get on the record with this batch of quick thoughts on Lionel Hollins and the entire season-ending Griz roster.
The rest of this month, Beyond the Arc will be on semi-hiatus. I might pop in with breaking news, links, or responses to reader comments as warranted, but don’t expect much else here until the first week of May.
Lionel Hollins: I was probably a little unfair toward Hollins a few weeks ago in my post-Calipari piece. He’s gone 13-26 as head coach — a slightly better record than Marc Iavaroni had this season with slightly less talent (following the Kyle Lowry trade) and against a much tougher schedule. Despite his disappointing reluctance to give O.J. Mayo serious point guard minutes when Mike Conley sits, he’s done a pretty solid job with this team, particularly getting Rudy Gay refocused. Mike Conley also blossomed on his watch, but I think that started when Iavaroni left, not when Hollins started. Given the solid finish, the response from the team, and financial factors, he’s very likely to remain head coach heading into next season, and that’s fine. My biggest concern: That he’ll have too much off-season influence, often a danger with head coaches, as Griz fans have seen. More on this later.
O.J. Mayo: Mayo averaged 38 minutes a game and played all 82 as a rookie, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he couldn’t quite keep up his torrid November scoring pace. But more than 18 points a game on 44/38/88 shooting is very good for a jumpshot-dependent rookie that defenses have been keying on most of the season. His limitations in terms of size and athleticism by NBA two-guard standard in conjunction with his promising playmaking ability suggests a fulltime move to the point could be in his future. He’s too turnover-prone for that now and has proven he can be a big-time player at the two (potentially on both ends of the floor), so the team has a lot of options with Mayo in the backcourt. Mayo is clearly the most significant player on the team, but doesn’t profile, to me, to be a top tier ballhandler/scorer (Lebron/Kobe/Wade). He can clearly be a second-tier guy (Roy/Billups/DWilliams), but that means this team is still on the “balanced-talent” rather than the “star and role players” team-building plan. (Which is fine by me, actually.)
