Tag: Dallas Mavericks

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From My Seat Sports

Mike & Marc

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

I grew up devoted to some special Dallas Maverick basketball teams. New to the NBA (the franchise began play in 1980), the Mavs drafted my college hero (Tennessee’s Dale Ellis) in 1983 and I adopted the team from afar (I was living in New England at the time). I quickly fell in love with a trio of players — Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman, and Derek Harper — that steered a run of five straight playoff appearances, including a trip to the Western Conference finals in 1988. (Does this sound familiar yet?)

The problem for my Mavericks was that they peaked at the same time a dominant team from California commanded the Western Conference. (Surely this rings familiar now.) After losing to the mighty Lakers one game shy of the 1988 NBA Finals, the team cracked. Aguirre was traded to Detroit the next season (where he’d win a pair of championships with the Pistons). Blackman was traded to New York in 1992 after a 22-win season. Harper was traded (also to the Knicks) in 1994 and helped New York win the Eastern Conference title. The “cracking” left a considerable emotional gap for at least one basketball fan for several winters to come.
Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies’ dynamic duo.

It appears less and less likely that Mike Conley and Marc Gasol will complete their NBA careers in Grizzly uniforms. With his team spiraling toward the bottom of the Western Conference — don’t get too close to the Suns — team owner Robert Pera hinted earlier this month that the two franchise icons could be included in trade discussions. When asked about his name being used as trade bait, Conley was quoted as saying, “Memphis is all I know.” Gasol suggested that his relationship with the Grizzlies franchise might change, but not his connection to Memphis, Tennessee. By that of course, Gasol means his connection to us, Memphians. It’s a deeper sentiment than most modern professional athletes are capable of uttering. And it makes the thought of Gasol (and/or Conley) in another uniform even harder to stomach.

But the Grizzlies, as the roster is currently shaped, are moving further from contention for an NBA title and not closer. It’s not a trajectory conducive to retaining highly paid stars, never mind the duo’s decade of tenure in Beale Street Blue or the seven playoff trips they made possible. And this has been the hardest part of the reality math for me: Conley and Gasol will leave Memphis (the franchise) with a whimper, and not the celebratory flourish more reflective of their impact on Memphis (the city).

For me, Mike Conley will always be “the masked man,” a point guard who played the majority of his minutes in the 2015 playoffs (and against the mighty Warriors no less) with a broken face. For me, the image of Marc Gasol I carry is Big Spain taking the opening tip at the 2015 All-Star Game. A Memphis player starting the All-Star Game. Save for a championship or perhaps an MVP, I’m not sure a moment could more legitimize Memphis as an NBA city than that tip-off in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Both players have been slowed in recent years by significant injuries. Both have nights now when they appear to have lost a step (as athletes do in their 30s). But neither Conley nor Gasol has ever griped, at least not about their plight as players. Their steady comportment, in good seasons and bad, has made them, well, Memphis AF. It’s among the reasons no other Grizzly will ever wear number 11 or number 33. Conley and Gasol are destined, you have to believe, for the bronze treatment someday. Only if there’s enough room in the FedExForum plaza next to the Zach Randolph and Tony Allen statues.

Our favorite teams hurt us as much as they help us. Only one group of players finishes a season with a parade. And the players we cheer — at least as long as they remain human — move on to new life stages. But joy, while never bottled, has no expiration date, not really. And those who deliver a certain brand of joy (a sweep of the San Antonio Spurs comes to mind) outlast physical presence. Here’s hoping Conley and Gasol — no, Mike and Marc — find their paths to happier life stages than the Grizzlies’ current record suggests. They’ll remember Memphis, perhaps with the same profound appreciation we’ll remember them.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies Beat Mavericks 98-88, Tie for #1 in West

CREDIT: Matthew Preston

On the second night of a back-to-back, the Grizzlies returned to FedExForum hoping to secure another win, and a tie for first in the Western conference, after 16 games.

The Dallas Mavericks arrived in Memphis on a four-game win streak, having beaten the Golden State Warriors on Saturday. Jaren Jackson had faced off against every other top 5 2018 draft pick except the Mavs’ Luka Doncic before tonight.
Matthew Preston

In his pregame availability, Grizzlies head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said the foundation has been set after 15 games and lauded the team’s solid identity and culture. In terms of improvement, Bickerstaff said better offense will come along as the Grizzlies get more comfortable with one another, and learn each others’ games and how to play toward their teammates’ strengths and tendencies.

The Mavericks started the game on a 5-0 run, but the game sank waist-deep into that Grindhouse mud soon after and remained bogged down, per the Grizzlies’ liking, from that point onward. Neither team pulled away by more than a few points, with the lead changing hands 17 times.

The Mavericks got an early boost from Dorian Finney-Smith’s two threes. Meanwhile, the Grizzlies shot 0-4 from deep to begin the game.

Jackson put on a showcase in the first quarter. Though he and Doncic were the star rookies in this matchup, Jackson spent more of his time guarding and being guarded by DeAndre Jordan.

Jackson made Jordan look downright foolish on a handful of possessions. On one play, Marc Gasol kicked the ball out to Jackson in the corner. Jackson dribble-drove into Jordan, backed up, then drove past him for a reverse-layup.

Grizzlies Beat Mavericks 98-88, Tie for #1 in West (2)

In another sequence, Jackson hit a deep two in Jordan’s face, then blocked Jordan’s dunk attempt on the other end. Jackson registered another block on Jordan in the post soon after. The Mavericks finished the first period shooting 29.2 percent from the field.

Between the first two quarters, the Grizzlies game-break entertainment featured a three-way competition between dental equipment. I’m only pointing that out because the competition and accompanying video made less sense than episode 8 of the recent Twin Peaks. I don’t know if it was ineffectual production or high art, but I didn’t like it (unlike episode 8 of Twin Peaks).

Another absurd thing that happened: Jackson had multiple highlights in one sequence. Doncic had a look from three, but didn’t want to take it with Jackson defending the perimeter. Instead, he drove towards the rim, but only made it about a step before Jackson picked his pocket, ran the court, and finished at the other end with an and-one spin move. It was sublime and deserving of the Black Unicorn nickname I’ve seen spreading on Twitter.

Grizzlies Beat Mavericks 98-88, Tie for #1 in West (3)

Mike Conley also had a sweet assist to Jackson in the second quarter, where he drove to the rim and no-look flipped the ball over his shoulder to the trailing rookie. I’m interested to see how the Grizzlies’ fast break offense unearths ways to leverage Jackson’s abilities for easy points.

After the game, Bickerstaff said Jackson has “… an offensive skill set that we’re just beginning to see.” I agree.

Through good overall team play, the Mavericks pulled ahead early in the second quarter, and held that lead til near the end of the half. But the Grizzlies clawed their way back to a four point lead after two quarters.

One thing I liked seeing: Gasol looking great on one of his rumbling hook shots in the paint, with bouncy footwork and an elastic finish. It’s nice to know that shot is still very much in his tool belt.

Bickerstaff called a timeout less than a minute into the second half, after Doncic and Smith Jr. hit quick threes. Doncic would finish with 8 points in the period.

The teams finished the third quarter tied at 74.

Memphis suffocated Dallas in the fourth quarter, holding the Mavericks to 14 points. I repeat: the Grizzlies held the Mavericks to 14 points in the final period of play, and did so on the second night of a back-to-back (when their previous game was on the road).

Meanwhile, solid and clutch play by Conley, Shelvin Mack, Garrett Temple, and Gasol enabled the Grizzlies to close out the game on the offensive end.

Grizzlies Beat Mavericks 98-88, Tie for #1 in West (4)

Conley had another stellar shooting night, filling the basket to the tune of 28 points, and going 7-11 from deep! Five of those triples came in the second half. He also dished seven assists, had two steals, and five rebounds.

His shooting was efficient — 10-18 from the field. Conley made it to the line for only two free throws, but I don’t mind him pouring in nearly 30 points without having to put his body on the line to get to the charity stripe this early in the season.
Larry Kuzniewski

Kyle Anderson was effective in this game as well. His passing and defense were stellar, and he’s shown much better touch around and near the rim in the last two games. He finished with 8 points on 4-6 shooting, and had 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. He had one particularly clutch play late in the game, where he missed a corner three, stole the rebound away from the Mavericks, and finished with a jam.

JaMychal Green buoyed an otherwise disappointing performance by the Grizzlies bench. Wayne Selden and Marshon Brooks had trouble making good decisions with the ball, especially in the pick and roll, and combined for just 5 points. Mack had a lackluster shooting night, taking a small number of shots, but he made a timely three in the fourth quarter, and didn’t turn the ball over once.

Green had a nice return to the home court after his jaw surgery. He had a nasty block on Dennis Smith Jr., and scored 12 points on 5-8 shooting, 2-4 from three. He was one rebound shy of a double-double.

Gasol had a solid night on offense, contributing 17 points on 6-16 shooting, but missed all five of his three point attempts. He made up for it on the boards, however, pulling down 15(!) rebounds (all defensive).

Grizzlies Beat Mavericks 98-88, Tie for #1 in West

Memphis beat Dallas on the boards (45-43), and in the paint (44-36).

Defense won the game again for the Grizzlies. The Mavericks average about 110 points a game this season, but couldn’t break 90 at the Grindhouse. Gasol and Jackson had 4 blocks each. The team had 11 overall. The Mavericks finished shooting an anemic 34.1 percent from the floor.

One thing Dallas did differently for stretches at the beginning of the game and second half, pointed out by Chris Herrington, was put Jordan on Jaren Jackson and smaller forwards on Gasol. As a result, Gasol’s three-point game was taken away, and he spent much of his time down low with Jackson on the perimeter—when their positions are usually the other way around.

After the game, Bickerstaff and Gasol said they weren’t too worried about other teams trying a similar tactic, and attributed the scheme and its success to the type of personnel the Mavericks have.

The Grizzlies are now tied for first in the Western conference after 16 games. That’s not a tiny sample size. But the team isn’t thinking much about that. Bickerstaff said he won’t be paying too much attention to the rankings until after the All-Star break, and Gasol said he was happy, but that being happy isn’t the same as being satisfied.

The Grizzlies are off until Wednesday, when they’ll take on a dangerous and similarly slow-paced Spurs team in San Antonio.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Lose-Win Proposition

Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, got in trouble last week for remarks he made during a podcast interview with Hall of Fame great Julius Erving. Cuban’s statements were so out of line that Commissioner Adam Silver fined him $600,000 for “public comments detrimental to the NBA.”

What was Cuban’s speech-crime? He told the truth. He said he told his players the best thing for them to do for the rest of this season was to lose: “I sat down and I explained it to them,” he told Erving. Pretty expensive blasphemy.

The preferred term for trying to lose is “tanking.” The problem is that at least eight, and maybe nine, teams besides the Mavericks are tanking right now, including our beloved Memphis Grizzlies. That’s because the NBA’s draft lottery system rewards teams that finish the season with the worst records with the early picks in the post-season player draft. In short, the worse a team’s record, the better their odds of picking a good player in the draft. Hence this unseemly race to the bottom.

But with nearly one-third of the teams in the 30-team NBA now playing to lose, the regular season has simply become a farce. Consider: The nine openly tanking teams had lost a combined 44 games in a row, as of last weekend. That means if you’re a team that’s actually trying to win, your odds on any given night are about one in three that you’ll be playing a team that will be quite happy to let you do so. Throwing games on purpose used to be called cheating. Now it’s “strategy.”

Tanking is not so obvious as teams intentionally missing shots or making purposeful turnovers. Players would never “try to lose,” we are assured by everyone affiliated with the NBA not named Mark Cuban. No, the methodology is slightly more subtle. A team’s best players get lots of “rest”; they experience prolonged bouts of “illness” or suffer from “sore knees” that just don’t get better, darn it. Meanwhile, young bench-warmers and end-of-career veterans get most of the court time. They hustle and scrap, but they are cannon fodder — the Washington Nationals versus the Harlem Globetrotters — and they know it.

It’s a strategy that cheats everyone: The fans see a lot of non-competitive basketball games, often absent the stars they come to see. Teams that are actually fighting for playoff positioning get hosed when a team they are competing with in the standings gets to play a tanker while they’re playing against a team trying to win.

In this week’s cover story, Kevin Lipe offers five ways that Grizzlies fans can “enjoy” watching our tanking Grit ‘n Groaners. You know, watch the young players develop, celebrate their hustle, get excited for those nights when comebacks fall just short. Yada yada, yada. I say, if we’re going to tank, let’s tank. Let’s go all in. Let’s have fun with it. Let’s be like Cuban and tell the truth.

First, we need stop with the Kabuki theater of the pre-game shows, wherein Brevin Knight, Rob Fisher, and Chris Vernon assess the team’s chances on a given night and offer “three keys to victory.” Seriously? Everybody knows we’re trying to lose, so just go ahead and embrace it.

Knight: “Here are my three keys to a loss against the Magic tonight, fellas: 1) We need to have Deyonta Davis take as many three-pointers as possible; 2) No jumping; 3) Foul, foul, foul.

Vernon: “Good points there, Brevin. And I’d add we’re really going to have to resist the urge to take open shots.”

They could also analyze upcoming games a bit more honestly.

Fisher: “We’ve got some tough must-lose games coming up, fans. It doesn’t get any easier from here on out. The Griz shouldn’t have any problem losing to Houston tonight, but there are a few contests coming up that will put the Griz to the test. Home against Atlanta, for example. The Hawks are streaking with 14 straight losses and the Griz have lost 11 in a row, so something’s got to give. Should be a helluva game. … ”

Break out the “Grit ‘n Grind” towels, y’all. We can do this!

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From My Seat Sports

Frank’s Top Five Memphis Sports Moments of 2015

Frank Murtaugh continues the count-down of his Top 10 Most Memorable Memphis Sports Moments of 2015:

5) Navy 45, Tigers 20 (November 7) — Forget the result. This game, ironically, is the snapshot that will stick with me from the Justin Fuente Era in Memphis. The undefeated (8-0) Tigers and the 6-1 Midshipmen met on the gridiron (somehow for the very first time). And 55,000 fans packed the Liberty Bowl without an SEC team in sight. I’ve long held the Liberty Bowl is too big a stadium for the Memphis program. A crowd of 40,000 should not feel like a third of the stadium is empty. But when you pack 55,000 into the old saddle, it feels like big-time college football. Dreams of a New Years’ Six Bowl for the Tigers died on this night. But something else came alive.

4) Dallas 103, Grizzlies 95 (January 19) — The Martin Luther King Day game has become, in my opinion, the top annual event on the Memphis sports calendar. Saluting former athletes for making a difference beyond the box score makes for a poignant event, and one held merely blocks from the National Civil Rights Museum. This was the first chance I had to take my entire family to the game, allowing me the chance to try and explain the significance of Earl Monroe and his connection to one of the NBA’s most memorable teams. (Happily, my daughters were both familiar with another of the Sports Legacy Award honorees: Jason Collins.) This may have been the best matchup in the history of the event, the Griz entering the game with a record of 29-11 and the Mavericks at 28-13. Memphis fell behind by nine after the first quarter, clawed back to finally take the lead with just over four minutes to play, but fell when Dirk Nowitzki hit three field goals over the game’s final two minutes. The real winner, as it is every year on MLK Day, was the city of Memphis.

3) Redbirds 9, Sounds 4 (June 24) — I used some vacation time, took the afternoon off, and enjoyed this Wednesday-afternoon tilt with one of my daughters. Memphis fell behind, 2-0, in the top of the first, but Stephen Piscotty homered on the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the first, making the 109-degree heat index feel like hitters’ fuel. Bartlett native Jacob Wilson later added a double and Tommy Pham a triple as the Redbirds’ offense took starting pitcher Zach Petrick off the hook. Less than a month later, Piscotty made his debut with the St. Louis Cardinals, taking over leftfield from the injured Matt Holliday. Pham also played a key role in the Cards’ 100-win season that earned the franchise a third straight National League Central title. But on this sweltering afternoon at AutoZone Park, the Cardinals’ future was still the Memphis present.

2) Tigers 53, Cincinnati 46 (September 24) — This Thursday-night affair took more than four hours to play . . . but felt like 90 minutes, max. The two teams combined for 1,322 yards of offense (most of them — 752 — by the loser), 12 touchdowns, and 11 lead changes. Cincinnati scored nine times (four field goals) and Memphis eight (one field goal), with the same team scoring consecutively but once (two Bearcat field goals in the second quarter). Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch passed for 412 yards, a career high (until the Tulsa game a month later). Not until Tiger linebacker Leonard Pegues picked off a wobbly Hayden Moore pass with 10 seconds left on the clock did the U of M secure the win. This was the third time in four games Memphis scored at least 50 points in a football game (with two more to come).

1) Tigers 37, Ole Miss 24 (October 17) — The Rebels were visiting the Liberty Bowl for the first time in five years and had beaten mighty Alabama a month earlier. But here’s the thing: The vast majority of the 60,000 fans in the Liberty Bowl . . . were wearing blue. This game certainly represented the apotheosis of the Justin Fuente Era in Memphis. The question should be whether or not it’s the apotheosis of University of Memphis football, period. After falling behind 14 points just six minutes into the game (“Here we go again . . .”), the Tigers simply dominated the 13th-ranked team in the country. Over the next 30 minutes of playing time, Memphis outscored Ole Miss 31-0, quarterback Paxton Lynch throwing three touchdown passes on his way to a 384-yard game. Two field goals by All-American kicker Jake Elliott provided separation in the fourth quarter. The victory improved Memphis to 6-0 for the first time in 54 years and extended the Tigers’ program-record winning streak to 13 games.

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News

Stan Musial, The Mavericks, and More …

Frank Murtaugh surveys three new sports books that are perfect for summer reading.

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Opinion The BruceV Blog

Congratulations, Miami Heat!!

In the classic newspaper tradition of “Dewey Beats Truman,” the Miami Herald ran a huge Macy’s ad Monday congratulating the Miami Heat on winning the NBA championship. For those of you not in the reality-based community, the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA championship Sunday night — by beating Miami.

I’m guessing Macy’s will get a “make-good” on that ad. And it’s safe to say that whoever put that ad in the paper was obviously not a sports fan. Or awake.

mistakead-thumb-500x863.jpg

Details here.