Tag: Grit ‘n Grind

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Opinion The Last Word

Grit and Groan

CREDIT: REUTERS | USA TODAY USPW

While the local and national media were busy portraying Memphis as a town just happy to watch our Large Spanish Son succeed, I wondered if I was the only Grizzlies fan watching the NBA Finals with the acrimony of an ex who had just received a save-the-date from the one who got away. If nobody else is going to acknowledge that it’s still freaking weird seeing Marc Gasol in Toronto Raptors black and red, whooping and celebrating and chugging wine with some other teammates, I guess I’ll be the first.

When the Grizzlies sent Gasol to Toronto, I knew they were doing right by him, putting him in a position to win a ring without the pressure of having to be The Guy all the time. I just wasn’t prepared for it to happen so fast. It was beyond time for both sides to move on and start looking toward the future. But seeing your ex having a good time with somebody else at a place he never took you is never fun, regardless of who broke up with whom.

REUTERS | USA TODAY USPW

Marc Gasol holds the 2019 NBA Championship trophy.

“Oh, he does that now? Interesting,” I caught myself saying during Game 5. “Aggressive Marc showed up. Man, I miss these nights.”

Yes, the relationship outlived its spark and lasted about a year longer than it probably should have, taped together by memories of happier times. But that should have been us, dammit. Forget throwing a parade for Big Spain — how about a pity party for the city that was, to borrow a line from his new team’s pop icon, with him shooting in the gym. And we’ll get to do it all over again next season, when Mike Conley inevitably proves to be Utah’s missing piece. Hell, maybe Mike and Marc will end up playing each other in the Finals. Won’t that be a dream come true? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. It will be depressing.

Please do not get it twisted — despite my bitterness and the number of times I’ve yelled “Oh, for God’s sake will you just shoot it?” over the past few seasons, I am truly happy for Marc Gasol. I love nothing more than seeing people accomplish their goals.

Actually, that’s wrong. There is something I would love more, and that is seeing Zach Randolph and Tony Allen on a parade float, cruising down Riverside Drive. Please pause for a moment to ponder this amazing visual and consider how close it was to becoming reality. In some parallel universe, I like to imagine it has happened — maybe even twice. In that universe, Z-Bo’s hand never met Steven Adams’ face five years ago. The Grizzlies upset the Thunder and rode that momentum to the Finals. CJ McCollum’s elbow never got acquainted with Conley’s eye socket, and the Warriors never even got a chance to blow a 3-1 lead against the Cavaliers. A lot of things would have had to go right to secure those outcomes, and “everything going right” has only recently become associated with the Grizzlies brand, but fandom doesn’t have to be rational all the time. Fan is short for fanatic, after all.

That’s how close they got to glory — just a couple of unlucky breaks and some really, really questionable personnel decisions away. Remember that the next time you see someone comparing the Gasol and Conley trades to “sending them off into the real world” like a kid to college, as a fan told one local outlet. It wasn’t long ago that the Grindhouse was the real world that chewed up the Spurs and crushed the Clippers, where the MVP became Mr. Unreliable.

With an electric new point guard and some new people in charge, it feels like good times are on their way back to the corner of Beale and B.B. King. But the organization lingered a little too long in the glow of the Grit ‘n’ Grind era (ahem, Wrestling Night), so I think we’ve earned a little extra time to grieve. Hopefully Ja, Jaren, and company understand and can make room for the Core Four in their eventual championship parade. For the visual and for paving the way.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Conley Regains Griz Scoring Record: How Long Will He Stay?

Mike Conley’s time in Memphis is possibly coming to an end. If it does, he’ll go out as the team’s all-time leading scorer, which is a fitting accomplishment.

Although the Grizzlies fell short Wednesday night in a pseudo-road game against the Golden State Warriors in a FedExForum filled with faux-Warrior fans, Conley was able to regain the franchise’s all-time scoring record with a corner three-pointer in the first quarter.

Conley, who also leads the franchise in assists, steals, three-point field goals, and games played, joined LeBron James and Reggie Miller as the only players ever to lead in all those categories for their respective franchises.

Conley was a late-bloomer scoring-wise over his career, after struggles to be productive early. As a young player, he was often the butt of fan and media jokes, but Conley went from being the third to forth option on teams that had some combination of Rudy Gay, OJ Mayo, Zach Randolph, and Marc Gasol to the team’s number-one option in recent years. His longevity, combined with his production, has now placed him among the franchise’s all-time greats.

But now, Conley has a cloud of uncertainty floating over his head, as he is constantly the subject of trade rumors — even as early as NBA Draft day — after not being moved at this year’s trade deadline. There are those who believe the Grizzlies will, in fact, move Conley either around the draft or at some point before next season’s trade deadline, the thought being that another team looking to re-tool going into next season might be willing to give more for Conley than the offers that were presented to the Grizzlies this season.

The Lakers, Jazz, Pistons, Pacers, and Magic seem to be the most likely candidates, based on previous interest in Conley, as well as speculative looks into their roster make-up, needs, and draft placement. Conley’s recent scoring production has made him look like a much more desirable player. There are those who say that Conley might even be “auditioning” or showcasing his abilities to a league-wide audience because he might not be opposed to the possibility of leaving Memphis via trade.

There are two ways of looking at his situation. There’s the obvious benefit of having Conley back next season, especially if the Grizzlies are not able to convey the draft pick they owe to Boston. A team that consists of Conley, Jackson, Anderson, Brooks, and some combination of the players acquired via trade this season could not only be good enough to convey the pick, but possibly be good enough that the pick lands high enough that it might not sting so much to lose it.

There is also the thinking that not only should Conley not have to be forced to be a part of a team that is clearly rebuilding, but that the Grizzlies shouldn’t try to rebuild on the fly, and keep Conley in the process. This kind of clean break would force the team — and the fans — to embrace life after Grit ‘n Grind, of which Conley is now the lone survivor.

Regardless of what the Grizzlies end up doing with Conley between now and the near future, it is great to see him cement his place in team history. His hard work, dedication, and loyalty to the franchise, his teammates, and the city has placed him where he belongs — on top.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Farewell, Grit ’n Grind

My early NBA memories from FedExForum are hazy. I remember a late-season game in 2005 against the Spurs, who were supposed to be “resting.” The Grizzlies ultimately won despite the persistence of Manu Ginobili, back when he had hair. Since then I’ve groaned “Ugggh, this friggin’ guy” every time our teams meet — which is too frequently, if you ask me.

I saw Yao Ming vomit on the baseline once, and I’m pretty sure he stayed in the game. Among vague recollections of J-Will passes and Mike Miller threes are visions of Pau Gasol checking his nose for blood. Thanks to a holiday ticket promotion during the lowest point of the Iavaroni era, I sat courtside when Chris Paul’s Hornets came to town. The thing I remember most about that game was my husband’s ruthless heckling of Peja Stojaković’s shoes, which were still prettier than the home team’s defense.

Either I picked the worst games to attend, or the Forum was a different place before it became the Grindhouse. (Pretty sure it’s the latter.) The memories start to crystallize around the time Zach Randolph arrived: The first home game of the 2009 season felt more like the beginning of a crazy experiment than a basketball game. I felt dizzy in the top row, growl towel aloft, that April afternoon in 2011 when the Grizzlies shocked the Spurs and everyone else who assumed they were just happy to be there. I can tell you where I was sitting and what I was wearing that Friday night in 2013 as we jingled our keys at that former Hornets star who had become a pesky, detested Los Angeles Flopper. At the risk of revising history, it wasn’t always sunshine. But every season, at least, felt like a chapter in a story.

Zach Randolph, the basketball player, made the Grizzlies relevant. Then Tony Allen, the basketball player, made them fun. Together, as people, they made them relatable. We knew in our minds a day would come when Memphis, the community, would need them as people more than the Grizzlies needed them as players on the court. We knew one day they’d decide their bodies had given enough to the grind of training camps and ice baths, media avails, and six months on the road. We hoped in our hearts the dates would align. It’s more than basketball, until it’s only basketball, and you realize you’ve invested too much emotional capital in some dudes who chase a ball around. They tried to prepare us, but some data is just too painful to take. Such is life in a one-sport town.

Tony Allen and Zach Randolph

Zach Randolph and Tony Allen are beloved by Memphians for a lot of reasons — their “blue collar player” and “all heart, grit, grind” philosophies are engraved in the team’s mythology. But more than anything, to me they embody the fundamental contradictions the city represents. Tough but generous. Proud but flawed and extremely misunderstood. Stubborn and a little anachronistic. They “get it” because they lived it.

Like most of my friends who move away, Z-Bo just got a better job offer out of town. He still loves Memphis so deeply that a rumor he’d covered the city’s outstanding utility bills on his way out of town was completely believable. Sometimes business is business, though. That’s another one of the city’s contradictions, sadly — we love you, but we just can’t, y’know, pay you. Loyalty is priceless but damn, $24 million for two years’ work is impossible to turn down.

For at least three years, national sportswriters have warned the end of “grit and grind” was approaching. Slowly suffocating opposing teams with defense was no longer a sustainable strategy in “today’s NBA,” they said. The eulogies began as soon as Tony Allen cryptically deleted “currently grinding for the Memphis Grizzlies” from his Twitter profile. Maybe “#GnG” is over, if the term is shorthand for an era, like the Bad Boy Pistons or Showtime Lakers. But just because the most beloved player is wearing a different jersey and the Grindfather is more like a forefather doesn’t mean the Memphis Grizzlies’ best days are behind them. Mike Conley’s annual All-Star snubs will continue. The games won’t be nationally televised, and when they are, everyone’s names will be mispronounced. As long as they can continue to weaponize underdogism, small-market disrespect, and our paradoxical need to prove outsiders wrong despite claiming not to care, the culture lives on.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and a digital marketing specialist.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Forget Nashville

CREDIT: Clewisleake | Dreamstime.com

Nashville has treated Memphis like Little Brother for as long as I can remember, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that Memphis is the bigger city — just barely. It won’t be that way for much longer, according to 2014 population data recently released by the Census Bureau. Right now, Memphians outnumber Nashvillians by only about 20,000. Nashville’s population is growing and ours is just … sitting there. It dropped by .25 percent last year — not a lot, but obviously we would prefer that the population grow, not shrink.

So, we’ve got some work to do. But we already knew that. Of course, the public policy and urban planning experts in our daily paper’s comment section claim to have exclusive insights into where folks are going and why, but that’s a topic for another day.

So Nashville’s finally poised to surpass Memphis. Big deal. Enjoy this cookie as a token of my not caring.

As a Memphian, I know I’m supposed to roll my eyes and say, “Ugh, Nashville … the worst! More like Trashville, right? ‘It City’? Are you sure they didn’t mean to say, ‘It’s shitty?'”

Hating on Nashville is as much a part of life in Memphis as jaywalking, waiting in line at Jerry’s, or getting heat exhaustion at the Elvis Week candlelight vigil. Rumor has it there’s a secret ingredient in our delicious water that allows the Nashville hate to flow more freely.

Meh. I can’t do it. I don’t hate Nashville anymore. In fact, to paraphrase one of my favorite Don Draper lines, I don’t think about it at all.

Sorry, no time. Too busy enjoying Memphis.

Standing on the top floor of a BBQ Fest mega-tent, sipping a Memphis Made kÖlsch as the sun slipped behind our giant glass pyramid newly filled with alligators and tourists and hunting supplies, the last thing on my mind was “Oh man, I wonder what Nashville is doing right now!”

Clewisleake | Dreamstime.com

When I was waving my Growl Towel and yelling “FIRST TEAM DE-FENSE” at the tippy-tip-top of FedExForum, I never paused to imagine what the fans chant at Predators games. If they chant anything at all.

As I bounce from barre class to brunch at Second Line to a hair appointment at Gould’s or a matinee at Studio on the Square, I don’t ask myself what in Nashville compares to Overton Square.

Remind me, why are we “rivals” again? The two cities have little in common beyond the highway that connects them. Nashville is “country” and Memphis is “soul.” Nashville’s brand-new, never-worn, and Memphis is gently used one-of-a-kind vintage. Emphasis on one-of-a-kind. Think about it: What do they have that we don’t have or even want for that matter? An eponymous TV show? Been there, done that, would rather not talk about it. Jack White? By all means, they can have him — and Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman too. A neighborhood called SoBro? Nah, bruh. The Titans? LOL. Trader Joe’s? It’s just a grocery store, y’all. Yeah, I said it. (If anyone from TJ’s happens to be reading this: Just kidding! We’d love a location in Memphis. Pretty please. ASAP. Thanks.)

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” As a city whose unofficial motto is “Memphis vs. Errrbody,” we could probably benefit from President Roosevelt’s advice. Let’s compare Memphis today to five, 10 years ago. Maybe the population is stagnant, but Memphis is growing in a different way. And it’s been a thrill to witness. Entire neighborhoods are being reborn. We’re figuring out how to turn old, forgotten things like the Tennessee Brewery, Hotel Chisca, and the Crosstown building into new, useful things.

Every time I cross a “New Restaurant To Try” off my list, another one opens. More touring bands and musicians are playing in Memphis instead of just flying over en route to bigger cities. We’ve got a basketball team that owns the fourth-longest streak of postseason appearances in the NBA. We even have a respectable — nay, good — college football team now! Around this time next year we’ll have an IKEA, an H&M, and a Cheesecake Factory. Scoff all you want at chain corporate retail and dining, but the money their employees earn spends just the same as anybody else’s. Those brands would not be expanding here if they didn’t see potential.

Potential, in Memphis? Believe it! Once we learn how to enjoy having nice things instead of waiting for them to be taken away from us, watch out. The New York Times might not be ready to christen Memphis the “It City,” but that’s not really our style. It kinda sounds like a jinx, to be honest.

Memphis doesn’t need a rival. The past is our only rival, and we’re kicking its ass. Congrats to you, Nashville. You’re off the hook.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and digital marketing strategist.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Crush Portlandia

Playoff time in Memphis is a special thing, a time when we as a city come together to become the best version of ourselves. In a town that already spends most of its time thinking about basketball anyway, the NBA postseason brings about something like a religious fervor, a common belief, a unified zealotry.

The Grizzlies have now made the playoffs every year since 2011, the only Western Conference team other than the Spurs to do so, and each year we get a slightly new variation on the same “Believe Memphis” theme. This year, the Grizzlies’ first-round matchup is against the Portland Trail Blazers, the first time the Griz have played them in the postseason. The seven previous series since 2011 were all played against the Spurs, Thunder, and Clippers, so it’s nice to see some different players in different uniforms for a change.

It’s also a matchup that favors the Grizzlies. Memphis swept the regular season series, but it’s more how they did it than that they did it: Portland lacks the interior defense to guard Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol for an entire game (though they certainly have good post players overall, especially LaMarcus Aldridge), and the Grizzlies’ swarming defense causes serious problems for their primary scoring threats. Injuries to Portland guards Wesley Matthews, who is out for the year with an Achilles injuy, and Arron Afflalo, who has a shoulder injury and seems to be aiming to return as soon as possible, mean that the Blazers, who normally rain 3-pointers on opponents to space the floor while Aldridge and point guard Damian Lillard go to work, are limited to relying on Aldridge and Lillard to carry more than their fair share of the load.

The Grizzlies have injuries, too. Mike Conley and Tony Allen both missed long stretches to close out the regular season, and while both returned and played well in Game 1, one could see that they had to adjust to being back in a game situation after sitting for so long. Allen, who is suffering from a hamstring injury, was clearly still having a little difficulty doing what he wanted to do, some of which may have just been rust from sitting since the beginning of April. Conley, on the other hand, was magnificent on both ends, scoring efficiently, using his hesitation move coming off screens to get open, and creating problems for Lillard on the defensive.

There may have been a hint of exorcism at play in Game 1, as well: The last time the Grizzlies opened up a playoff series with home-court advantage was the 2012 first-round opener against the Los Angeles Clippers, in which they gave up a 27-point lead and lost — maybe the most emotionally devastating loss for the Grizzlies ever in FedExForum. When the Griz got out to a similar lead over Portland, there was always a sense that “We’ve seen this before.” The Blazers made a run in the fourth quarter, but this time, Allen stopped it with an emphatic two-handed slam.

As dominant as the Grizzlies’ Game 1 performance was, the series is far from over. Portland is a team with quite a bit of offensive firepower, and even given their injuries, still has several players who could get hot and have a big game. Lillard and Aldridge probably won’t shoot so poorly again. The playoffs are about the long game: who can adjust to what the other team is doing, who can neutralize those adjustments and make a counter-move, who can be the first to will themselves to four victories.

I don’t expect a Grizzlies sweep of the series. Portland will have at least one home game where their offensive firepower is unleashed and the Griz can’t string together enough stops to keep up, and the Blazers’ insane home crowds are deservedly legendary. They’re not a team that will roll over and give up, not even when they’re missing key players against a team that swamped them even before those injuries. That said, I do think the Grizzlies deserve to be the favorites in the series, and that they’ll take care of business against the Trail Blazers (no matter how many games it takes) and advance.

Beyond the first round lurks a matchup with the winner of the Golden State/New Orleans series (which is for all intents and purposes guaranteed to be the Warriors), and the Grizzlies’ health will be just as important in that series as it is in the current one. But that’s not what matters right now: Right now is about reveling in another spring of postseason play. Nothing is guaranteed in the playoffs — nothing but the roar of a FedExForum crowd, and a parade of uniquely Memphis moments playing out on the court and in the arena.