Jason Wexler – Memphis Flyer

Remember when Memphis Tiger basketball seemed to have lost its way? (Go back 14 months on the calendar and you’re there.) Remember when discussion around Tiger football turned toward whether or not the university should field a team? (Larry Porter was in charge merely eight years ago.) Today, this city’s flagship college programs — in particular, those programs’ stability — are the absolute envy of our lone big-league operation. After last week’s shenanigans surrounding the dismissal of Memphis Grizzlies coach J.B. Bickerstaff, we’re left to wonder not just who’s calling the shots for our NBA franchise, but are those shots being called with an ounce of wisdom? With foresight?
Courtesy Memphis Grizzlies

Robert Pera

I spend my winters wearing blue-and-gray blinders, my focus primarily the fortunes of the basketball Tigers, the Grizzlies’ pay-by-night tenant at FedExForum. I’m not going to pretend to know the front-office mechanics most recently led by Chris Wallace (assigned last week to scouting duty, it would appear). But with one franchise icon (Marc Gasol) recently traded and another (Mike Conley) exasperated — and that was before last week’s front-office bloodshed — the Tigers’ landlord seems to be a bit light in the tool belt.

What an odd year it’s been in Memphis sports, and we aren’t even approaching Memorial Day yet. Penny Hardaway’s first season as Tiger coach raised the community’s collective happy-joy metric to almost unreasonable heights … and the Tigers played in the NIT. The most passionate fan base in town, though, pound for pound, may prove to be the Bluff City Mafia, recently seen in a cloud of blue smoke at an AutoZone Park soccer game. Who gives a kick-in-the-grass if 901 FC scores a goal?

The Memphis Redbirds — two-time defending champions of the Pacific Coast League — are back for their 22nd season, lending some brand stability to the sports landscape. But they have a new manager (Ben Johnson) in the dugout and the usual collection of new faces that comes with every minor-league season. The Redbirds have won so much over the last two years, any losing in 2019 will feel like not so much a disappointment as an inconvenience.

We even have pro football! Well, scratch that.

All of this brings us back to the Grizzlies, the one Memphis franchise that appears in standings printed in the New York Times or Chicago Tribune. It’s the one Memphis franchise that should be this community’s rudder in the stormy, emotional sea of sports fandom. Win or lose, we’ll wear Grizzlies gear to remind us we’re big-league.

The Grizzlies will open the 2019-20 season with their fourth coach in five years. (Remember how a broken Tiger program had to survive three coaches in four years?) This is the “stability” model of the Phoenix Suns or New York Knicks, not a club anywhere close to contending for an NBA title. The new hire, of course, will be a primary component of Griz owner Robert Pera’s solution for the recent descent of a franchise only two seasons removed from a seven-year playoff run. If Jason Wexler and/or Zach Kleiman prove more savvy with roster building than Wallace (the man who brought Conley and Marc Gasol to Memphis), stability will once again don Beale Street Blue. But for the time being, Pera might need a breathalyzer before his next move.

Sports are distraction. Heart-squeezing, at times soul-draining distractions, to be sure. Even with last week’s head-scratching news, I happen to believe the overall Memphis sports landscape has never been healthier. (Yes, my Penny-endorsed blinders are a factor here.) We prefer our tackle football in the fall. We’ve embraced 901 FC like we really are a part of planet futbol. We have good baseball for summer nights and an NBA team when winter comes. Stability wins championships and will be achieved by the Grizzlies before a banner is raised at FedExForum. As for the current state of affairs, embrace the madness and call it a Memphis thing.

TEDx will be arriving in Memphis this weekend, and it’s all thanks to a high school senior.

Patton Orr, a senior at Memphis University School, has been interested in TED Talks — which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design — since he was a freshman. And now Orr is the brain behind launching a Memphis version, which will feature multiple monologues of 18-minutes or less on one particular topic, on Saturday, August 29th.

Kimbal Musk

The one-day TEDx event will feature entrepreneur Kimbal Musk, hip-hop artist Marco Pavé, Memphis Grizzlies President of Business Operations Jason Wexler, Church Health Center CEO Dr. Scott Morris, New Ballet Ensemble founder Katie Smythe and 12 others, ranging from backgrounds of education and art to business and nonprofit. TEDxMemphis is sold out, but the event will be available to watch online around September 7th.

Marco Pave

Orr’s sister, who attends the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, attended a TED conference and eventually went on to work in their TEDx program, which helps independent organizers create a TED-like speaker event in their own cities.

Orr became curious about the organization and its events. He found himself looking at a map of TEDx offerings and saw a hole.

“To me, it looked like Memphis was really the largest market in the United States still remaining without a TEDx event,” he said. “So instead of waiting around for someone to organize that, I decided to do it myself.”

After Orr got into the process, he realized he couldn’t do TEDx justice if he continued alone.

“I’m only 18 years old,” he said. “I soon realized if I tried to control this conference myself or be the sole person trying to organize it, it was just not going to be the kind of large event that could really impact the city the way I wanted it to.”

Ownership over the event wasn’t important to him, Orr said. Anna Mullins, the director of marketing and communications from the New Memphis Institute, attended the early committee meetings and stepped in at the request of Orr. The New Memphis Institute focuses on attracting and retaining local talent.

TEDx events usually have an overarching theme. TEDxMemphis’ theme this year is “What’s Next?”

“The ideas are typically thought-provoking, innovative, provocative in some way,” Mullins said. “They’ve become very diverse in their topics. There are really popular talks that are three minutes long that talk about tying your shoes, and there are talks that are 18 minutes long that talk about food scarcity globally.”

“We really see this as an opportunity for ideas to converge and challenge one another,” Mullins said. “Hopefully, it’ll spark discussion.”

“So many people, and teenagers especially, are always saying, ‘Get me out of Memphis,'” Orr said. “It just makes me sad. I love to see when people take pride in our city, when people share ideas with each other, when people showcase the positives in Memphis, because there are so many. There are so many great things happening here, especially within the last couple of years.”