Tag: Kevin Lipe

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Grit and Grind is Dead and Alive; or, Weird Things In The Night

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Author’s Note: This is my last week at the Flyer, and this is my last piece.

The basic idea was: it was a capital-M Moment, and I thought Herrington was the only one doing it any justice. There were Grizzlies blogs, and I read them, but none of them shared my view, or talked about it the way I wanted to talk about it, and none of them seemed to know how to explore what was happening: in 2011, Memphis burned with the blue flames of the Spurs and Thunder series. It felt like the whole city was boiling over with pride, or with a new energy we hadn’t felt since the 2008 Final Four that apparently never happened.

So I messaged Matt Moore, then only of Hardwood Paroxysm but of a lot of other things in the intervening years, and he pointed me to a little blog called Straight Outta Vancouver, and I sent Tom Lorenzo a sample essay, and, well, if you’re looking for someone to blame for all of… this… there you go.

Why am I talking about this? Easy: like the Grizzlies, I’m in a different spot along my trajectory now. I’m at (or approaching, really) the beginning of a new chapter, and this weird, scrappy basketball team I’ve been covering for a majority of my adult life is in the same place: ready to do something else, unsure how to honor the past and still step into the future, making moves for the next phase.

I. Grit and Grind is Dead

Larry Kuzniewski

Future Memphis Mayor For Life Zach Randolph

Where the Grizzlies have been is not where they’re going.

There’s never going to be another Zach Randolph, in the same way that there’s never going to be another Tyrannosaurus Rex: the conditions that allowed for the past’s fearsome predator to operate no longer exist. And, really, there is no way to have a “Grit and Grind” team without Zach Randolph on it. Tony Allen named it, functioned as its Chaotic Neutral, embodied its space-cadet vibe to the fullest, but without Randolph on the interior infusing the proceedings with an appropriate level of contained violence, none of it happens.

And while “tenacious defense and a refusal to back down” is an easy way to gloss over what the “GNG” years meant, in a very real sense, there was always a level of danger baked into the proceedings. When Z-Bo got tossed for telling Kendrick Perkins “I’ll beat your ass,” he meant it, and was one of maybe five NBA players about whom that was true. Allen never threw hands on the court, but ask OJ Mayo whether TA was willing to get into it.

It seems unlikely that any future incarnation of the team will ever recapture the vibe of the 2010-2015 Grizzlies, in which a collection of the league’s written-offs and misfits came together in the only NBA town that didn’t much care whether they were rough around the edges, because, well, have you seen our edges?

Larry Kuzniewski

Mike Conley, shown here beating the Warriors with a broken face

So, then, it’s important for the Grizzlies, for the people talking about them (especially nationally, where it seems like 75% of the people paid to talk about basketball can’t remember whether they’re still in Vancouver or not), and for the people watching them to remember that the previous era is over. Gone. The truth is, that era ended in the 2015 Warriors series, when they pushed the eventual champs to six games, a blaze of glory, a raging against the dying of the light, etc. That series felt so monumental at the time—that whole playoffs, really—that I thought it would be a good idea to try to write about it like Faulkner. That’s what the first GNG period was.

We also have to come to terms with the fact that the last three years have been a wandering in the wilderness. From 2016’s 28-man rotation, to the first Fizdale year, that flowering of false hope in a different Miami-infused future, to last year’s, let’s face it, outright tank job. (Take that for data.) There’s a clear period of demarcation here, and just because they managed to make the playoffs in two of those three years doesn’t mean there’s continuity. Fleetwood Mac may have kept playing “The Green Manalishi” into the Buckingham/Nicks years, but do you think anybody bought that, either?

No, the door closed on that era in 2015. We know that now. Wherever they go next, no matter how much they keep saying the words “Grit and Grind,” cannot be the same. Experience slips away, just like Geddy said.

Larry Kuzniewski

Tyreke Evans and Tony Allen, in a photo that will never stop looking weird to me

II. Grit and Grind is Permanent

Something changed within the Grizzlies organization between the end of the 2017-18 season and the draft—something bigger than just announcing the hiring “for real” of JB Bickerstaff, last year’s interim coach. What happened was this: The Grizzlies know what a Grizzlies player is now.

For years, we’ve seen this franchise take flyer after flyer on underperforming guys with high upside, guys who were McDonald’s All-Americans in high school and played for Kansas (or some other college program that usually makes the Elite Eight) and hasn’t put it together yet in the NBA. Guys who had bounced around and would be locks for massive contracts if they could only “figure it out.” (Remember those training camps with Hassan Whiteside and Michael Beasley?) That strategy worked when the Grizzlies traded for Zach Randolph, and it worked when they signed Tony Allen for more money than the Celtics wanted to pay him, and it never worked again, not really.

There was another parallel but different strategy at work in the GNG years: adding veterans who could shore up the Grizzlies’ “one piece away” rotation and who wouldn’t make dumb mistakes, guys who played hard on minimum deals and could pull you through a bad Thursday night in Milwaukee if the team needed them to. Sometimes, of course, they got to Milwaukee, got ejected, and then chased John Henson into the tunnel, but that seems beside the point.

What there wasn’t, in all of these years, was a concept, or a Platonic form, of a Grizzlies player. The MO of the front office seemed to be to repeat the process that led to the construction of the Zach/Tony/Mike/Marc/(Rudy and then Tayshaun) core, when that process was never a repeatable or reliable one to begin with. Garbage in, garbage out, and eventually that methodology nets the second-worst record in the entire danged Association.

Once Bickerstaff had the reins, one started to hear an alarming number of references to “bringing back Grit and Grind,” references which raised the hackles of this Griz-Watcher more than once. What do they mean by that? Are they going to sell a pick to the Mavericks and sign Jeremy Pargo again? But now, of course, with the passing of the last few weeks, we know what they meant.

Larry Kuzniewski

Dillon Brooks

They Grizzlies have identified The Form Of A Grizzlies Player: excellent defender, high basketball IQ, big for his position (something that has always factored into their player evaluation—lookin’ at you, Andrew Harrison), not a star but generally acknowledged to be good. Jaren Jackson, Jr. fits this bill. Kyle Anderson fits this bill (except maybe the size thing, but he’s not undersized). Omri Casspi fits this bill, even—he’s 20th among small forwards in Defensive RPM.

I’m sure there are other attributes they consider, but a prototype is emerging, and it’s important, because: that’s what it really means to have an organizational culture. Grit and Grind, whatever it was back in the dead past, was a culture, sure, but it was a player culture. It came from the guys on the team, and how the gelled, and what they were like. It probably also came from having a hardboiled, grizzled Lionel Hollins calling the plays. That’s great, and it certainly lead the Grizzlies to their greatest successes as an NBA franchise, but the problem with a player culture is exactly what we’ve seen in the Griz since 2016: when those players are declining and/or gone, the culture isn’t sustainable.

Grit and Grind is permanent because in its new organizational form—which is necessarily different from its previous player-based form—it’s a sustainable model for player evaluation and basketball system decisions.

III. Grit and Grind Exists Outside of Time

OK, so what does that mean for next year? When are the Grizzlies going to be good again?

The bad news for Grizzlies fans is that a “new Grit and Grind” doesn’t answer either one of those questions, and can’t, and here’s why: the moves the Grizzlies are making, and the philosophy they’re putting in place, is intended to give them a path forward from the Conley/Gasol era, but they’re still in the Conley/Gasol era.

Gasol has two years left on his max deal (one if he decides to opt out after this season). Chandler Parsons has two years left on his max deal. Mike Conley has three years left on his max deal. The plan, at the time of the Parsons signing, was to build the Grizzlies’ next four years around that trio, and thus shift philosophies while maintaining their streak of success for the length of Gasol and Conley’s contracts.

Larry Kuzniewski

Chandler ‘Knees’ Parsons

We’ve seen—not least of all in Parsons’ nearly continuous knee injuries—how well that plan has gone. Because of the myriad ways in which the Grizzlies’ Summer 2016 plan for The Next Core has gone pear-shaped, they’re now in a position where their only option (given the two first round picks traded back when the first plan was coming together: the 2017 first traded to dump Marreese Speights’ salary and the 2019 protected first traded to bring in Jeff Green, the latter of which still makes me want to vomit) is to work with what they’ve got.

What might “working with what they’ve got” look like in 2018-19 and beyond? If Mike Conley returns from injury looking anything like he did in the single full season under David Fizdale, and if Chandler Parsons can contribute more than he did last year and play in more games, and if Marc Gasol’s foot holds together another couple seasons and the drop-off in his play last season was because of the bad team and the poor motivation and not because he’s 33 this summer and starting to decline because he’s played pro basketball since leaving high school…

…they might make the playoffs. They’ve certainly shored up the rotation. But given that Conley has missed large portions of two of the last three seasons, and that Parsons has done the same and moves like a 29-year-old trapped in a 37-year-old’s body, and that there’s no way to know what Gasol might look like until we get into the season and see, that’s a bet I’m not sure I’d take.

If they were healthy all season last year, the Grizzlies probably would’ve made the 7 or 8 seed. That much seems clear. But no team in the NBA is healthy all season, not even the Warriors, and a team that can’t survive a single injury to any of its best players is not a team that can be counted on to do much of anything.

And here’s what I think: it actually doesn’t matter much whether the Grizzlies make the playoffs next year; what’s much more important is that they win enough games to escape the protections on the pick owed to Boston. If the Grizzlies finish outside of the top 8 of the 2019 draft, their first round pick goes to Boston. If they’re bad enough to be in the top 8, they keep the pick and then their 2020 pick goes to Boston if it’s outside the top 6. If, for some reason, the Grizzlies are so bad in 2018-19 and 2019-20 that their pick doesn’t convey to Boston, their 2021 first round pick goes to the Celtics completely unprotected.

Larry Kuzniewski

Jeff Green, in happier times

This is why you (1) never trade a first round pick five years in the future, because you don’t know what your team will look like then, and (2) especially never trade any pick that could potentially become an unprotected first for Jeff Green. You shouldn’t trade a Tops cheeseburger for Jeff Green. You shouldn’t trade a nice, well-used Snapper lawnmower for Jeff Green. I hated trading that pick at the time and I continue to hate it, and I hope the summer of 2019 is the last time I have to get worked up about it.

But what does that mean? It means the Grizzlies really need to win enough games to finish, by my reckoning, 9th or so in the Western Conference, so they can give a back-end lottery pick to Boston and move on with their future. If they can’t make it to 40 wins, or 38, or whatever that means, they’re going to need to try to move Conley, Gasol, or Parsons (LOL) and press an even bigger reset button. They have good young talent around, and if they’re going to be bad anyway, they might as well try to recoup that missing draft pick somewhere along the way.

And while they’re doing whatever they’re doing, there’s old Grit and Grind. The next two years could be great—it’s plausible if not likely that they could, say, be the 8 seed one of the next two seasons. But they could also be a storm to be weathered, with the “tear down the old core” portion of the rebuild happening after the “bring in young talent” portion has already happened. That’s a good thing, really: in Jackson, Anderson, Dillon Brooks, and maybe Andrew Harrison, they’ve got some very good young pieces around which they can build already on the roster. That’s not how rebuilds usually go.

But Grit and Grind, in its new top-down form, suffusing the whole organization with its endless determination Not To Bluff and to be Vs. Errbody and whatever else, will still be there, still be evaluating players, still be creating a system and a style of play from the ashes of long ago playoff successes (and failures, because let us not forget that what made the Grizzlies vulnerable was ultimately their inability to cope with the new “Pace & Space” NBA that sprouted some time around 2012-13).

It’ll still try, in its new and grasping way, to be a basketball culture that reflects something of the identity of its host city: an underdog mentality bordering on a complex; a flat refusal to go along with what’s happening in the more glamorous places, whether that’s Nashville and Austin or Golden State and Houston; a collective of weird people doing weird things in the night, whether that’s Lawler and Kaufman at the Coliseum, or whatever studio allowed Mystic Stylez to be recorded on its equipment, or FedExForum when Zach Randolph gets ejected from a playoff game.

Grit and Grind is gone, and it will never go away.

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Way Forward: Grizzlies Start a New Era

CREDIT: Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

Nostalgia is a subtle nihilism. It denies the possibility that anything will ever be better than it was in the past and robs us of the ability to see what’s in front of us because we’re always comparing what is with what we remember.

This season, there’s no way for the Memphis Grizzlies to avoid that trap.

With Zach Randolph and Tony Allen gone and suiting up for other teams, you can’t deny that an era has ended and a new one has begun. The “Core Four” era has been, without question, the most successful in the history of the franchise — and the period in which the team’s fanbase finally blossomed into something bigger than a bunch of die-hards hoping the next Three Year Plan will finally be the one that works. The things that happened between the 2010-11 and 2016-17 seasons will not soon be forgotten.

The catch, of course, is that all eras end. Players age out of their primes, injuries derail plans, wild swings of fate move the ground out from under even the best-laid foundations. It was inevitable that eventually the most successful group of players in the team’s history would no longer be together in Beale Street Blue and that there’d be a season in which the Grizzlies first had to face that reality and build something for the future.

This is that season.

The Core Four is gone, and the Grizzlies — still helmed by Mike Conley and Marc Gasol and in the second year of head coach David Fizdale’s tenure — have to figure out what to do next. But regardless of what happens, will it hold up when compared to the glory days that just passed? Will the Grizzlies be able to succeed or fail on their own terms this season, or will they be judged harshly when they fall short of fan expectations because they can’t replicate the glory of the Grit & Grind Days? That’s the question that will be answered over the next 82 games. What will the 2017-18 Grizzlies be, and will that be enough?

Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

Chandler Parsons

The Chandler Parsons Project

As the Grizzlies look to reinvent themselves around Conley and Gasol, all eyes will be on the Grizzlies’ big $94M free agent signing from last summer, forward Chandler Parsons. After trying to rush back from a knee injury and then failing to ever reach playing shape, to say Parsons’ 2016-17 was a disappointment would be like saying the Titanic didn’t have a great maiden voyage. The hope is that this year, he’ll be able to contribute in some sort of meaningful way. That way didn’t make itself apparent during the preseason, and given how much Fizdale has talked about using Parsons as a power forward, it seems like his role this season (at least at first) will be coming off the bench to play that position in smaller, two-point-guard lineups.

Obviously, no one thinks that paying $23M per year to the eighth man in the rotation is a successful outcome for Parsons, but at this point, the money is spent, so as long as he can contribute, he’ll play. But Fizdale has made clear that one thing won’t happen: the mandated 20 minutes of playing time while Parsons tried to rehab last season, which frustrated everyone and accomplished nothing.

Parsons was signed to be a playmaker, a scorer with the starting unit that the Grizzlies never had in the Core Four days (apologies to late-period Tayshaun Prince and to the Platonic ideal of whatever people see in Jeff Green). It’s clear heading into this season that the 2015 Chandler Parsons is never, ever coming back, so now the challenge is to figure out a way to get something out of him. If he can play above replacement level, I’ll call it a “win” (and break out the Wild Turkey when it’s time to look at the salary cap numbers). But he won’t be the player they signed him to be — not this year, not ever again.

Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

Tyreke Evans

On a Wing and a Prayer

Don’t let the Parsons debacle cause you to give up hope, though, because there is something positive brewing in the wing positions: a depth that the Grizzlies have not had in recent years. The offseason additions of Tyreke Evans and Ben McLemore helped to shore up a rotation already starting to come into its own with James Ennis’ decent season (I won’t call it a “breakout,” really, but it was solid) and the emergence of Wayne Selden as a potential starter during last season’s ill-fated San Antonio playoff series. McLemore won’t be ready to play for a while yet — he broke his foot this summer in a pickup game, just part of the Grizzlies’ ongoing multi-season injury curse — and I wasn’t very excited about his addition on its own, but coupled with Evans, it’s a notable upgrade from the days of Tayshaun Prince and Austin Daye (or even Jeff Green and Matt Barnes, or the 2015 “can’t run” version of Vince Carter). Add the near-miraculous return of Mario Chalmers to the mix as another point guard, and you have a team poised to play smaller and faster with much greater skill at the positions needed to do so.

The operating premise here is that even though none of these guys is particularly a star on his own — Evans is probably the closest thing, but he’s been too inconsistent and injury-prone to ever earn the title — together, as a unit, they’re better top-to-bottom than anything the Grizzlies have been able to put on the court in a while. Since Parsons isn’t going to be the small forward of the Grizzlies’ dreams, Plan B will have to become Plan A. It’s a small victory, then, that there are so many decent-to-good role players ready to step in. For a team that has been so hard up for offensive production the last few seasons, the sudden presence of several versatile (if imperfect) players on the perimeter will feel like a sudden breath of fresh air, even considering the big piece (that is, Parsons) that will forever be missing.

Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

JaMychal Green

The Young and The Restless

On Monday, the Grizzlies cut their roster down to the 15 required for opening night, saying farewell to 2016 first-round pick Wade Baldwin IV and Serbian forward Rade Zagorac. Baldwin is a high-upside player who doesn’t seem to be developing toward that upside, and Zagorac was a young Euro player who didn’t seem to be able to make the leap to the faster, more athletic NBA game. But even though the ranks have thinned, the Grizzlies will still be relying on young guys to step up and produce.

Some of these (Andrew Harrison and Wayne Selden, especially) stepped up last year. Others (thinking specifically of Dillon Brooks, who has looked very good in Summer League and in preseason action) are still mostly unknown quantities. But regardless, if the Grizzlies are going to be any good this year, it will take a burgeoning of player development the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days when O.J. Mayo was scoring 30 points a night for Marc Iavaroni.

What the Grizzlies are doing, really, is rebuilding in place around Mike Conley and Marc Gasol. The plan was to have a Big Three that included Parsons, but that plan’s no longer workable. That means the process of retooling is more important, because the young players have to be able to contribute more than was previously expected but also need to be able to do so on a much shorter timetable. It’s not the position the Grizzlies thought they’d be in when they signed Conley and Gasol to 5-year max deals, but they’re determined to make the most of it while they can.

Joe Murphy (NBAE/Getty Images)

(left to right) J.B. Bickerstaff, Dave Fizdale, Keith Smart

The West

It’s worth considering what the best-case scenario would be for this season’s team before talking about what’s the most likely outcome.

The top tiers of the Western Conference continue to become cartoonishly overpowered. Houston added Chris Paul over the summer. The Oklahoma City Thunder added Paul George and Carmelo Anthony to supplement Russell Westbrook. The Warriors will be the same as they were last year. The Spurs will continue to ride Kawhi Leonard’s dominance.

And while the top teams will all be the same or better, there’s a new crop of younger teams looking to break into the postseason for the first time. Denver will be strong this year. Minnesota added Jimmy Butler to a team that was already brimming with young talent. Both teams look to make the leap this year.

Where does that leave the Grizzlies? They won’t be in the top tier. They probably won’t be in the second tier of teams that could conceivably make it to the NBA Finals if they catch the right breaks or a top team suffers an injury. In this season of transition, they’re looking to make the playoffs and develop what they can with an eye toward maximizing the next two years. That’s not to say this year is a throwaway — just that it’s unreasonable to expect a team with this many question marks (even one that still features Conley and Gasol in their primes) to be much better than a low-end playoff team.

Ultimately, the teams around the Grizzlies have (mostly) gotten better, while the Grizzlies rode the same venerated core for a long time, and now the Grizzlies are reloading while their peers are leveling up. That’s not an indictment of the Grizzlies — it seems unlikely that Carmelo Anthony would have come to Memphis, for example — but it does make the failure of the Parsons signing that much more real. The Grizzlies could’ve had that, too. They tried, and instead they’re scrambling to develop a rotation and a style of play.

Conclusions

So what’s the ceiling for this year’s Grizzlies team? How good can they be, given the challenges in front of them? I think an optimistic projection would put them somewhere around 44 wins, which I figure might be good enough to make the eight playoff spot in the West. They’re in a group of teams (also including the L.A. Clippers, the Portland Trail Blazers, and the Utah Jazz) that could all finish around the same place, teams with a lot of uncertainties yet to be ironed out that look decent on paper.

That’s an optimistic projection. One serious injury to Mike Conley or Marc Gasol and things could get away from them in a hurry. They’re deep, but that depth is unproven. They’re tough, but that tenacity hasn’t been tested the way it will be over the course of the upcoming season. They’re faster, more athletic, and younger, but that doesn’t mean they’ll gel out of the gate.

A pessimistic projection gets dark in a hurry. With two big-name players on what are likely the biggest contracts they’ll ever get, if the Grizzlies think the current configuration isn’t going to work, the smartest thing to do may be to trade them for picks and start over. If things are going poorly, you can expect the rumor mill to be churning out reports about Gasol trades left and right, but ultimately I’m not sure the Grizzlies “have” to make that trade the way national conventional wisdom would suggest. It’s the downside of being in this position, though. If it’s January and the team is significantly below .500 for some reason, you will start hearing these rumors. It’s just the way the NBA works, for one thing, but also, it wouldn’t be the craziest move for the Grizzlies to make.

That said, I honestly don’t expect things to come to that. The Grizzlies have been pronounced dead several times over the last five seasons, and they’ve always found a way to over-perform. They’re due for a year where that doesn’t happen, but until it does, it seems safe to bet on their success, at least “success” on the terms of this season. There’s a way forward for the Grizzlies, and they’re only now starting to discover it in the young talent on the roster. The process of finding the next great Griz core could be a long one, but they’ve got no choice but to start that journey.

It’s tempting to compare this season to the seven before it, the best run of success in the history of the franchise. But to live in that (recent) past is to deny that this season can be a success on its own merits — even if that’s admittedly a smaller scale of success than the fanbase is used to. The Grizzlies will not contend for a title this year, but that’s not the interesting thing about them. What we should watch for is whether they learn what they’re going to be next. If you’re not watching for that, if you’re living in the past, you’ll probably be very disappointed.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Grit and Bare It

CREDIT: Poster by 816 Creative

On September 24th, Commercial Appeal Grizzlies beat writer Ron Tillery wrote a column previewing the team’s prospects at the center position for 2016. Astute readers could see that Tillery, who’s been covering the Grizzlies since the team’s arrival in Memphis in 2001, was a bit miffed.

He wrote, for example: “Several weeks after the Commercial Appeal learned about Marc Gasol’s return to full basketball activities and requested an interview with the center, the Grizzlies released an ‘injury update’ on their website.

“The report confirmed what the Commercial Appeal learned. The only difference is the franchise wouldn’t allow Gasol to speak with the newspaper. Instead, Gasol produced a statement on the Grizzlies’ website.”

Tillery mentioned the lack of access to Gasol a couple more times in his column, attributing another quote from him, thusly: “… Gasol, as told to the Grizzlies website several weeks after declining an interview request by the Commercial Appeal.”

It may be a sign of things to come. Last Friday, the Grizzlies introduced their new branded-content website, Grind City Media, and announced that they’d hired a writer — highly respected former ESPN columnist Mike Wallace — to create content about the team. The team also hired popular sports-talk radio host Chris Vernon (who recently split with ESPN 92.9 FM) to air his show via Grind City Media.

Nothing particularly wrong with any of this, of course. Increasingly, organizations of various kinds are seeking to control their image and the public’s perceptions of their operation. It’s also another way to monetize the Grizzlies brand.

Similar outfits abound in Memphis, including Higher Ground, Choose 901, Thrillist, and other websites that paint a relentlessly upbeat picture of the city and its businesses. Politicians are also in on the trend, using social media — Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram — to promote themselves. Mayor Strickland, for example, writes a weekly email, chronicling his administration’s accomplishments and activities.

Again, nothing wrong with any of this. Except that the public is increasingly being challenged to discern if what they’re reading or listening to or watching was created to push an agenda (or sell tickets or promote the chamber of commerce or garner votes) or if it’s attempting to be objective. Branded content is at its core, public relations, committed to blowing sunshine up your posterior. Journalism, conversely, is committed to reporting all sides, the good and the bad. It’s important that we, as media consumers, know the difference.

When it comes to the Grizzlies, I get it: Sports reporting is entertainment reporting, for the most part — the toy department of journalism. But real — or at least, embarrassing — stories do happen, stories that, say, an NBA franchise might not want getting out to the public. Mike Wallace, for all his admitted talent, won’t be writing about locker-room dissension or scraps on the team plane. He won’t be criticizing the coach’s bench decisions or the front office’s deals. That’s where Tillery or our Kevin Lipe or Chris Herrington or other local sports reporters come in.

The hope is, of course, that the two information streams will overlap and intersect and ultimately expand the reportage on the team to the benefit of its fans. The fear, at least for local sports-media types, is that the team will restrict access to reporters in favor of giving interviews and “scoops” to its own content providers. That kind of adversarial relationship won’t go well for anyone — fans, reporters, and ultimately, the team itself.

As Memphis’ only professional sports franchise, the Grizzlies are a civic asset that brings us the joy of victory, the sweet agony of defeat, the intrigue of locker-room drama, and the god-given right to second-guess the coach. The team would be wise to recognize that we’re big enough to handle all of it. And so are they.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

The Memphis Grizzlies at the All-Star Break

It’s been an interesting season for the Memphis Grizzlies. From the rough start — which included the only 50-point loss in franchise history — to Marc Gasol’s likely season-ending broken foot against Portland, it seems the season has been a progression of obstacles.

No doubt the Gasol injury now casts the season — its goals, its methods for getting there, its ultimate value in a Western Conference where there’s very little doubt as to who will emerge victorious — in a new light. Coming as it did right before the All-Star Break, the prospect of playing out the stretch without the team’s best player provides maybe the ultimate opportunity for evaluating, for taking stock.

The Foot of the Spaniard

There’s no question that Marc Gasol had been struggling this year. It’s been one of the worst seasons of his career, with a defensive rating worse than any season since 2009-10. And yet, he’s had some of the best single games of his career. A new career scoring mark, several 30-point games, the first triple-double by a Grizzly since his older brother did it, and some huge plays in close games.

When I talked to Gasol during the preseason for a Memphis magazine profile, he said team practice was the first time he’d played basketball all summer. I think he thought he could play his way into shape, taking it easy at the front of the season in order to be in his best shape at the end of it.

That’s not how conditioning works, though. Going from “no work” to “trying to play the same way I always do” is a guaranteed recipe for fatigue, for injury, and for strain, and Gasol’s movements on the court had been labored since the first night. That’s not what you want from a 31-year-old in the first year of a five-year, $110 million deal.

In the short term, a Griz team that was already a little light in the frontcourt — with a rotation that Dave Joerger was already leaning on Ryan Hollins to bolster — is now even lighter and will have to rely on either Hollins to play productive minutes or JaMychal Green to 1) be played by Joerger and 2) keep his foul rate down during the minutes he gets.

Given that this is a team with a long history of deep playoff runs and that just about every player on the team is playing below his career averages, it’s still entirely possible that they make the playoffs, albeit as a seventh or eighth seed. But it’s also possible that they just can’t play .500 ball without Gasol, and that some of the other teams around the middle of the substantially weaker West get it together just in time to push them into the lottery.

I hope this injury puts to bed forever whatever notion Gasol has that he has to play through every injury. Sometimes doing the right thing means missing two or three games so you don’t miss two or three months. He and Mike Conley both have been playing through injuries big and small for years now, and there’s no question that it’s probably cost both of them years off their careers. But this is the first example (that we know of) of one of them playing on an injury, aggravating it, and missing serious time that he might not have, otherwise.

Going forward, it’s important for the training staff, the players, and the coach to be on the same page about this stuff. “If Marc Gasol says he can play, he’s going to play” isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Ah, Trade Deadline. Ah, Humanity!

The interesting wrinkle to the Gasol injury is that it’s happened just before the trade deadline. It’s no secret that the Grizzlies would like to see if they can turn some of their expiring contracts into some sort of future asset. Between Jeff Green, Courtney Lee, Matt Barnes, a partially-guaranteed Vince Carter, Mario Chalmers, and (well, it’s got to be said) Mike Conley, the Griz have a lot to work with here. In the interests of preserving this season, though, it’s probably safe to say that Conley, Barnes, and Chalmers are off the table, so that leaves Green, Lee, and Carter as the most likely expiring deals being shopped.

Expiring contracts aren’t worth as much with the cap projected to rise dramatically this summer, and since the Grizzlies have been holding their own as of late (albeit against weaker competition than at the start of the season), the front office is probably more likely than not to hold on to what they’ve got, unless they can persuade another GM into giving up draft picks for a player on an expiring deal.

Conventional wisdom among some of the NBA commentariat is that the Gasol injury provides the Griz all the reason they need to look for a deal for Conley that nets them young players on long contracts. I get the argument, but I think that’s a worse and riskier alternative than re-signing Conley to the right deal and absolutely not what the Grizzlies are interested in doing.

What About the Draft Pick(s)?

Because of the trade made in 2012-13 that sent Marreese Speights, Wayne Ellington, Josh Selby, and a pick to the Cavaliers in exchange for Jon Leuer (remember JONNY BASKETBALL?), a salary dump that cleared the way (ostensibly) for a better Rudy Gay trade, the Grizzlies owe their first round pick to the Denver Nuggets this year if it is higher than 5th but lower than 15th. Basically, if the Grizzlies are horrible or make the playoffs, they get to keep their draft pick this season. If the pick doesn’t convey this season, it’s likely to next year when it’s only top five protected.

Because of the Jeff Green deal, the Grizzlies also find themselves owing Boston a pick that can’t be conveyed until two seasons after the Denver pick conveys. Granted, I don’t think they’re worried about whether it conveys in 2018, 2019, or 2020 at this point, but it is on the radar.

From everything I’ve gathered, the Griz have no intention of tanking to miss the playoffs. They want to make the playoffs, keep the pick, and get a quality guy on a rookie contract for next year to add to their growing roster of young guys (Jordan Adams, Jarell Martin, and James Ennis). There also seems to be a fear that a pick in 2017 will cost them a lot more money than a 2016 rookie contract because of changes to the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA). I’ve heard that from more than one Griz executive, and they seem pretty confident that they can grab a player with this year’s pick. Given that if they make the playoffs, it’ll probably be as a very low seed (7th or 8th), they’ll probably be picking in the 16-20 range, and good talent is almost always available in that range. I find it very unlikely that they’ll do anything to bolster this year’s playoff odds at the expense of future cap flexibility.

What all of This Means for Now

I think you’re going to see the Grizzlies’ — the players’, I mean — backs against the wall, trying to win every game they can. They’ve been playing much better lately, even if it’s been against non-elite teams. The schedule is still fairly relaxed through the rest of February and early March, but then it ramps up again. If they can still make the playoffs, I’m not sure they’ll have much of a chance of advancing, but that was likely against the Spurs or Warriors, even with Gasol playing.

This year, from opening tip, was not going to be a championship year. The worst thing the Grizzlies could do would be to sacrifice future flexibility or ability to acquire talent in a misguided effort to make the playoffs for no real reason this year. Unless six Warriors and three Spurs break their ankles, the Western Conference title isn’t really up for grabs.

I’d like to see them try to flip expiring contracts for players on rookie deals, or maybe some extra picks. If those deals aren’t there, and I don’t expect them to be, they might as well just hang on to those guys and try to keep the pick this year. No player making more than $4 million or $5 million next year is really worth the future cap space.

Gasol’s injury is a weird blow to a weird year. How the Grizzlies react to it, and whether they’re able to use it to shore up their position for next season and seasons beyond will tell us a lot about the the organization’s ability to set a course and stick to it. The rest of the year should be used by everyone involved to win as many games as possible while figuring out who they want to be, and how they want to get there.

Kevin Lipe writes the Flyer‘s Grizzlies blog, Beyond the Arc.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (May 28, 2015) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Kevin Lipe’s post, “How the World Ends: Game 6, Warriors 108, Grizzlies 95” …

As a Warrior fan (since 1965) I would like to say that the Grizzlies are a classy, hard-nosed team with classy fans. They gave the Dubs all they wanted, that is for sure. Also, I will say that I enjoyed reading your columns during this series and I wish you all the best!

GHN

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s editor’s letter, “The Big Empties” …

Yes, positive things are happening downtown and in Midtown. But rather than the obligatory references to Jack Belz and Henry Turley, I would like to see the grass-roots organizations, most notably Memphis Heritage, get credit for the endless amount of energy they have expended in making all of this a reality.

The Belz family certainly jump-started downtown’s rebirth when they purchased and restored the Peabody, but, as a founding member of the Chickasaw Bluffs Conservancy, all I remember of Henry Turley is he and Mayor Herenton fighting us tooth-and-nail for 10 years to prevent the Bluffwalk from being built on the site where Turley’s million-dollar homes overlooked the river.

Research all the restoration projects listed in that article and you will find Memphis Heritage and other activist groups heavily involved in all, including the battle at Overton Square. Good article, and easy to mention the household names, but there are foot soldiers out there working on these issues every day.

Gordon Alexander

The comment regarding the work of MHA director Robert Lipscomb — especially concerning public housing redevelopment — deserves closer examination. As a graduate student in city planning at the University of Memphis, we have examined both the city’s treatment of public housing and its strategy of using huge sums of public money to finance big-ticket development projects in our studies. 

In regards to public housing: While this system has assuredly had many problems in Memphis and throughout the country, affordable housing is a critical need for the most vulnerable of our population. As one example of the importance of public housing, low-income single mothers often use subsidized housing as a stepping stone to a better life as they are able to save more money and/or get additional training that leads to better employment opportunities. 

When bundled with needed social support systems, HOPE VI (now Choice Neighborhoods) can work, but these safety nets are often absent in the aftermath of relocation. In the worst cases, relocated tenants end up homeless when they cannot keep up with utility bills that were formerly subsidized in public housing. The new mixed-income communities offer minimal affordable housing units, thereby essentially facilitating gentrification. 

In regards to big-ticket development projects that have been the calling card under the Lipscomb’s direction, it is hardly time to declare victory in the use of this strategy. Before we hand him his gold watch, I think a balanced examination of Lipscomb’s record is needed.

Travis Allen

About the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act …

Imagine you are out for a hike with your dog and he gets caught in a steel-jawed leg trap that someone set out on our public lands. Or your children are exploring the woods and they come across a trap. That will be very possible if a bill now moving through Congress becomes law.

The bill, known as the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act (S. 405), is anything but sporting. Already, the majority of our public lands are open to hunting, so there is no shortage of access for hunters. But this bill would, for the first time, expand the federal definition of “hunting” to include trapping, and that would open all U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands to hunting and trapping. Steel traps, basically landmines for wildlife, introduce another risk to your child or pet. Traps are notoriously cruel and barbaric, with animals struggling in pain for hours or days before death. The American Veterinary Medical Association reports that up to 67 percent of animals caught in leg traps are not the intended target and that many “mistakenly” caught and then released do not recover.

This legislation is unnecessary and unfair. Senator Lamar Alexander is an important vote on this bill. Please contact him and let him know that you oppose trapping on public land.

Cindy Marx-Sanders

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

NBA Chaos Theory

“This is why we can’t have nice things.” That’s the first thought I had when I read Marc Stein of ESPN’s tweet dropping the bomb no one (save for maybe Chris Wallace) saw coming: Jason Levien and Stu Lash were on their way out of the Grizzlies organization. The Grizzlies had just finished up a tumultuous season: 50 games won despite injuries; a first-year head coach; long stretches of uninspired, lackluster play; and a barrage of Zach Randolph trade rumors.

Throughout the season, we learned a few things: Dave Joerger, despite his flaws and growing pains, is undeniably a decent coach. (Before you write those angry Lionel Hollins letters, please note that I said “decent.”) Levien, Lash, and John Hollinger proved they could make smart basketball decisions that also took the franchise’s long-term financial health into consideration. On the business side, the team has never been in better shape. ESPN ranked the Grizzlies the #1 Franchise in Professional Sports for a reason.

All of that isn’t necessarily gone, but it’s certainly been jeopardized. Controlling owner Robert Pera has shown some of the smartest guys in the business the door, allowed Joerger to interview for the Minnesota Timberwolves’ coaching job, and has said absolutely nothing about what he’s thinking or where the team is going. Not that he has to, of course. The fact remains, though, that the only people talking about what’s going on are people who were just shown the door, and thus 1) don’t know what’s happening with the team any longer and 2) are, shall we say, motivated to paint what has already happened as the lashings out of a crazy person.

Not that we know whether Pera is a crazy person or not. It’s entirely possible that he is, but it’s entirely possible that he has a carefully thought-out master plan that will take the Grizzlies from good to great. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The onus is now on Pera to regain the trust of the fan base and prove that he knows what he’s doing. Trust takes time to build and no time at all to destroy. There’s every reason in the world to think the Grizzlies are transforming into the Knicks right before our eyes: an owner who wants to call shots he shouldn’t be calling and who lacks the self-awareness to know when to stand back and let the basketball people do their jobs. That works in New York, where the Knicks have a license to print money. That goes a long way to cover up inept management. It doesn’t work in a small market, where the team has to break even to be viable, and a big part of breaking even is careful management, both of the business side and the basketball side. The Grizzlies’ fan base is still young and relatively fragile. A detour back to the broken-foot-Pau days may not permanently damage that relationship between team and city, but it won’t help.

There are on-court things to consider, too. How does this affect Zach Randolph’s decision-making regarding his player option this summer? If Pera makes the wrong moves, will Marc Gasol want to stay around next summer? If the wrong head coach is brought in, will that coach be able to manage the personalities in this locker room? It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where the good things the Griz have built over the past five years are washed away by a bad hire or two.

It could work out, of course. But at the very least, the power structure of the Grizzlies’ unwieldy ownership group has been upended, and relationships there may be damaged beyond repair. A promising front office has been partially dismantled, and a promising young coach has been shown the door, possibly because a player or two didn’t like him (but then, we don’t really know what the players said in those secret season-ending interviews with Pera). At the very least, instability has been injected into a situation where it didn’t seem like there was any, and Pera has taken his basketball team from a smart situation set up for success to, well, who knows?

It was already going to be an important summer for the Grizzlies, but it was only supposed to be roster decisions that determined the future direction of the team. Now there is no direction visible, and all of us get to sit and watch and wait for the Grizzlies to be remade in some image. But whose will it be, and how will it shake out? That’s up to Robert Pera, for better or for worse.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Changes at the Flyer

The only way to make sense out of change is plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. — Alan Watts

A few weeks back, staff writer Hannah Sayle left the Flyer to take a managing editor position at Minneapolis City Pages. Hannah had been with us for four years. She was a good reporter, and we miss her humor and enthusiastic profanity at staff meetings.

A week or so after Hannah announced her departure, our film and music editor, Chris Herrington, accepted a job as entertainment editor at The Commercial Appeal. Chris was with the Flyer for 13 years, winning several national awards for music and film criticism, and in his spare time creating the best local Grizzlies blog, “Beyond the Arc.” He was a hard-working triple threat, and left us with some big shoes to fill. Literally.

Now, in this issue, senior editor and City Beat columnist John Branston bids farewell, succumbing at last to the lure of big bucks on the professional squash circuit. I kid. He’s just changing gears, trying other directions. Read his final column on page 10 to get the straight dope. John had hundreds of connections and sources, a “no bullshit” attitude, and an old-fashioned reporter’s dogged persistence. We’ll miss the hell out of him.

So what are we going to do? Keep dancing, that’s what.

We’ve hired SBNation Grizzlies blogger Kevin Lipe to handle our Grizzlies coverage. Kevin’s a gifted writer with a droll sense of humor. You can find him at BeyondtheArc, starting this week.

Greg Akers, who reviews films for us while not editing our sister business publication, MBQ, takes over this week as Flyer film and television editor. He’s wicked smart and funny and knows a lot more about movies and TV than you do.

Joe Boone, who’s written about music for the Flyer and other publications for years, moves into the music editor slot, bringing a couple decades of hands-on experience as a Memphis musician and studio hand. He will, he will rock you.

We’ve also hired a couple of new columnists, who will alternate weeks. They are former “I Love Memphis” blogger Kerry Crawford and Fox 13 newsman Les Smith. Les’ first column will run next week; Kerry’s, the week after. I can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with.

Finally, we have hired Toby Sells as our newest staff reporter. Toby’s been reporting for The Commercial Appeal for the past four years. Prior to that, he wrote for the Memphis Business Journal. He is an excellent writer with deep sources in city and county government, and he likes beer. Should be a good fit.

So, yeah. We’re plunging into change here at the Flyer, saying farewell to former colleagues and friends, and welcoming some fresh voices and new energy. As the great poet Sonny Bono once wrote, “the beat goes on.”

Care to dance?

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com