Tag: Rudy Gay

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Road Recap, Trade Chatter, Griz-Spurs Ticket Giveaway

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Rudy Gay

Road Recap: Grizzlies 94, Warriors 87: The Grizzlies completed a sweep of their three-game West Coast road in Oakland last night in what might be one of their better wins this season. Against a Warriors team that looks increasingly legitimate, the Grizzlies used good offense in the first half to build a lead and then overcame a rough third quarter for a major “grit-and-grind” effort down the stretch, scoring off turnovers and offensive rebounds hold on for the win. Lots of players made big plays late, with Jerryd Bayless’ break-starting block and Rudy Gay’s long corner jumper in the final two minutes standing out.

The win gave the Grizzlies a game-and-a-half lead over the Warriors for the fourth seed in the West and, more importantly, secured a tiebreaker over the Warriors on the season, making it a de facto 2.5 game lead.

The sweep was also impressive, even if previous opponents Sacramento and Phoenix aren’t very good. That hasn’t really mattered much for the Grizzlies. Over the past three-plus seasons, in which the Grizzlies have an overall winning record, they’d gone 15-29 on West Coast road trips (three games or more) only notching a winning records (2-1 each time) twice.

Rudy Trade Chatter: Trade chatter about Rudy Gay continues. I’ve got a column in this week’s paper on the subject, which you can read here. One thing I probably haven’t underscored enough in the two pieces I’ve written recently: I’m not campaigning for the team to trade Gay. I believe it’s become inevitable, though, with the only questions being when (this season or this summer) and for what, so I’ve moved on to those two questions. And while I’ve made the case that I think it’s possible to deal Gay this season and maintain the overall quality of the team — depending on the deal, obviously — I would also be perfectly happy to see the team stand pat and work on their roster/payroll issues this summer.

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Sports Sports Feature

Deal or No Deal?

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

With roughly six weeks to go before this season’s NBA trade deadline, the Memphis Grizzlies face an increasingly public decision: Deal now or deal later?

That’s the real decision, because, while there’s a good discussion to be had about who the Grizzlies should trade and when, it’s almost certain that a major deal of some kind will happen in 2013.

Right now, the Grizzlies’ player payroll is about $4 million over the league’s luxury tax line of $70.3 million, which currently comes with a dollar for dollar penalty. Next season, with the threshold unlikely to change much, they’ll be at $65 million with just seven players, and that’s without dealing with Tony Allen’s free agency or potential player options from Jerryd Bayless or Marreese Speights.

While standing pat and paying the tax this season is an option, doing so next year — when initial tax rates are set to rise by 50 percent under the league’s new collective bargaining agreement — has never really been one. And the current payroll trajectory makes it all but impossible to field a team without exceeding the tax.

That’s the reality the team’s new ownership inherited. And when a deal happens — whether in the next month or later this summer, whether it’s Rudy Gay or someone else — don’t let anyone tell you that Michael Heisley wouldn’t have done it. An eventual tax-driven trade became inevitable when Gay and Zach Randolph both signed their near-max extensions and Marc Gasol followed with his. The Grizzlies were always going to have to trade to clean up the payroll before next season, regardless of ownership.

When a deal happens, you can count out Gasol, whose contract is smaller than Gay’s or Randolph’s and whose value is more difficult to replicate. And count out Mike Conley, whose contract is so much smaller that dealing him wouldn’t really address the problem. Instead, this has to come down to a question of Gay or Randolph. You can make the case for dealing Randolph based on the four-to-six-year age difference between him and the other three players, but the piece to move will almost certainly be Gay, who is less central to the team’s style and identity and also likely to fetch better return.

There’s risk in dealing a player of Gay’s caliber in-season, with the Grizzlies sitting in fourth place in a brutally tough Western conference and only 3.5 games out of first. But is the risk overstated?

Gay is the Grizzlies’ leading scorer, but he has not been their best player this season. Gay’s Player Efficiency Rating this season — a snapshot measure of overall production that just happens to have been devised by new Grizzlies executive John Hollinger — is 15.0, exactly league average and fifth best on this team. His play has also not correlated strongly to team success. A clearer indicator has been Conley (14 points, 45% shooting, 2 turnovers in wins; 11 points, 34% shooting, 3.6 turnovers in losses) and three-point shooting overall (39% on 15 attempts in wins, 29% on 13.5 attempts in losses). Tuesday night in Sacramento, Gay struggled to 8 points on 2-10 shooting, and — with Conley playing well and three-pointers dropping — the team still had its best offensive performance in more than a month.

The return on any Gay trade, especially given the need to take back less in future salary obligations, is likely to surprise and disappoint many fans. But a deal that improves the team’s overall ball-handling and outside shooting — both weaknesses of Gay’s more slashing/post-up/transition-oriented game — around the Gasol/Randolph post foundation could improve an average offense without seriously impacting the team’s already elite defense and rebounding.

Given the team’s place in the playoff hunt, the Grizzlies can’t — or, at least, shouldn’t — deal in-season if they don’t legitimately consider it a lateral move and can’t sell that notion to fans. But a deal that meets that criteria while also cleaning up payroll may well be out there. If it is, expect a move.

Read more on a potential trade at Beyond the Arc, the Flyer‘s Grizzlies blog, at memphisflyer.com/blogs/beyondthearc.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

The Rudy Gay Trade Opus

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

On and off for the last week, I’ve been playing with ESPN.com’s NBA Trade Machine, looking for potential scenarios that might work in the event the Grizzlies decide to move Rudy Gay this season. I’ve been banking these ideas for use sometime closer to the trade deadline, waiting to see if there was a stronger indication that a deal was likely.

But, on midday Friday, Zach Lowe at Grantland.com cracked the shell on this topic, confirming what I already half knew and fully assumed — that the team was having at least exploratory talks on the subject of a potential Gay deal — and going through a bunch of possible deals.

Inevitable talk about an inevitable Rudy Gay trade has begun.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Inevitable talk about an inevitable Rudy Gay trade has begun.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of overlap between my scenarios and the ones Lowe put out: Anyone who understands the league and how it works and has a feel for what the Grizzlies want and can reasonably expect in return and then starts looking for potential deals is going to come up with a lot of the same stuff. But there are teams he takes seriously that I don’t (Boston) and teams he doesn’t include that I take very seriously (Phoenix).

Made-up trades are fun and, to a degree, instructive. But before that trade-machine chaos, let’s establish why this is an issue now and what the realistic parameters are:

Why a Deal is Probably Inevitable: There’s a good discussion to be had about who the Grizzlies should trade and when they should trade them — a discussion that’s almost certainly ongoing inside the Grizzlies’ front-office — but it’s almost certain that a major deal of some kind will happen in 2013.

Right now, the Grizzlies are about $4 million over the league’s luxury tax line, which is $70.3 million. In 2013-2014, with the line unlikely to change much, they’ll have $58.5 million just in the core four of Gay, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, and Mike Conley. Add in guaranteed deals for Quincy Pondexter, Darrell Arthur, and Tony Wroten and it’s over $65 million, and that’s without dealing with Tony Allen’s free agency or potential player options from Jerryd Bayless or Marreese Speights.

While standing pat and paying tax this season is an option, doing so next year — when initial tax rates are set to rise by 50% under the new collective bargaining agreement — has never really been one. And the current payroll trajectory makes it all but impossible to field a team without exceeding the tax.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Month to Month: The Grizzlies’ December Slide was Offensive.

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Mike Conleys trouble finishing at the rim was just one component of his December struggles.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Mike Conley’s trouble finishing at the rim was just one component of his December struggles.

The Grizzlies came out of November with the best record in the league and the best month — 12-1 — in franchise history. December was decidedly less kind, with the team stumbling to a 7-7 record on the month, including losing three of their past four games heading into tonight’s contest in Boston, and now clinging to fourth seed in the West instead of jockeying with the Thunder, Clippers, and Spurs for conference pole position.

What went wrong in December? It’s pretty easy to narrow down. The defense, led by Tony Allen’s shut-down work on the wing and Marc Gasol’s more subtle but perhaps more meaningful anchoring in the paint, has remained elite. After allowing only 96.2 points per 100 possessions in November, the team allowed only 96.6 in December, and currently ranks second in the NBA behind Indiana. (All specific stats per NBA.com. Team rankings per ESPN.com.) The rebounding has actually improved at both ends of the floor, with the team leading in the NBA in offensive rebound rate and tied for fifth overall.

Instead, the slide has been almost entirely the result of a massive regression — some might say correction — on the offensive end.

In November, the Grizzlies scored 105.6 points per 100 possessions and, at one point, were among the league’s top five offenses, drawing media attention across the league for their suddenly elite offense. In December, they’ve nose-dived to 96.3 points per 100 possessions and have now fallen to 20th in overall offensive efficiency, matching last season’s mediocrity.

Pretty much all the good things I wrote about the team’s offense here and here have reversed or declined since November gave way to December, as the offense has gotten slower and grown more stagnant — more reliant on isolation plays from top scorers Rudy Gay and Zach Randolph and on mid-range jumpers from nearly everyone.

The early dynamism — with offensive improvement built on more three-pointers, more free-throws, and a faster pace rather that simply better overall shooting — has mostly disappeared.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Nuggets 97, Grizzlies 92 — An Unsurprising Ending

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Rudy Gay

Non-Griz deadlines on Tuesday necessitates a briefer-than-usual notebook:

The Lead: Let’s be honest, both of these teams were due for this. The Grizzlies hadn’t lost a regular-season home game since March. The Nuggets are a good team who got off to a rougher than expected start. Regression to the mean collided at FedExForum tonight.

With the Grizzlies playing their third game in four nights, the Nuggets younger legs and superior depth made this a game. For the first time all season for the Grizzlies, the outcome came down in final-minutes execution, which did not go well for the Grizzlies.

For starters, after having big vs. small match-ups go their way in multiple games last week, lineup imbalance worked against the Grizzlies tonight. The Nuggets played starting small forward Danilo Gallinari as a stretch four for most of the fourth quarters while the Grizzlies played small and Gallinari was able to drive and shoot his way to 9 points in the quarter. After the game, Lionel Hollins second-guessed the decision to stay big.

And the Grizzlies twice committed turnovers coming out of timeouts in the last minute. The most galling of these came with the Grizzlies down 93-92 and 46 seconds left in the game. Despite having a size mismatch on the post — and, admittedly, Marc Gasol had turned the ball over on an offensive foul on the previous possession — the Grizzlies chose to isolate Rudy Gay, who was being covered by Andre Iguodala, one of the two or three best perimeter defenders in the league. Gay was bottled up, picked up his dribble, and lost it trying to pass out.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Game 8 Preview: Grizzlies vs. Knicks

Carmelo Anthony

  • Carmelo Anthony

Is this the biggest regular-season game in franchise history? Maybe it’s not as momentous for the home squad as games in the middle of a heated playoff race, but from a national perspective I can’t remember there ever being a regular-season Grizzlies game with this kind of anticipation.

After dispatching the then Western Conference-leading San Antonio Spurs 104-102 last night in Texas, the Knicks remained the NBA’s lone remaining unbeaten team at 6-0, and they face a Grizzlies team that now leads the West at 6-1. In addition to the league’s two best records, the Knicks and Grizzlies also boast the league’s two best point differentials. No-one knows what the future holds, but, for the moment, this is a match-up of the two best teams in the NBA.

And it’ll be showcased for the nation, with a late 8:30 tipoff on ESPN. Wednesday’s game against the Thunder drew the biggest local rating ever for a regular-season NBA game on ESPN. Given that it’s a Friday night and 18,000 potential viewers will be in the building instead, this one is unlikely to match that, but it should be a near-playoff-level event anyway.

I’ll be on the scene tonight and will be tweeting from by perch on media row and filing a postgame notebook afterward. But first, here are four things on my mind about Knicks-Grizzlies, because a game of this magnitude deserves a bonus

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Road Recap: Grizzlies 107, Thunder 97 — If You Don’t Know, Now You Know

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Rudy Gay went large against the Thunder.

A double-digit home win on Sunday against one of the reigning NBA Finalists, the Miami Heat, felt like a breakthrough, with a raft of national attention following in its wake. But this follow-up double-digit win over the the other reigning NBA Finalist felt like a confirmation: This year’s model of the Memphis Grizzlies is, until further notice, one of the very best teams in the NBA.

You could put a mild asterisk on the Heat win if you really wanted, based on Wayne Ellington’s career night. But there was nothing extraordinary about this one, unless you count Rudy Gay going head-to-head against one of the NBA’s two best players and coming away with something close to a draw. But Gay’s done that before. He did it on Sunday too.

Instead, this victory felt encouragingly ho-hum. Unlike most of the Thunder’s opponents so far this season, the Grizzlies got off to a slow start, struggling to get their new-and-improved offense in gear and escorting the Thunder to the foul line at the other end. But, as the game wore on, the Grizzlies’ — get this — superior overall talent wore the Thunder down, and the Grizzlies maintained a decent lead the whole second half.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Early Offense — A more diversified attack has the Grizzlies looking like a contender.

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Mike Conley has been the engine driving the Grizzlies offensive improvement.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Mike Conley has been the engine driving the Grizzlies’ offensive improvement.

Even before Sunday night’s spectacular blowout of the defending NBA champion Miami Heat moved the Grizzlies to 5-1 and cemented the best start in franchise history, the boys in Beale Street Blue were already showing signs of being a potentially elite team.

What was true before the opening tip on Sunday remained true when the final buzzer sounded: The Grizzlies were one of only two NBA teams — along with defending Western Conference champs and follow-up opponents the Oklahoma City Thunder — to rank among the league’s 10 best in offense, defense, and rebounding.

The rebounding is not a mystery. The return of Zach Randolph, who currently leads the league at 14.5 boards a game, has pretty well taken care of that. Neither is the defense, which has been a constant since the Grizzlies put Tony Allen and Marc Gasol on the floor together two seasons ago.

But the offensive improvement — way up, from 20th to 9th, per possession — is a little more surprising, especially with each of the team’s frontcourt stars — Randolph, Gasol, and leading scorer Rudy Gay — starting the season shooting below their career averages, and with last season’s top bench scorer, O.J. Mayo, enjoying a bit of a rebirth with the Dallas Mavericks. Rather than individual dominance, a lot of small team factors have conspired to make this year’s Griz squad deeper, more dynamic, and more efficient on the offensive end of the floor.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Road Recap: Grizzlies 108, Bucks 90

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Jerryd Bayless has rebounded from his pre-season shooting struggles.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Jerryd Bayless has rebounded from his pre-season shooting struggles.

The Grizzlies improved to 3-1 on the season with a third consecutive commanding win over a team with legitimate playoff aspirations. Marc Gasol continued his versatile, efficient excellence (14 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists on only 8 field-goal attempts). Zach Randolph continued to dominate on the boards (a game-high 13; he leads the league with a 15.3 average). Rudy Gay continued to find lots of shots (20) without quite connecting on enough of them (7).

But the real story last night was the performance of the Grizzlies’ bench. Marreese Speights went off for 18 points and 9 rebounds in only 22 minutes, while the perimeter trio of Jerryd Bayless, Wayne Ellington, and Quincy Pondexter combined to shoot 6-9 from long-range. Bayless has hit a three-pointer in every game so far (50% overall), which is encouraging after his poor shooting in the preseason. Assuming Pondexter’s development into a viable three-point shooter was one of the reasons I projected the Grizzlies to be a slightly better overall three-point shooting team even after losing O.J. Mayo, and the early returns are good, as he’s 5-9 from long-range through four games. Ellington hasn’t quite found his groove yet (3-9), but his sufficient defense and overall strong effort level has made him a general plus as a deep reserve.

The cherry on top of this one was three uneventful garbage-time debut minutes for rookie Tony Wroten Jr.

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Cover Feature News

Playoff Bound?

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

As streamers fell and the Gap Band played at FedExForum Monday night, the Memphis Grizzlies, having just registered an exciting 100-97 win over the Orlando Magic, found themselves somewhere they haven’t been since October — with a winning record — and yet somewhere they expected to be all along — in the thick of the NBA playoff race.

As they enter the final two-and-a-half months of the season, the Grizzlies are well positioned for the playoff run promised by owner Michael Heisley last summer. But whether the team could get to this point had been in doubt for much of this surprising, interesting, and wildly inconsistent season.

After a 4-4 start, the Grizzlies went on a five-game losing streak in mid-November. Hosting Lebron James and the Miami Heat on November 20th, with the team showing signs of internal disarray and a 4-10 start looming, Rudy Gay drove to the baseline in the final seconds and hit a buzzer-beating jumper over James.

It wasn’t just a game winner. It may well have been a season saver. It was at that moment that the Grizzlies’ 2010-2011 playoff campaign regained a pulse, the start of a maddening, Sisyphean journey back to contention that has seen the Grizzlies get to within two games of .500 on five separate occasions, only to slip back again each time, and to get to within one game of .500 last week only to lose a 16-point lead to the lowly New Jersey Nets in the next game.

But, over the past few days, the Grizzlies finally pushed that rock to the top of the hill — overcoming a 21-point second-half deficit to steal a road win against the Philadelphia 76ers and then coming home the next night to rough up an overmatched Washington Wizards team.

“It’s nice to be back at .500. We’ve been scratching and clawing. Stuttering and starting and stuttering,” coach Lionel Hollins said after the Wizards game, describing the team’s season to this point.

And Monday night, against one of the league’s elite teams, with O.J. Mayo suspended and top scorers Zach Randolph and Rudy Gay having subpar games, Hollins got contributions from all over to finally get his team back in the black: point guard Mike Conley’s first career 20-plus point and 10-plus assist game; center Marc Gasol playing the Magic’s Dwight Howard, the league’s best center, close to even; reserves Tony Allen and Darrell Arthur making timely plays.

At 25-24, the Grizzlies are actually a game behind where they were at this point a season ago. But that was a different Western Conference, one in which it took 50 wins to qualify for the playoffs. With the middle of the West sagging a bit this season, a post-season birth is not likely to come with so steep a price tag. At the moment, that 25-24 record is good for ninth place, only one game behind the Portland Trailblazers for the conference’s last playoff spot.

And this is a different Grizzlies team, one deeper, tougher, and more experienced than last year’s model. Plagued with arguably the worst bench in the NBA, the 2009-2010 Grizzlies weren’t set up to sustain their level of play as the season wore on. This year, with more functional depth and a more favorable late-season schedule, the end game should play out differently.

The result should bring the Grizzlies and their fans, if not their first playoff berth since 2006, at least a legitimate post-season race into the final weeks of the season.

Larry Kuzniewski

supreme Marc Gasol.

At the outset of the season, the Grizzlies’ hopes for a playoff run hinged on repeating what went right last season — namely, an effective power game built around the frontcourt duo of Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol and strong overall play from their returning starting five — while improving on the team’s two primary problem areas: defense and depth.

That power game stumbled out of the gate. Gasol missed opening night with a preseason ankle injury, and Randolph joined him on the sidelines early in that game with a bruised tailbone, leading to a depressing double-digit home loss to the Atlanta Hawks to start the season.

But the duo has rounded into a reasonable facsimile of last season’s dominance. The Grizzlies once again lead the NBA in points in the paint. They won’t be able to duplicate last season’s league-best offensive rebounding, but after a rough start they are sixth and rising in that category. And Randolph and Gasol are one of only two power forward/center combos averaging more than 30 points and 20 rebounds a game. (The other is Minnesota’s Kevin Love and Darko Milicic, where Love carries most of the weight.)

After playing last summer for the Spanish national team and coming back perhaps too soon from his pre-season ankle sprain, it’s taken Gasol longer to round into shape. On the season, his defense, rebounding, and scoring efficiency have all been below last season’s level. But the recent signs have been encouraging. Gasol has scored in double digits in six consecutive games, his blocked-shot numbers have been on the rise, and he just put up 19 points and 8 rebounds against the league’s best defensive center.

As for Randolph, he’s overcome his season-opening injury to be as monstrous a scoring and rebounding machine as he’s ever been. Randolph’s rebound rate this season is a career high. He’s set a franchise record with 14 consecutive double-doubles. And he’s been named the Western Conference Player of the Week twice.

Joining Randolph as a co-alpha dog has been Rudy Gay, who hasn’t made “the leap” exactly, but he has responded well to his controversial off-season contract extension with modest across-the-board improvements and by bolstering his reputation as a prime late-game option with three game-winning or overtime-forcing shots. But Gay’s most significant improvements have not been related to scoring but instead have come in his areas of greatest weakness: playmaking and defense. Gay has become a more willing and effective passer, and his assist rate, while still middling, is the highest of his career. Defensively, his block and steal averages are both career highs, but he’s also just been more solid overall. After being only moderately better defensively when Gay was on the floor last season, the Grizzlies have been significantly better defensively with Gay this season.

Much like Gay, point guard Mike Conley has responded to his widely criticized summer contract extension with solid rather than dramatic improvement. And, like Gay, his most important advances haven’t come from scoring. Instead, Conley has solidified himself as a legitimate starter with better consistency and ball control that has united a career-high assist rate with a career-low turnover rate. (Though Conley’s usually sure hand seems to get a little wobbly in the clutch.)

The one real chink in a starting unit that was among the league’s best last season has been shooting guard O.J. Mayo, whose tumultuous season has included a move to the bench, a black eye at the hands of teammate Tony Allen after complaining about a gambling debt, and, most recently, a 10-game suspension for a failed drug test that found the banned supplement DHEA (available in various over-the-counter products) in his system. But even when Mayo has played, he’s been far less effective on both ends of the floor, with a huge drop in his shooting accuracy and — according to both the eye and the numbers — some serious problems on the defensive end.

With less scoring production from a revolving-door shooting guard rotation and a rebounding and shooting-percentage decline from Gasol as prime culprits, the Grizzlies offense has slipped from 17th a year ago to 21st so far this season. But if the team’s returning core and power offense has fallen off slightly, that decline has been more than offset by vastly improved team defense and much better depth — advances rooted in the same two “new” additions, Allen and Darrell Arthur.

A defensive specialist for the champion Boston Celtics, Allen signed a free-agent contract with the Grizzlies over the summer with an eye on a bigger role that, frankly, his limited offensive skills didn’t warrant. This desire put Allen at odds with his coach, who also had to get comfortable with not only Allen’s rather unconventional game but also his equally unusual personality.

For the first month and a half, it wasn’t really working. Allen was averaging about 10 minutes a game, with a handful of “did not play – coach’s decision” designations by his name. Allen’s demeanor was sullen and disappointed. But, gradually, Allen came to accept his role, Hollins grew more comfortable with him, and Allen finally carved a regular role in the team’s rotation. And then we found out what an engaged Tony Allen is like: A wildly entertaining player both on the floor and on the bench, where he became perhaps the league’s most vocal and demonstrative cheerleader. A chaotic, destructive defender whose ferocity rubs off on teammates. An unpredictable “trick or treat” contributor who has fans alternately hiding their eyes and raising their arms.

Allen is the most unusual Grizzlies player since Bo Outlaw. His ability to jump into passing lanes to generate steals while still recovering to contain his man might be unparalleled league-wide. He has a knack for deft passes, swooping blocks, and thunderous dunks. He also has a knack for wobbly dribbling, missed lay-ups, dead-on-arrival jumpshots, and curious on-court decisions. He’s the most entertainingly volatile Grizzlies player since Jason Williams, except Allen’s energy is more positive. This is a guy who beat up a teammate over a gambling debt and still became a folk hero among fans and a rallying point for teammates.

Larry Kuzniewski

Grizzlies co-alpha dog Rudy Gay

But the former Griz player Allen evokes the most is probably James Posey, from the team’s first playoff run in the 2003-2004 season, another tough wing defender who came to town on a modest free-agent deal and changed the defensive tone of the team.

Among rotation players, Allen leads the league in steals per minute, and his ball-hawking style has inspired teammates, with Gay, Conley, and Sam Young also excelling in this area. As a team, the Grizzlies lead the league in both steals and opponent turnovers, and this has helped instigate a dramatic defensive improvement, with the team leaping from 23rd in defensive efficiency last season to 11th this season.

The Grizzlies’ ability to take the ball from opponents and take care of it for themselves has been one of the biggest positive changes this season, going from a +1 turnover differential last season (21st in the league) to -2.3 this season (second only to the Portland Trailblazers). Essentially, while the Grizzlies haven’t been quite as effective with their scoring opportunities this season, the improved turnover differential and strong offensive rebounding have made up in quantity what the team’s lacked in quality.

And the team’s previously deplorable depth has probably advanced as much as the defense, with Allen and an improved Arthur giving the team two high-quality reserves — or two more than the team had a year ago.

After being thrown to the wolves as an overmatched rookie starter and then losing most of his second season to injury, Arthur has emerged this season as the player the Grizzlies always hoped he could be: A quick, active athlete, Arthur has graded out well defensively. Offensively, he’s proven a deft scorer both on mid-range jumpers and around the hoop. On an isolation-heavy team, Arthur is especially helpful in that he thrives playing off others with catch-and-shoot or catch-and-finish scores.

Led by Allen and Arthur, and with reasonable contributions from second-year swingman Sam Young and rookie point guard Greivis Vasquez, the Grizzlies have decent depth for the first time in three seasons. Last season, the Grizzlies were +7.3 per 48 minutes with their primary lineup and -6.7 without them. This season, the primary lineup (Conley-Mayo-Gay-Randolph-Gasol) has fallen off slightly (+4.9), but the team’s plus/minus is only barely negative with other lineups, and lineups where Allen or Young have replaced Mayo have been very positive.

Overall, the Grizzlies on-court performance this season has been better than its record. Point differential is commonly considered a better indicator of future performance than win-loss record. By that measure, the Grizzlies, at +1.1, have been better than two teams ahead of them in the standings: the 25-22 Portland Trailblazers (+0.4) and even the 29-20 Utah Jazz (+0.3). And considering the Grizzlies have put up a positive point differential against what has been a difficult, road-heavy early schedule, the indicators are very positive going forward.

ESPN.com‘s John Hollinger does daily NBA power rankings based on how well teams have faired against their schedules and has the Grizzlies ranked 10th after the win over the Magic. By applying past performance against the strength of a team’s remaining schedule, Hollinger also does daily playoff odds, which have the Grizzlies with a 57.2 percent chance at making the playoffs, better than Portland’s 42.4 percent.

But if the metrics are so strong for the Grizzlies, why have they been fighting uphill all season to get to their current 25-24 record? They’ve struggled some in close games, improving to 7-9 in games decided by three or less or in overtime with Monday’s win over Orlando, and have gone 1-4 in overtime games. Among these are three of the most unlikely losses Griz fans have ever seen: Losing on a fullcourt buzzer beater in Sacramento, on a stolen inbounds pass at New Orleans, and on a fluky series of miscues at Phoenix.

The team has also been inconsistent, manifested in a competitive 7-7 record (with two overtime losses) against the league’s eight best teams and a modest 8-5 record against the league’s eight worst teams.

Another issue, as Hollins acknowledged after the win over Orlando, is that it’s taken awhile for this team to come together — and given Mayo’s current suspension and uncertainty over his status approaching the NBA’s trade deadline, questions still remain. The Grizzlies spent a month of the season playing lackluster — and since jettisoned — veteran guard Acie Law and not playing Allen much. Four different players have started at least seven games at scoring guard.

But, in winning six of their past seven games to get above .500, the Grizzlies have gotten in a groove. And the remaining schedule is conducive to maintaining momentum. After their road-heavy start, the Grizzlies will play more home games the rest of the season than any other Western Conference team. Having taken five road trips of three games or more already, the Grizzlies don’t have a trip longer than two games remaining.

An optimistic but also realistic look at what this team has done and the way the remaining schedule plays out suggests this: If Gasol continues to come around as a physical presence, the team can sort out its complicated wing rotation in a satisfactory manner, and they can avoid major injury, fans can get ready for a return of playoff basketball in Memphis this April.