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11-2
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If NBA teams were condiments, the Grizzlies have stood on the shelf like a freshly opened bottle of ketchup for the past several years. It’s taken a whole lot of shaking and banging on the bottle to get anything out of them.
But here are the Grizzlies, six weeks into the season, flowing right along. Watch the ball move from Mike Conley at the top of the key to Rudy Gay on the wing to Zach Randolph down low for a bucket. Watch Randolph find his path to the hoop blocked and he’ll slip a neat little pass to Marc Gasol. Or Z-Bo will kick it back out to Gay without hesitation.
“I think,” said Conley, “a lot of guys who’ve been in this locker room for a while now just got tired of wasting years.”
It’s happened before in Memphis, most notably in the 2011 playoffs when the Grizzlies shocked the basketball world as a No. 8 seed, eliminating the No. 1-seeded Spurs and pushing a second round series with the Thunder to Game 7.
It usually happens in Memphis sometime well into the thick of the schedule, after the Grizzlies have laid down the shovels when they’ve tired from digging a hole.
Two seasons ago, the Grizzlies were fortunate just to make the playoffs. They were stumbling along with a 19-23 record on Jan. 19 until closing with a 27-13 kick to grab that No. 8 spot.
Last season, after they’d been picked by many to be a legitimate contender. Again they staggered at the beginning, sitting at just 12-13 on Feb. 6 until finishing 29-12 to claim the No. 4 seed, but were upset by the Clippers in the first round.
“We’ve grown mentally,” Conley said. “We understand what it takes to beat good teams and we’re applying that now and not waiting until February to start rolling. We just got our minds ready for the first game, the first part of the season, as opposed to working ourselves up to that.”
It’s easy to say that the Grizzlies have been able to pull it together this season simply because they’re all healthy. Two seasons ago, Gay missed the final 1 1/2 months of the regular season and playoffs with a dislocated shoulder. Last season, they lost Randolph to torn ligaments in the first week of the abbreviated post-lockout season and he missed 38 games.
However, it’s been more than just the good fortune of good health that has these Grizzlies looking and playing different. There’s almost a barbershop quartet’s harmony that has replaced the usual Memphis blues.
“I tell everybody it’s been a different camaraderie, a different spirit among the team in the locker room that has helped us,” said coach Lionel Hollins.
“The communication is good. The help is good. I just think it’s a conscious decision by players to embrace each other and play for each other.”
Nobody talks about it openly, but the departure of guard O.J. Mayo has made the Grizzlies’ offense and locker room happier places. For four seasons, Mayo could never find a comfortable or effective place as a starter or reserve. He also made the locker room a cliquish place that often froze out Gay and made it tougher for Conley to be the unifying quarterback and leader.
When the Grizzlies finally just let Mayo walk as a free agent last summer, it was addition by subtraction, even if one of the weak links in their attack is still the lack of reliable outside shooter.
Randolph is showing few effects from his knee surgery and is once more a ferocious inside force, rebounding (13.3 per game) at a higher clip than ever. Gasol’s scoring (15.8 ppg) and assists (4.4 apg) are both career highs. Though his shooting percentage is down, Gay (18.6 ppg, 6.0 rpg) keeps buzzing around the numbers that have had him on the verge of an All-Star berth.
It is Conley who has taken the biggest step up, not just in stats but attitude. He is clearly running things on offense and the muscle he’s packed on is making him less apt to get pushed around on defense.
“Mike’s had this in him,” Hollins said. “That’s why he was the No. 4 pick in the draft (2007). He’s been working and building toward this for several years.”
Of course, the entire construction project has taken place under Hollins, who returned for his third stint as coach in January 2009 and has lifted the Grizzlies to unseen playoff heights, including that inaugural series win over San Antonio. The loss to L.A. notwithstanding, he has forced them into the elite level conversation in the Western Conference, which makes the fact that he has not been offered a contract extension both puzzling and foolish.
It is safe to say that Hollins is not happy with the situation and it’s odd coming at a time when there is so much comity around the team. Outgoing owner Michael Heisley said he didn’t want to burden the new buyer with more debt and Robert Pera, head of the new ownership group, has indicated he wants to see how things play out.
At their current pace, things could play out quite well for the Grizzlies. They’ve beaten the Thunder in OKC, whipped the defending NBA champion Heat, handed the previously unbeaten Knicks their first loss of the season and took the Spurs to overtime in San Antonio on the second game of a back-to-back.
At 13-3 heading into a back-to-back weekend set at New Orleans and home against Atlanta, this is the latest point in franchise history that Grizzlies have held the best record in the league.
“We’re another year older and we’re putting all the experience we have to good use,” Gay said. “It’s not about feeling our way along anymore and getting together later. We know what it takes. So our attitude has been, well, why wait?”
30 on TA head Friday
Rudy Gay trade scenarios riddled with complications
By Rob Mahoney
Let’s clear up one thing off the top: There is no report or rumor out there stating that the Grizzlies want to trade Rudy Gay — merely the acknowledgement (via Grantland’s Zach Lowe, Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, and ESPN.com’s Marc Stein) that Memphis is entertaining the thought. Gay is a fine player, and one whose strengths and weaknesses Memphis understands completely. So it makes all kinds of basketball sense for the Grizzlies to hold on to their best wing player to make a run — no matter how slim the odds — at a title, but unfortunately NBA teams don’t have the advantage of operating solely within a framework of basketball logic.
There are plenty of other factors to consider, and chief among them are the financial realities of keeping a player like Gay (who is owed $37.2 million over the next two seasons after this one) on the books with so many other costly pieces already in place. Gay’s massive contract is very much of a different time, both in terms of salary standards (as it predates the current collective bargaining agreement) and the Grizzlies’ specific needs. Memphis gifted Gay such a lucrative deal on the heels of its first winning season in four years, and overpaid on the basis of his potential, that a luxury tax-induced headache was inevitable for the team’s new ownership and management. Gay’s salary is by no means empty, but as the least crucial player in Memphis’ starting lineup, he holds an auspicious post as theoretically the most movable commodity.
I say “theoretically” because the very reason Gay has become a burden to the Grizzlies is precisely what makes moving him so tricky. Gay is making $16.5 million this season, and he stands to erase the future cap room of any team to which he’s dealt. Trade rules also require that another team line up salary to meet a pretty specific range: large enough to qualify as a legal trade, but small enough to absolve the Grizzlies of their $4 million tax burden. All of this must be accomplished without acquiring any equivalent salaries or redundant players, and in a way that could be appealing to two (if not more) teams.
The trade machine may make managing an NBA team seem easy, but the guidelines in play here vastly limit the realistic trade partners, not to mention pare the return in virtually every potential deal. Making a trade for tax-motivated purposes rarely yields the same payoff as a strict talent-for-talent swap. It would be one thing if Memphis were looking to move Gay for better depth or a better fit, but the one-sided financial nature of any swap for Gay basically assures that Memphis will be in some way shortchanged.
That makes many of the most realistic potential deals less than enticing, especially when Memphis could, in theory, clear $4 million in salary through other means. The Grizzlies could deal some combination of Marreese Speights, Tony Wroten, Quincy Pondexter or Wayne Ellington to help clear the tax line at minimal cost to their rotation, and no one should be surprised if that winds up being the superior option to trading Gay.
There’s already a report floating around (courtesy of ESPN Radio in Minneapolis) that the Minnesota Timberwolves turned down a trade offer involving Gay almost immediately, and I’d doubt very much if this were the last offer reported as refused by either the Grizzlies or a potential trade partner. Memphis is checking the market, but that doesn’t mean they’re inclined to give away one of their best players.
The Grizzlies might need to get creative in coordinating a multi-team deal that could appease the interests of several parties with somewhat clashing interests. Sacramento, Toronto, Golden State, Phoenix and Minnesota have supposedly expressed interest in acquiring Gay, but none — even the Wolves — are a perfectly clean match; we could concoct deals that get both the Grizzlies and their trade partner some semblance of what they want, but nothing so compelling as to get all parties to sign on the dotted line. Adding more teams to the mix only creates more needs and more variables, but perhaps it could also introduce much-needed flexibility. Jared Dudley and draft picks won’t get a deal done, but an extra ball-handler from a third team might. Marcus Thornton strikes me as a piece that the Grizzlies may find interesting, and perhaps a third team could supply salary filler more interesting than Francisco Garcia. There are endless possibilities along these same lines, which is more than we can say of the more limited pool of potential acquisitions should Memphis only work one-on-one deals.
That’s supposing the Grizz are really all that interested in dealing Gay at all. The general vibe seems to indicate that they’ll listen to offers and pitch their own on occasion, but this is by no means a player that has to be moved. As Zach Lowe mentioned in his piece on this subject for Grantland, Memphis is still a team on the very fringes of the title discussion — a place that many basketball thinkers and general managers feel is sufficient enough to hold course. They’d be a long shot to even make it out of the West, but let’s not overlook how much damage this team is doling out if it finds an offensive groove or hits the right matchups. Those preferable top-tier opponents are dwindling with the Spurs, Clippers, and Thunder looking better and better, but teams this good typically need to be coaxed into such a significant trade, even with a tax penalty looming.
The bottom line is this: There’s a world of difference between expressing a willingness to trade a player and actually getting a deal done, especially with manageable tax-dodging alternatives in Memphis’ back pocket. The long-term finances would need some additional pruning, but there’s no rush to liquidate a player as valued as Gay before the deadline, and no motivation for the Grizz to take anything less than what they deem to be acceptable value. We can fully expect the rumor mill to continue spinning, and for all manner of potential deals to be brought to the conversation. But Gay, even while somewhat inessential on a Memphis team that doesn’t always know what to do with him, has no reason yet to pack his bags. Rumors of his availability made waves because a very good team is open to dealing a named player, but the hurdles inherent to trading him away still make the cobbling together of a perfectly balanced deal a bit of a long shot.
Good win tonight. But why didn't memphis foul tp9 before he get the ball up the court in those dying seconds of the 4th