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| Survival experts reccomend that if you ever encounter a Grizzly in the wild (or Memphis) you should pretend you are a basketball. He will carry you gently around in his paw. |
How the hell did this happen?
It's not an exaggeration to call the Grizzlies, in either of their incarnations, a laughing-stock. They've always stunk. Spectacularly and profoundly. In 16 seasons, the team has won 32% of it's games, won less than 25 games a whopping 10 times and, before this season, had a playoff record of 0-12. So, how does a team that:
- Drafted, with consecutive Top 10 picks, Bryant “Big County” Reeves, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, three straight point guards (Antonio Daniels, Mike Bibby, Steve Francis), Stromile Swift, Shane Battier & Drew Gooden;
- Saw only one of these picks (Battier, and that's being kind) become an impact player for its franchise. (Francis refused to play for them and was traded for a group of players that wouldn't have been good enough to form the senior-lead core of a Sweet Sixteen team. Abdur-Rahim put up hollow numbers. Bibby was more successful elsewhere. Reeves, Daniels, Swift and Gooden were all varying levels of busts.)
- Had only 2 All-Star players in its history;
- Traded away the pick that ultimately became the #2 pick in the LeBron-Melo-Wade-Bosh draft (had they won the lottery they would have kept the pick and the residents of Memphis would have been witnesses to more than just murders. Never have ping-pong balls been so cruel) for a 35-year old Otis Thorpe who played 47 games for a 19-win team before being traded for Bobby Hurley and Michael Smith (not that one, the other one). Sure the pick ended up being Darko, but that's Joe Dumars' cross to bear;
- Despite having the league's worst record, fell to four in the draft that saw Oden, Durant and Horford go 1-2-3;
- Traded the best player in franchise history for his fatter, less skilled brother; and
- Acquired its current best player straight up for a bench warmer ...
... end up as the most compelling team in the tournament? Are they an upstart that’s finally seeing the fruits of its planning pay off? Or is it simple an aberration, a product of dumb luck?
Sorry Grizzlies Fan
When we first started to write this, we had every intention of lauding Memphis for its ability to identify and develop talent. We had just witnessed Randolph/Gasol, who had quietly become one of the most potent front lines in basketball, absolutely decimate Duncan/McDyess/Blair, Mike Conley seemingly becoming a player worthy of a Top 5 pick, unheralded guys like Sam Young and Darrell Authur hitting basketball puberty and Shane Battier and Tony Allen doing Shane Battier and Tony Allen things and collectively leading the Grizz past the first round. And they were doing with while their "max-level” wing, Rudy Gay and rookie lottery pick, Xavier Henry (#12 overall), sat injured on the sidelines. They were doing it with defense, rebounding an hustle.
More often than not, when an NBA team goes from awful to relevant by lucking into a Franchise Guy/All-Timer (LeBron + Cleveland) or a fortuitous free agent signing of a Superstar (Amare + New York). The change doesn’t happen overnight, but you can see it coming. For Memphis it was different, much, more subtle as they improved from 24 to 40 to 46 wins with an odd cast of characters. How could this not be cause for celebration in the “Barbecued Pork Capital of the World?”
But as we looked closer, instead of finding evidence of sneaky, underrated decision making by their oft-criticized front office, we found what looked less like a product of intelligent design and more like a happy accident.
Three Levels of Bad Decision Making
We broke down the Grizzlies' decisions in acquiring the 9 players who make up their playoff rotation into 3 categories - Defensible, Highly Questionable and Indefensible.
Indefensible
Trading Pau Gasol to the Lakers for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, two guaranteed to be late first round picks and Marc Gasol. Sure, Marc has turned himself into a nice player, and they were certainly backed into a corner with having to trade Pau, but, by most accounts, they didn't even shop him around and got, what many believed, and still believe, was way below market value.
Signing Rudy Gay to a 5 year, $82 million contract a restricted free agent (meaning they could have matched any offer he received) and then watching the team advance in the playoffs without him. There really is nothing redeemable about that move. Gay is a nice player but he averages about 19 points and 6 boards and has a PER of 17, 58th in the league. Do you really have to lock that guy up for that much money?
Drafting Hasheem Thabeet #2 overall and passing on, among others, James Harden, Tyreke Evans, Ricky Rubio and Stephen Curry.
Highly Questionable
Bailing on Thabeet, your #2 overall pick and a player you no doubt drafted as a project, after a year and a half to reacquire Battier, a player who becomes a free agent after the year.
Drafting Kevin Love (#5 pick), a badly needed rebounding big man, and then trading him for O.J. Mayo (#3), an undersized 2-guard, only to sour on Mayo, relegate him to the bench and then try and fail to trade him.
Signing Tony Allen, a role-playing, defensive stopper with an erratic offensive game to a perennial lottery team.
Drafting Sam Young over DeJuan Blair. Apparently you don't need ACLs to board.
Trading for Zach Randolph and giving him a massive esxtension. It doesn't matter that they only gave up Quentin Richardson. More on Z-Bo later.
Defensible
Trading Shane Battier to Houston for Rudy Gay, the #9 overall pick. They're both good players, though getting rid of Battier the first time coincided with their fall from playoff contender to lottery fodder.
Drafting Mike Conley #4 overall. You can't fault them for losing the lottery and, while they passed on Noah, so did other teams (he went 9th) and, at the time, he wasn't considered anywhere near an elite prospect.
Drafting Darrell Arthur 27th overall.
But It All Worked, Didn't It?
It sure does look that way. But is making that many bad decisions really part of some master plan? Maybe they've discovered the new "Moneyball." Maybe they're the first team to sucessfully bring the "Constanza Theory", i.e. doing the opposite, to mainstream sports. More likely, they got lucky. Who wouldn't rather have had Pau Gasol, Kevin Love and Steph Curry instead of Mayo, Marc and Shane?
So What Now?
Are we seeing the budding of a new Western Conference contender to join the Thunder in filling the void being rapidly left by the Lakers and Spurs? Well, if they resign Gasol this offseason (he's restricted so they can match whatever offer the Knicks make) as we expect, they'll return most of their core guys while presumably adding the contributions of a healthy Gay and Henry. Sounds great, right?
Well, it all comes down to Zach Randolph, aka Z-Bo, their best player. If you lok just at his stats, you think we're crazy to say getting him, a 5 time 20-10 guy, for a bench player was questionable. But look at the other players to pull that feat off this year - Dwight Howard, Blaker Griffin and Kevin Love - and you should quickly understand that there's something very, very wrong with Zach. 4 players, 3 of which you'd have to give up half your roster to acquire and the other, he comes with a free tote bag. Whether its the off-court issues from being arrested for marijuana, sucker punching his teammate or, more recently, being implicated in a pot selling ring, or is on-court reputation for laziness and general disinterest in passing, he’s found a way to be a problem everywhere he's gone. Now, the Grizz have essentially tied the entire future of their franchise to this guy. Sure, there's undeniably something different about him this season (and to some extent last) but is he going to continue to show that type of matrity now that he's gotten himself his last, big contract? Despite all evidence to the contrary, we're supposed to believe he's now going to be a consistent, dominant, winning force for the next 5 years. That he's now a true Superstar or a Franchise Guy? We doubt it.
So enjoy it while you can before Randolph's implosion and the Grizzlies' short fall back to the top of the draft occurs. It's inevitable, you'll just have to stifle your laughter for a few years.
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