The sliding doors of the Cavaliers and Grizzlies

Cleveland hits a point Memphis was at recently, and takes the other path.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Reading, Eduoard Manet, 1865-73

One of the most intriguing storylines in recent years has been the Memphis Grizzlies’ decision to build from within despite holding a trunk full of assets — draft picks, young prospects — to make a swing for an All-Star veteran. After bottoming out in 2018 and 2019, the Grizzlies landed Ja Morant in the NBA Draft and have been on the upward swing ever since. The pandemic glitched out their impressive 2019-20 season, and they eventually fell in the league’s first play-in game in the bubble. In 2021, the Grizzlies won two play-in games to make the playoffs for the first time in the Morant era. Last season, they vaulted all the way to the No. 2 seed.

Along that meteoric rise, there have been opportunities and certainly suggestions that they leverage their own stock of draft picks and prospects to bring in a proper topline co-star for Morant. But Memphis has resisted completely, opting to leverage cap space to facilitate deals for other teams while adding more assets and maintaining flexibility that is quickly being spent to keep homegrown players. Memphis has all of its own firsts and a future Warriors first. Along with Morant, the Grizzlies have Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane, either of whom could be on an All-Star roster this season. Then there’s Ziaire Williams, Brandon Clarke, Dillon Brooks, Tyus Jones, Xavier Tillman. There’s David Roddy, who they picked up in a trade sending out the good De’Anthony Melton, who was valuable but a bit superfluous.

A No. 2 seed sending out a rotation player for a rookie picked in the 20s, just because they can.

This is not a normal path for a young-and-rising team, and because Memphis is on its own path — working to be sustainable, patient, flexible and cautious — it makes it for a pretty interest contrast with how many observers say teams like this, with young stars and a wide-open window should act.

That they should go for it, like the Cleveland Cavaliers just did.

The Cavaliers aren’t that dissimilar from the Grizzlies prior to last week, though a clear level of quality behind. Cleveland tanked out in the wake of LeBron James’ departure in 2018, picking up Darius Garland in the 2019 NBA Draft, flipping a future first to add Jarrett Allen in early 2021, then drafting another big in Evan Mobley in the summer of 2021. Cleveland did a few other things in the 2021 offseason with a nod toward trying to win games, trading Taurean Prince and a second for veteran Ricky Rubio and doing a sign-and-trade for Lauri Markkanen at the cost of a second and Larry Nance Jr.

All that stuff worked — mostly Garland improving like gangbusters, and JA and Mobley working beautifully together, and Rubio anchoring a great reserve unit until injury ended his season — and Cleveland popped into the playoff chase. Eventually, injuries cost too much. The Cavaliers this offseason were in a similar place to Memphis circa 2021. In fact, you can have a legitimate argument as to which trio you’d be better served to have on your roster going forward: Morant-JJJ-Bane vs. Garland-JA-Mobley? Morant’s the best of the bunch right now, though Mobley might have even more upside than him, and JA is a touch more proven than JJJ. It’s a pretty good debate.

Memphis has that and stayed patient. Cleveland has that and went for it: they traded Markkanen, a signed-and-traded Collin Sexton, three picks and two swaps for Donovan Mitchell. Memphis stayed climbing the stairs, maybe even stopped to peak out a window (this is a metaphor for the Melton-Roddy deal). Cleveland paid a big price to gain entry to the elevator.

But we don’t know where that elevator lets off, exactly. Mitchell is a very good but very particular sort of player, at least in the NBA context we have seen him in as a ball-dominant creator. How he fits sharing offensive generation duties with Garland, how he connects with JA (a major lob threat) and Mobley (a beautiful, budding creator in his own right), how he relates to J.B. Bickerstaff after coming up under the idiosyncratic Quin Snyder, how he performs defensively for a defense-skewed team, how he fits with potential starting small forwards Isaac Okoro and Caris LeVert. We don’t know where this elevator lets off, or how fast it travels. Probably toward the top of the building in a couple of years, maybe even the penthouse if all goes really well (including some continued resilience from Rubio and Kevin Love off the bench). Maybe the elevator gets stuck. Maybe the collective young Cavaliers weren’t really accelerating up the stairs as fast as it seemed, and Mitchell will only prevent their otherwise inevitable tumble back to the ground floor. We don’t know.

That’s what makes it exciting: the Cavaliers were on an exciting but normal rise, and this is some potential rocket fuel in the tank. You just hope the fuel mixes properly. Memphis, meanwhile, is on the steady march upward and is remaining completely patient. No jet packs, no elevators. Just plugging along, slaying rivals as they go.

Two interesting paths we get to watch unfold. Variety is a good spice, and it’s nice to have differing blueprints to assess and judge. Here’s to hoping both get all the way to their destinations at their pace, and their fans find joy in the journey from here.

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Schedule

Potential close-out games in the W. This could be Sue Bird’s final game. This is not a drill.

Sky at Sun, 8 PM ET, ESPN2 (CHI leads 2-1)
Aces at Storm, 10 PM ET, ESPN2 (LVA leads 2-1)

Critical day in EuroBasket with these games (plus more): France vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland vs. Czech Republic, Slovenia vs. Germany and Croatia vs. Italy. Lithuania needs to beat Hungary and for France to beat BiH to have a chance to move on.

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Links

M.A. Voelpel on where Game 3 of Aces-Storm ranks among all-time WNBA playoff games.

Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe reports that Knicks front office boss Leon Rose has hired disgraced former Wolves GM Gersson Rosas as a consultant AND deputized Rosas to negotiate a potential Donovan Mitchell deal with the Jazz. Washburn further reports that Justin Zanik, not Danny Ainge, was running the show on the Utah side. Intrigue!

Baxter Holmes for ESPN Insider tries to dig into the most annoyingly secretive ballot in sports: the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. ($) Lots of good stuff here. Peter Vecsey, a problematic former media member, comes out as having served as a Hall voter in the past. Dick Barnett is out here talking in the third person. Gary Payton was apparently a voter this year, and lobbied hard to get George Karl in. No comment from DeMarcus Cousins.

Furkan Korkmaz speaks on allegedly getting jumped at the arena in Tbilisi. Toko Shengelia, an injured Georgian you may remember from a brief career with the Nets, says the Turkish contingent started it. FIBA is investigating.

Apropos of nothing, remember when Nenad Krstic got arrested for throwing a chair in a fight between Serbia and Greece in a freaking warm-up tournament in 2010? Those old Byzantium feelings die hard.

Ben Golliver’s list of five young players ready for All-Star breakouts.

Ukrainian basketball is doing something special at EuroBasket. They have made the Round of 16 after beating Italy in Milan.

Old heads like me know the story of Lithuanian tie dye but this is a great primer for those unfamiliar.

Be excellent to each other.