The worst thing we could do to the Grizzlies
Memphis is incredibly young and shockingly competent. But please don't rush the Grizzlies.
Good morning. This has been a sad, strange week. I hope you’re finding windows of happiness where you can. And I hope that in some small way, the newsletter has helped by linking to good essays and reflections on Kobe’s life or distracting you from the heartache with on-court developments. Thanks for being here. Let’s basketball.
The Memphis Grizzlies won their fourth straight game and moved to .500 on the season at 24-24. Vegas had the Grizzlies’ win total over-under line set around 26.5 in the preseason; Memphis will beat that before All-Star Weekend. In fact, Vegas had Memphis as the third worst team in the NBA (better than only the Hornets and Cavaliers) — something I would have absolutely agreed with.
The Grizzlies went to a total youth movement after trading Marc Gasol last season and Mike Conley this summer. They hired in Taylor Jenkins a young, mostly unknown coach who seemed to fit the Brett Brown, Kenny Atkinson, Lloyd Pierce mold: manage the rebuilding process on the court by developing young players and building a culture of hard work and accountability.
Instead, Jenkins has built the eighth best team in the Western Conference.
Coming into the season, teams might have been sniffing around the few veterans left on Memphis, like Jonas Valanciunas and Jae Crowder. Teams might have thought they could snag a player like Dillon Brooks eventually. But the Grizzlies aren’t likely to be selling when the playoffs are in view, and they shouldn’t be selling. Brooks is young and has developed really well — his deep shooting (40% on five attempts per game) is highly useful to the team. Valanciunas is still just 27 and has been a big part of most of Memphis’s wins. Crowder, the oldest active player at 29, actually hasn’t had great numbers, but he’s playing lots of minutes and the team is clicking. He’s the only active player Memphis should really consider trading for a prospect or a pick, or a veteran that offers a little more shooting.
What Memphis absolutely should not do is short-circuit their rebuild to chase the new expectations. And we as the media and fandom have a role in preventing that by not holding their success against them.
People are comparing this young Memphis team to a variety of favorite young surprise teams in the past. My concern is that these Grizzlies turn into the 2013-14 Phoenix Suns: a team everyone thought was tanking but turned out to be legitimately good, which then drank its own Kool-Aid and ruined everything. Memphis is different in that Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. — the two young stars in this enterprise — are younger and better than anyone that Phoenix team had (no offense to Goran Dragic). But there’s a similar risk: that Memphis thinks it can speed up the rebuild by adding more veterans (even “young veterans” a la the mid-2010s Pelicans) at the expense of developing the full complement of prospects.
This isn’t to say Memphis should not believe in itself. It’s just that expectations for a team this young and raw are at real risk of getting completely scrambled. It’s something to guard against. Not all development is linear or predictable. Just because Memphis is far more competent right now than anyone thought possible does not mean Memphis will be even better next year.
Trusting a process means not overreacting when results are different than expectations. Usually, this comes into play when teams fall short. But those guardrails need to be in place when a team overachieves, too. Ask the 2018-20 Sacramento Kings, another example of a team that exceeded expectations, drank its own Kool-Aid, went for veteran upgrades and promptly met the doom of regression to the mean.
This all comes to a head in the form of Andre Iguodala, who is on the Grizzlies’ roster but not with the team. Memphis has held out from buying out his contract in the interest of landing a first-round pick in a trade. There is some light murmuring that the Grizzlies ought to instead tell him to report to Memphis and join the playoff race. I think that would be a mistake. Memphis is doing just fine without the smart wing. He would help sand some of their roughest edges, for sure. And it would be a luxury to have him guard LeBron James in a prospective first-round playoff series.
But given that Iguodala hasn’t been around these players at all, and given that Memphis is unlikely to be competitive in the playoffs should the team make it that far, it makes sense to me to continue to try to trade him for a pick. Iguodala hasn’t been around to teach these young cubs the tricks of the trade, and we don’t know how game-ready he is. A pick can help Memphis for years. Iguodala’s knowledge could help Morant and Brandon Clarke and everyone, too. But the likelihood that outweighs the value of a pick at this point is slim. Had Iguodala been with the team from the start of the season or even November, maybe it’s different.
The Grizzlies are surprisingly awesome now and will be truly awesome in the future. But it’s not necessarily a smooth path from here to there, and everyone — the organization and the rest of us alike — should be patient. Don’t rush this. Time is on Memphis’s side.
GTFOH Marcus Morris
Elfrid Payton landed a cheap shot on Jae Crowder, and a tussle developed.
This is some real bulls—t from Marcus Morris after the game.
Equating “feminine” with “softness” in basketball in the year of our Ja 2020? Get out and don’t come back. This is retrograde nonsense that women athletes have proven to be retrograde nonsense for years. Smart men in the NBA have been trying to correct this misogny (Kobe Bryant made this a real project of his in recent years), and Marcus Morris trots it back out after his team got its tail chopped off by a 24-and-under squad?
And this all started because the Knicks got mad that the Grizzlies kept playing in garbage time. I know losing takes its toll, but sheesh.
Scores
Bulls 106, Pacers 115 (OT) — WELCOME BACK, VICTOR OLADIPO!
What a moment. This was Oladipo’s first game in more than a year since tearing his quad. He scored 9 points off the bench, and missed his other six tries from deep. But none of that matters in the end. Dipo forever. Go Pacers. This team has something.
Jazz 120, Spurs 127 — San Antonio controlled this game, not something easy to do against Utah, especially when Donovan Mitchell goes off for 30+. But DeMar DeRozan was unstoppable (38 points, 11-19 from the floor, 16-19 from the line) and the Spurs shot really well inside the arc. I mean, look at this 2007-ish replica shot chart from this game.
17-23 as a team on long twos? Wild! 8-9 at the time against Rudy Gobert’s team? Get out of here.
Rockets 112, Blazers 125 — Damian Lillard picked up his first career triple-double, coming against his nemesis Russell Westbrook (who put up 39 points on 16-29 shooting in the loss). Trevor Ariza is just what Portland ordered.
In the month of January, James Harden has averaged 28 points on an effective field goal percentage of 41.6%, which is really, really low. His numbers over the full season are still incredible, but this was the roughest regular season month for him since sometime in 2015-16.
Schedule
Six games on the schedule, including a TNT double-header and the first NBA game in L.A. since Kobe’s death. All times are Eastern and games are on League Pass unless otherwise noted.
All-Star reserves will be announced on TNT at 7.
Raptors at Cavaliers, 7
Hornets at Wizards, 7
Sixers at Hawks, 7:30
Warriors at Celtics, 8, TNT
Jazz at Nuggets, 10:30, TNT — big game
Kings at Clippers, 10:30
Links
Inside the Lakers’ first team meeting after Sunday’s tragedy.
Wonderful piece by Rob Mahoney on how the Pacers have become one of the most stable, consistently successful franchises in the NBA.
Mike Prada with the 32 most iconic basketball moments in Kobe’s career.
Good heavens: ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks report that the NBA has warned teams the salary cap could drop by $3 million off projections next year due to revenue loss from China’s reaction to Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong. The luxury tax threshold would also drop, which would mean potentially higher tax bills for pricey teams. They report China’s reaction to a brief call for justice for the people of Hong Kong from a single employee of a single NBA team has cost the league $150-200 million.
Shea Serrano on losing Dad Kobe.
Darius Soriano, one of my favorite Lakers writers ever, on searching for happiness amid tragedy.
Was Charles Barkley the worst stretch four ever?
Her Hoop Stats named its Mid-Major Player of the Year award after Becky Hammon. Cool!
High school phenom Paige Bueckers on the cover of SLAM.
Seth Wichkersham talked to the Colorado prosecutor from Kobe’s 2003 sexual assault case.
How the Kobe case affected the victim and her community.
ESPN’s re-air of Kobe’s final game on Monday was the most-watched T.V. program of the night.
Again, thank you for being here. Be excellent to each other. See you Friday.
Allegory of Prudence is a deep dish, but you nailed it.