Despite Recent Struggles, Memphis Grizzlies Belong in NBA Championship Mix
The NBA's championship chase seems to have narrowed considerably since the middle of the 2014-15 season. Back then, as many as a dozen teams looked like they could conceivably lay claim to the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Now, that number looks like something closer to three, with the Golden State Warriors (winners of 11 in a row), San Antonio Spurs (winners of six in a row and nine of 10) and Cleveland Cavaliers (30-7 since Jan. 15) leading the way.
The Memphis Grizzlies should be well-aware of how things are shaking out. Last week, they had to face all three of those late-season front-runners in succession.
The result? Three losses, by an average of 19.7 points per game.
Those defeats, while somewhat anomalous given the competition, appeared to fit a broader, more troubling pattern of a Memphis team that might not belong in the same class as those other title contenders.
Dig a bit deeper, though, and you'll find more than a few cues that point to plenty of grit and grind to come in the postseason.
Case in point: The Grizzlies' 100-92 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday night, during which they did what they do best—ride an impregnable defense to a much-needed victory.
They swarmed Dion Waiters (3-of-11 shooting), chased Anthony Morrow off the three-point line (1-of-6 from deep) and marginalized Russell Westbrook insofar as he can actually be marginalized; he finished with 18 points and seven assists, but he shot just 5-of-20 from the floor and committed five turnovers.
This win keeps the Grizzlies' hopes of snagging the West's second-best record alive. They are now in a tie with the Houston Rockets, with both squads sitting at 52-24 (though the Rockets currently have the tiebreaker).
More importantly, it reinforces the Grizzlies' status as title contenders. They're still here, still grinding and still part of the championship mix.
Predictable Misery in Memphis
Prior to Monday's win over the DeMarcus Cousins-less Sacramento Kings, the Grizzlies had gone an uneven 9-10 over a 19-game stretch.
During a recent appearance on The Chris Vernon Show (h/t Grizzly Bear Blues' Chris Faulkner), head coach Dave Joerger attributed Memphis' struggles to an overabundance of unwarranted confidence:
But Joerger was his team's own harbinger before that slump began. "We have the hardest schedule in the league, 10 back-to-backs," Joerger said before his Grizzlies sneaked past the Los Angeles Clippers, 90-87, in their second game after the All-Star break. "We've got a lot, a lot of work to do."
Those comments came on the second night of Memphis' first post-All-Star back-to-back. Since then, the Grizzlies have swept just one of seven two-evening sets—at Dallas and home against Portland on March 20-21. They've gone 5-7 across the other six pairs.
One of those seven losses, a 107-87 shortfall against the similarly slumping Washington Wizards, was the byproduct of Joerger's attempt to manage his team's fatigue, wrote NBA.com's David Aldridge:
"The Grizzlies insist that they're only the victim of a bad patch of the schedule...bad weather and the usual orneriness that comes with a long season. Everybody's been a little grumpy lately, including the coaches.
Which may explain, at least in part, why coach Dave Joerger decided to rest [Marc] Gasol, [Zach] Randolph and [Tony] Allen last Thursday in Washington, along with Conley -- who was legitimately laid up, in a walking boot after aggravating his sprained ankle Wednesday in Boston after stepping on Avery Bradley's foot.
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Those concerns are no longer so pressing for the Grizzlies. Mike Conley has been healthy enough to play in Memphis' last eight games.
Moreover, the Grizzlies' remaining schedule features just two more back-to-backs. The team had three full days between its win over the Kings on Monday and its Friday win over the Thunder. It'll have three more to work with following Saturday's showdown with the Washington Wizards.
That should give the Grizzlies time to address some of their lingering concerns. Chief among those is an offense that, despite its theoretical improvement, has fallen off the map.
According to NBA.com, the Grizzlies averaged a solid 104.6 points per 100 possessions before the All-Star break—a borderline top-10 mark. Since then, they've cratered to 25th in the league at 99.4 points/100, all while maintaining their elite defensive prowess (100.2 points/100 allowed across both swaths of the season).
Wingin' It
Memphis' struggles therein stem, in part, from a paucity of perimeter shooting and the lack of spacing that so often results. Per NBA.com, the Grizzlies' three-point percentage has actually improved slightly, from 34 percent pre-All-Star to 36.2 percent since. But the team's share of shots from beyond the arc—which already ranked among the bottom of the Association's barrel—has slipped to a paltry 17.9 percent.
Some of that perimeter shortfall can be traced to Courtney Lee's individual trials, spurred to some degree by injuries. Since the All-Star break, Lee, the Grizzlies' most reliable sharpshooter, has knocked down just 27.4 percent of his threes while chipping in a paltry 8.5 points per game.
With Lee scuffling, Joerger has sought out other means of spreading the floor. As Grantland's Zach Lowe detailed, the Grizzlies have turned to Jeff Green to serve as a small-ball power forward, with mixed results to this point:
"It looks great! But dig into the numbers and you’ll find that the Grizz are a combined minus-19 in the 110 minutes featuring the five small-ball lineups that have logged at least 10 minutes together, per NBA.com.
Most of the issues come on offense, which isn’t surprising, since Green in these units often plays alongside three complete non-shooters in Kosta Koufos, Tony Allen, and Nick Calathes.
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But Green, who has shot a respectable 38.8 percent from deep since landing in the River City in mid-January, isn't likely to get much run at the 4 with better personnel than those with whom he tends to share the floor when he slides up to a bigger position. Memphis is at its best when Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph are on the floor, and last anyone checked, neither of those guys is properly equipped to play the 3.
Joerger, though, is optimistic that a starting lineup with Green and Lee on the wings can thrive, even though a fivesome featuring those two alongside Gasol, Randolph and Conley has managed a measly 99.1 points/100 and been outscored by 3.8 points/100 on the season, per NBA.com. Faulkner shared Joerger's comments:
Such is the dilemma for Joerger at this juncture. Does he proceed into the great unknown, riding a group that, on paper, should be able to score and shoot well enough to keep opposing defenses honest? Or does he return to the tried-and-true tactic of slotting Tony Allen in place of either Lee or Green and take his chances with what would seem to be a slightly lower offensive ceiling?
Allen's lockdown defense alone may be enough to justify that recidivism. As Complex's Justin Sherman detailed:
"When defended by Allen, NBA players shoot 8.3 percent worse than they normally shoot (the biggest differential in the league). His steal percentage is 4.1 percent (the highest in the league).
With Allen on the floor, the Grizzlies outscore their opponents by 10.9 points per 100 possessions (most on the team). And with Allen off the court the Grizzlies are outscored by 3.5 points per 100 possessions (most on the team).
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Strange as it may seem, Memphis has benefited on both ends in 2014-15 with the normally offensively challenged Allen on the floor.
He has shot 49.5 percent from the field, including a respectable 34.5 percent from three. The Grizzlies' group with him in place of Green has poured in 110.1 points/100—which would represent an NBA-leading mark for a team, per NBA.com—while hitting a scorching-hot 46.2 percent of its three-point tries.
For now, though, Memphis doesn't have much choice in the matter. Allen has missed the team's last three games.
Allen, for his part, doesn't seem too concerned about his role. "The starting spot don’t mean nothing to me because we collectively do it together as a team anyway," Allen told Complex. "Don’t matter who started as long as we bond together and get the wins. It really don’t even matter."
Core Concerns
Allen's right: It doesn't matter, but for reasons beyond what he and Green bring to the table. In the grand scheme of things, the Grizzlies' wing rotation is small potatoes compared to the importance of the team's core trio of Gasol, Randolph and Conley.
Conley, in particular, hasn't been quite as effective overall since recovering from his latest ankle injury. Conley's assists (5.3) and turnovers (2.3) in his last seven games coming into Friday are right in line with his season averages, but his scoring (13.1 points) is down, despite shooting 50 percent from three therein.
The Grizzlies could certainly use more of Conley's marksmanship from here on out. Memphis' aforementioned lack of spacing has taken its toll on both Randolph and Gasol since the All-Star break. Both have suffered declines in the scoring and rebounding on which the Grizzlies have long leaned so heavily to succeed.
Now, Randolph will face the added challenge of fighting for real estate down low with a hyperextended elbow.
Gasol, on the other hand, seems to be battling some serious fatigue at the moment. Over his last eight games coming into Friday, the normally foul-averse big man has averaged four infractions per night, including back-to-back foul-outs in Detroit and Dallas. To Grizzly Bear Blues' Jonah Jordan, this is highly irregular and may indicate exhaustion on Gasol's part.
"He fouled out only once in all of last season, and I'm pretty sure that was an awfully officiated game," Jordan wrote. "He's not moving his feet like the Gasol we're used to. He's swiping at the ball much more, or just fouling so he doesn't get scored on."
Jordan connected Gasol's apparent lethargy on one end to his increased workload on the other. Indeed, Gasol is shooting more (13.3 times per game) and scoring more (17.5 points) than he ever has in the NBA. But Gasol, to his credit, isn't going to run and hide from his expanded responsibilities, as he told NBA.com in mid-March:
"Everybody goes through rough patches. It's just a matter of making it short. This one has gone longer than we wanted it to, and I'm not going to make any excuses. It starts with me offensively. I've got to impose my will a lot more. If I've got to break off plays for me to get the ball down there, then that's what I'm going to do.
Trust me, that's not how I think it will go. But if the team thinks that's the best thing for me to do, I'll do it. It's not the way to do it. But if we have to break plays, I'll break plays, understanding what we get out of this.
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River City Revival?
After all that, why should anyone believe the Grizzlies will get their act together and be a major factor in the Western Conference playoffs?
For one, the core of this club has been through its fair share of postseason battles. In the four previous playoffs in which the Gasol-Randolph-Conley-Allen collective has played, the Grizzlies have won four series and lost three others in seven games.
That includes last year's first-round ouster against OKC. Four of those games were decided by single digits, of which Memphis claimed three.
The Grizzlies are still great in the sorts of close games that are commonplace in the playoffs. Only the Brooklyn Nets and Washington Wizards have won more games decided by three points or fewer than have the Grizzlies, who are 8-3 in those circumstances.
That's when taking care of the ball on offense and playing stifling defense truly come in handy. Memphis' defense is still a top-five outfit, and its offense sports the eighth-lowest turnover rate in the league, per NBA.com. Not surprisingly, then, the Grizzlies have been the Association's fifth-best crunch-time team in terms of pace-adjusted point differential.
So long as Memphis can manufacture offense in the middle—which is what Gasol and Randolph tend to do down low—and get some occasional support from its perimeter shooters, its defense and ball security should be enough to keep things close against just about any opponent.
"Defense, chemistry and clicking with each other," Randolph told Grizzlies.com's Kevin Negron, when asked about the keys to his team's postseason hopes. "It’s a combination of things. Trust. We need to take what we’re doing now and build upon that."
As for whatever weariness remains from a brutal, 82-game gauntlet, the Grizzlies can kiss those pesky back-to-backs goodbye once the postseason starts later this month. That, in itself, should afford Memphis the time its players need to recover from game to game, not to mention from regular season to playoffs.
"Rested legs and fresh minds are better than the other," Joerger insisted a month-and-a-half ago. That's just as true now as it was then, if not more so, in light of all the Grizzlies have endured.
This isn't to suggest, though, that things will get any easier for Memphis as soon as the regular season wraps up. If current seedings hold, the Grizzlies will have to begin their quest for the franchise's first championship against the San Antonio Spurs, who swept them out of the Western Conference Finals two years ago and have looked rested and refreshed—just in time to defend their title.
There's plenty of pressure on the Grizzlies to get it done this year, too.
Gasol and his backup, Kosta Koufos, will both be free agents at season's end. Gasol, who is basically a Memphis native at this point, figures to stay. But if the Grizzlies fail to make a deep run and a more tantalizing opportunity to win arises elsewhere (as Tim Duncan's replacement in San Antonio?), there's no telling whether Gasol will see fit to stay in Tennessee over the long haul.
"We’ll see how it goes going forward; we’ll see what factors play into my decision," Gasol told Sheridan Hoops' Shlomo Sprung. "I haven’t put them down, written them down, I haven’t thought about them because there’s no time. It’s just not a process you can go through during the season."
Given all the ups and downs the Grizzlies have endured this season, Gasol's reluctance to look ahead to July is not only reasonable, but it's also crucial to his team. Memphis will need Gasol and his fellow Grizzlies firing on all cylinders come mid-April if they're to widen the field of championship contenders by at least one.
The current signs may not be so encouraging, but the requisite ingredients are there for the Grizzlies to grit-and-grind their way to the top.
NBA.com stats up to date through games on Thursday, April 2. Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. All quotes obtained first-hand unless otherwise noted. Follow him on Twitter.Follow @JoshMartinNBA
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