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Saturday 28 December 2019 00:56, UK
The Grit'N'Grind era is dead but, thanks to a deep young roster led by Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson and Brandon Clarke, the Memphis Grizzlies have serious hope for the future.
Success is relative, but it does not need to be absolute to be legitimate.
After a barren first decade of their existence, the Memphis Grizzlies achieved some measure of success over the past few seasons, making the playoffs for seven consecutive years between 2010 and 2017.
Along the way, they won four playoff series and made one run to the Western Conference Finals. Having previously never won a postseason series and routinely finishing at the very bottom of their conference, this stretch became a pleasing new norm.
Everything ends eventually, or else it would not end. The injury to Mike Conley early in the 2017-18 season was the first big step in what proved to be a terminal decline of that period of Grizzlies history, affectionately known as Grit'N'Grind. Coming on the heels of the highly unsuccessful free agency signing of Chandler Parsons that spent up all the money available to improve the team, plus the unavoidable aging of Tony Allen and Zach Randolph, and the wheels came off after that point.
With both Conley and Marc Gasol traded in 2019, the Grit'N'Grind era was over.
It is, however, a design feature of the NBA that going from the middle of the pack (where the final few iterations of that team had been) all the way to the bottom provides a better springboard for shooting back upwards then papering over the cracks could ever do. With this in mind, consecutive top-five draft picks in the forms of Jackson Jr and Morant in back-to-back seasons, paired with the insanely good value pick-up of Clarke in this year's edition as well, brought the Grizzlies serious hope for the future and, potentially, a very quick turnaround.
It is not just those three, either. The Grizzlies have the second-youngest roster in the NBA, behind only the Phoenix Suns, and this number is being artificially dragged upwards by the presence of Andre Iguodala on the bench (yet to play for the team, and who may never play for the team), as well as the relative veteran statuses of Jae Crowder, Jonas Valanciunas and Solomon Hill. All but Valanciunas from that list have expiring contracts, and he might be a realistic candidate to be on the move as well.
Having an offensive dynamo at the point guard position like Morant - the closest thing to Russell Westbrook since Russell Westbrook - has not yet made the Grizzlies into a good offensive team. Despite scoring the highest percentage of total points in the paint of any team in the league, they have rarely gotten to the free throw line and are only average outside the three-point line, key reasons behind their ranking of 22nd in the league in offensive rating.
The pace is high, as it should be, yet Morant's high turnover numbers, a severe lack of offensive rebounding from anybody other than Valanciunas, Crowder's insistence on shooting jumpers with any slight slither of space from outside and Dillon Brooks' tendency to attack the rim with his eyes closed combine to undercut the athleticism replete on the team that, once harnessed, should lead to so many highly efficient offensive possessions.
Nevertheless, the pieces for an optimistic future are in place. Morant is a whirlwind, one of the better athletes in existence at the point guard position, a tremendous attacker of the rim and a genuinely incisive passer.
Jackson Jr's awkward jump shot release does not look as though it could ever offer the much-hallowed high-volume high-efficiency shooting threat, but with a team-high 80 made three-pointers already this season at a fraction above 40 per cent, it seems as though it already does.
Clarke's ability to seemingly always be open to dunk everything combined with his own promising-looking outside game is a welcome complement to that. And although players of his ilk are generally being moved away from, Valanciunas still scores plenty of points very efficiently.
Aided by contributions from the bench by a resurgent Grayson Allen and the spotty yet determined De'Anthony Melton, plus the volume scoring of Brooks, and the potential for growth offensively can be seen.
Relative success though can still have relative disappointments. And this is what the team as a whole has been on defense.
Jackson Jr's ability to both guard opposing bigs in space while also being an excellent shot-blocker at the rim is a virtue, but, in pairing him with Valanciunas who can only do the latter, that flexibility is lost. In theory, Jackson Jr's ability to do this along with Clarke's ability to stifle every area of the court should be a dominant pairing upfront. In practice, they just do not rebound enough.
The Grizzlies have expressly tried to add plus-defensive players in every position. Crowder has a reputation for being a junkyard dog, while Kyle Anderson and Tyus Jones have been targeted over the past two summers as young veterans on their second contracts precisely because of their defensive tenacity, good reads and high IQ. Allen is feisty if undersized, Melton can play like a ball hawk at the point of attack, Valanciunas does at least defend his own small area well, and the length and athleticism of Bruno Caboclo and Josh Jackson (yet to play for the team having been on assignment to the G-League all year, yet also proving down there that he is too good for it) offers more potential on this end.
It is both a shame and a disappointment, then, that they have been worse on this end than on offense. Aside from clearing the defensive rebounds well - something for which Valanciunas is a significant factor, and therefore something that may become a weakness were he to be moved - the Grizzlies are below average in every defensive facet. They do not force turnovers, they (in particular Jackson Jr and Brooks) foul too often, they do not cramp opposing ball-handlers for room and they do not force turnovers.
Considering that as-near-as-it the entire roster has been made over in the past 18 months, and much of it in the past 12, a need for greater team cohesion is understandable. Continuity, as we know, is conducive to defensive success. Not helped by a few niggling injuries, particularly the one to Morant, the Grizzlies have yet to run out their best units for long periods of time. When they do so, perhaps greater results will be seen on the unglamorous end.
They are also getting better. The Grizzlies have won six of their last 10 games, and while it has mostly been done against lottery-bound opposition (as well as including a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers and a performance against the San Antonio Spurs in which they gave up 145 points), you can only beat who you face.
A 12-20 record on the season is not bad. Uncompetitive, certainly, but not bottoming out. Even without functioning on all cylinders, there is a reassuringly high raw talent level on this team that sees them a cut above the New York Knicks and (normally) Cleveland Cavaliers of this world.
If there is to be a quick and steep ascent, though, then the defensive potential must become a reality. Jackson Jr is going to have to want it more on the boards. Morant is going to have to make quicker reads in the pick-and-roll defense. Fewer one-pass possessions offensively will, in turn, lead to more opportunities to properly set the defense, and everyone is to have to communicate better.
A Morant/Valanciunas pairing will always be targeted in the pick-and-roll, a difficult thing to counter, but everyone has some area of the defensive end that they can pick up as an individual, and all areas can be better covered as a team.
Nonetheless, the need to improve should not overly dampen the enthusiasm for what might yet still be to come. Whereas recent Grizzlies teams were workmanlike, gritty, resolute and yet limited in their upside, this current incarnation of the Grizzlies franchise has plenty to be optimistic about. Even the G-League affiliate, the Hustle, are fun and deep.
In terms of both the on-court personnel and the salary cap picture behind it, Memphis is in a good place, with a hugely promising core trio unlike anything they have had before in franchise history.
Notwithstanding the myriad factors behind it, they perhaps should be better than they have been thus far defensively, but if we are really picking holes into what specifically their young players cannot do rather than worrying about their long-term potential as a collective, it must be a good sign.
