Official 2014-15 Memphis Grizzlies Season Thread: 26-11, Grizz Acquire Jeff Green from Boston

Refs won't let us live in SA...tis cool tho
Guess we should rest our starters next game.
 
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Damn.. tough L to take, but good test for us.
Especially w/o our main defender.

I saw momentum swinging in 3rd when Spurs couldn't miss 3s and we couldn't hit consistent shots.


Welp, back home to bounce back against Phoenix
 
If that foul would've been called on Ginobili for grabbing Rudy's arm on that catch, Spurs would've been in the penalty. If the shot clock violation would've been called, Grizz would have set up a play. I knew we would allow the Spurs to make a run early in the 4th, but I thought we would be able to manage and steal the win.

I think we will definitely win the next 3, but I don't know how I feel about this road trip coming up with (PHO, DEN, UTA). We have trouble in all 3 arenas. Coming out winning 2 of 3 would be great.
 
If NBA teams were condiments, the Grizzlies have stood on the shelf like a freshly opened bottle of ketchup for the past several years. It’s taken a whole lot of shaking and banging on the bottle to get anything out of them.

But here are the Grizzlies, six weeks into the season, flowing right along. Watch the ball move from Mike Conley at the top of the key to Rudy Gay on the wing to Zach Randolph down low for a bucket. Watch Randolph find his path to the hoop blocked and he’ll slip a neat little pass to Marc Gasol. Or Z-Bo will kick it back out to Gay without hesitation.

“I think,” said Conley, “a lot of guys who’ve been in this locker room for a while now just got tired of wasting years.”

It’s happened before in Memphis, most notably in the 2011 playoffs when the Grizzlies shocked the basketball world as a No. 8 seed, eliminating the No. 1-seeded Spurs and pushing a second round series with the Thunder to Game 7.

It usually happens in Memphis sometime well into the thick of the schedule, after the Grizzlies have laid down the shovels when they’ve tired from digging a hole.

Two seasons ago, the Grizzlies were fortunate just to make the playoffs. They were stumbling along with a 19-23 record on Jan. 19 until closing with a 27-13 kick to grab that No. 8 spot.

Last season, after they’d been picked by many to be a legitimate contender. Again they staggered at the beginning, sitting at just 12-13 on Feb. 6 until finishing 29-12 to claim the No. 4 seed, but were upset by the Clippers in the first round.

“We’ve grown mentally,” Conley said. “We understand what it takes to beat good teams and we’re applying that now and not waiting until February to start rolling. We just got our minds ready for the first game, the first part of the season, as opposed to working ourselves up to that.”

It’s easy to say that the Grizzlies have been able to pull it together this season simply because they’re all healthy. Two seasons ago, Gay missed the final 1 1/2 months of the regular season and playoffs with a dislocated shoulder. Last season, they lost Randolph to torn ligaments in the first week of the abbreviated post-lockout season and he missed 38 games.

However, it’s been more than just the good fortune of good health that has these Grizzlies looking and playing different. There’s almost a barbershop quartet’s harmony that has replaced the usual Memphis blues.

“I tell everybody it’s been a different camaraderie, a different spirit among the team in the locker room that has helped us,” said coach Lionel Hollins.

“The communication is good. The help is good. I just think it’s a conscious decision by players to embrace each other and play for each other.”

Nobody talks about it openly, but the departure of guard O.J. Mayo has made the Grizzlies’ offense and locker room happier places. For four seasons, Mayo could never find a comfortable or effective place as a starter or reserve. He also made the locker room a cliquish place that often froze out Gay and made it tougher for Conley to be the unifying quarterback and leader.

When the Grizzlies finally just let Mayo walk as a free agent last summer, it was addition by subtraction, even if one of the weak links in their attack is still the lack of reliable outside shooter.

Randolph is showing few effects from his knee surgery and is once more a ferocious inside force, rebounding (13.3 per game) at a higher clip than ever. Gasol’s scoring (15.8 ppg) and assists (4.4 apg) are both career highs. Though his shooting percentage is down, Gay (18.6 ppg, 6.0 rpg) keeps buzzing around the numbers that have had him on the verge of an All-Star berth.

It is Conley who has taken the biggest step up, not just in stats but attitude. He is clearly running things on offense and the muscle he’s packed on is making him less apt to get pushed around on defense.

“Mike’s had this in him,” Hollins said. “That’s why he was the No. 4 pick in the draft (2007). He’s been working and building toward this for several years.”

Of course, the entire construction project has taken place under Hollins, who returned for his third stint as coach in January 2009 and has lifted the Grizzlies to unseen playoff heights, including that inaugural series win over San Antonio. The loss to L.A. notwithstanding, he has forced them into the elite level conversation in the Western Conference, which makes the fact that he has not been offered a contract extension both puzzling and foolish.

It is safe to say that Hollins is not happy with the situation and it’s odd coming at a time when there is so much comity around the team. Outgoing owner Michael Heisley said he didn’t want to burden the new buyer with more debt and Robert Pera, head of the new ownership group, has indicated he wants to see how things play out.

At their current pace, things could play out quite well for the Grizzlies. They’ve beaten the Thunder in OKC, whipped the defending NBA champion Heat, handed the previously unbeaten Knicks their first loss of the season and took the Spurs to overtime in San Antonio on the second game of a back-to-back.

At 13-3 heading into a back-to-back weekend set at New Orleans and home against Atlanta, this is the latest point in franchise history that Grizzlies have held the best record in the league.

“We’re another year older and we’re putting all the experience we have to good use,” Gay said. “It’s not about feeling our way along anymore and getting together later. We know what it takes. So our attitude has been, well, why wait?”
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http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2012/12/07/at-last-grizzlies-not-waiting-to-roar/

I wonder if the bold is true.
 
Its no shock to me we lost 2 out of 3 on that road trip. We were something like 18-61 against those 3 teams on the road. Weird how those 3 were put together for a road trip :lol:

When our bench plays the way they have played the past couple of games, it makes us look like a true contender. The problem is getting consistency out of everyone at the same time. Ellington seems to have found his shot the last 3 games. Bayless is doing ok, DA returning from his concussion and Q doing well. I really want us to get another SG or SF (Redick, Lee or Dudley). All of these guys should be available with the right price.

If not, I would like for us to find a way for Wroten or Selby to work themselves in just so we can be 11 deep come playoff time. The question is, can this team afford to work a rookie or Selby into the lineup? I think one of these guys could add some much needed dynanism to the 2nd unit. I'm expected us to go on a nice little win streak as well.
 
This is what we've all been waiting on.

OJ vs TA.

Tony Allen vs good SG's this season

vs Ellis 5-18, 15 points
vs Ellis 1-14, 4 points
vs Harden 4-18, 18 points
vs Martin 1-4, 4 points
vs Wade 3-15, 8 points
vs Kobe 7-23, 30 points
vs Iggy 3-8, 7 points
vs Neal + Manu 8-31, 23 points
 
700


The lovable Memphis Grizzlies get some national shine.


by Adam Figman / photos by Atiba Jefferson

True story: Rudy Gay looked me square in the eye and told me he didn’t like me.

It was the last day of my trip to Memphis—a four-day voyage I took to hang out with some Grizzlies and write SLAM 165’s cover story—and I was fresh out of clean clothes of any sort. With few options, I made do with the closest thing to half-clean I could find, a slightly stained adidas sweater hidden somewhere in the back corner of my travel bag. Looked fine, though I had no choice but to rock it with a pair of black/cement Jordan IIIs (gasp!), the only pair of sneaks I had brought with me to Tennessee.

This didn’t bode well with Gay, a Nike endorsee and Jordan lover since he was a young kid growing up in Baltimore. “How you gon’ do that to Mike?” he asked while sizing me up in his team’s locker room after the Grizzlies completed a 90-78 home victory over the Detroit Pistons. “And I thought I liked you.”

Gay smiled widely enough that it was clear he was joking, which is good, because I’d rather not be in the business of making very tall humans mad at me. (Especially humans like Gay, a genuinely nice guy.) I noted that that unlike him, I had to pack light because I didn’t have any rookies to carry my oversized bags, a claim he swiftly rebutted: “Me neither! Ours is in Reno.” (First-year player Tony Wroten Jr was gaining some D-League experience with the Reno Bighorns at the time.) Good point.

Anyway, I bring up that harmless little back-and-forth to say this:

Sorry, bud, but any feelings of dislike, even of the most playful variety, ain’t mutual. And that goes for your squad, too.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who holds any kind of disdain for the Memphis Grizzlies whatsoever. How could you? They play with a grittiness symbolic of the city they represent. They’re led by a strong coach in Lionel Hollins, a man who created a positive culture within the organization from scratch, something dozens of sideline stalkers around the League are currently attempting (and failing, mostly) to accomplish. And check out this starting lineup, which also happens to feature the five dudes on our newest cover:

At the point you’ve got Mike Conley, a quiet, good-natured 25-year-old who has slowly morphed into a rock of a leader over the past few years. Conley’s biggest struggle has been evolving from the shy type who’d rather do his own thing into the floor leader who feels comfortable bossing his tough-minded colleagues around the court. “I’m trying to get him to have two personalities,” said Henry Bibby, a Grizzlies assistant. “One, when he walks on the floor, he’s really that ******* type of guy that will tell everybody where to go and what to do, and then when he walks off the floor [he's] that nice guy again.”

On the wing is Gay—******g Rudy Gay, man—a silky smooth scorer who, as that one screaming Canadian certainly knew, you wouldn’t want holding the rock while facing up against your favorite team as the clock ticks toward the final buzzer. Gay has been with Memphis since he was drafted in 2006, and he’s seen the franchise at its post-Vancouver lowest. “I’ve seen the bottom and I don’t wanna go back,” he told me while walking through the FedExForum the day after the SLAM photo shoot. “It made me who I am as a man, as a basketball player. It taught me how to play through it. Some people, that defines their careers. Being losers. I never want that to be me.”

In the low- and high- post, more or less interchangeably, are Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol. Hard not to love Z-Bo: after some time spent in Portland generally known more for off-the-court escapades than on-the-court production, then a couple years in L.A. and New York where he never really found his footing in any sense, Randolph finally has a real, steady home in Memphis, and a fan base that’s embraced him accordingly. Gasol, meanwhile, has had a real home in Memphis since he was 16—his family has been living in the Bluff City since his older brother was drafted by the organization in 2001, and his jersey is retired at the Laussanne Collegiate School, a prep school about 20 miles east of the Grizzlies’ home arena. “I’ve seen the whole process from day one ‘til today,” Gasol said during an interview immediately following the cover shoot. “I’ve loved it. The fact that my family has been here the whole time—we really feel like this is our home.”

The two big men have formed a Bash Brothers-like bond with one another. In mid-November Randolph and Thunder center Kendrick Perkins exchanged some unfriendly words on the court, and Z-Bo later said the incident began because Perk had been yapping at Gasol. “[Perkins] wasn’t talking to me,” laughed the Spanish 7-footer. “But that’s how we feel: I know Zach has my back, and I have his back. We have a special bond. We work together.”

And then there’s Tony Allen, the unexpected Face of the Franchise, who plays the incalculably vital role of the defensive-minded wing whose nightly assignment is to lock down the opposition’s best scorer. “You look at our core group of guys, and that’s the one thing we’re missing—a guy like myself, a tough-nosed defender who gets after it,” he said.

Allen didn’t see much playing time when he originally arrived in Memphis in 2010, but after a knee injury sent then-rookie Xavier Henry to the bench, the Chicago native slid into the starting role and the team’s #GritNGrind identity—founded, officially, right here—was established shortly thereafter, with TA’s fingerprints all over it. “Grit ‘N Grind is basically clawing, scratching, biting if you have to, whatever it takes to win,” Allen explained. “Going out there to compete, giving it your all to win the battle. I think each guy in the starting lineup has that same mentality, and it shows night in and night out when we play.” Allen’s face is on Grizzlies billboards around the city; his voice is often the loudest one in the locker room; and the group plays with a noticeably different, nastier energy when he’s on the floor than when he’s not.

(On my last day in Memphis, I walked past Tony in a hallway a few hundred feet from the FedExForum practice court. He reminded me to tell the world that he’s “down with the media, and like the funniest dude on the team!” It didn’t fit into the final cut of the story in the magazine, but there you go, TA.)

So, yeah: fun team. We decided to put these five on the cover in November, when they were (at press time) arguably the best in the League. Now, less so. At the moment they sit at 19-9, fourth in the West, having won a just-decent five of their last 10 tilts. Long season, it happens. But the Grizzlies are still very much in the mix, and we’re here to tell you they’re probably a little more in the mix than you realize. They play in a small market, they don’t spend a ton of time on national TV, and they don’t have a single superstar—all of the superstar duties, from all-around leadership to lock-down defense to clutch buckets, are split evenly amongst the members of the starting lineup—so it’s easy to overlook the still-very-legitimate fact that this could be the unit that makes it out of the West. Maybe this cover (and cover story, which is much more expansive than this post; you’ll need to pick up the issue to read the full piece) will help you take them a little bit more seriously.

And if not, that’s cool. Just don’t bothering trying to actively dislike the Grizzlies as you pull for their competition. Not possible.

Ed’s Note: Our boss wanted to pair this cover with the Knicks, but a-we had just done that awesome Carmelo cover, and b-we wanted to truly give the Grizzlies a national cover. And now look: The Knicks are playing much worse than the Grizz over the last two weeks. The Clippers? Let’s just say their repped nicely in this issue with a DeAndre Jordan feature and something bigger with them is in the works. Besides Adam’s amusing cover story on the Grizz and the DeAndre piece, this issue has nicely timed stories on Kobe Bryant, Luol Deng, DeMar DeRozan, OJ Mayo and much, much more good stuff. Look for it on newsstands in NYC this weekend and nationally—and/or online—next week.—Ben Osborne

#Memphis Grizzlies SLAM 165 Cover
 
10-6 road record. Now, that's the type of road record we need to have as a contending team. That's like the 3rd or 4th best road record in the league. For those who've followed the Grizz for a while, know that team cannot win in Sacramento or Phoenix. Winning those games and beating a team that was 11-4 at home is pretty impressive.

Grizz are back to playing the way they were in November. Winners of 4 of their last 5, 4-0 on the road. Held every single team under 88 points, even in the game they lost. :lol: They are scoring the ball better, pace is a little faster as well.

The next 4 games will be tough. Two games against SAS, one against LAC and one on the road against DAL. With all the trade talk going on, if Memphis can come out of that stretch winning 3 out of 4, I expect the team to stay put. The rest of their schedule isn't too hard heading into the all star break.
 
Probably the best article about all this damn trade talk going on...

From SI:

Rudy Gay trade scenarios riddled with complications

By Rob Mahoney

Let’s clear up one thing off the top: There is no report or rumor out there stating that the Grizzlies want to trade Rudy Gay — merely the acknowledgement (via Grantland’s Zach Lowe, Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, and ESPN.com’s Marc Stein) that Memphis is entertaining the thought. Gay is a fine player, and one whose strengths and weaknesses Memphis understands completely. So it makes all kinds of basketball sense for the Grizzlies to hold on to their best wing player to make a run — no matter how slim the odds — at a title, but unfortunately NBA teams don’t have the advantage of operating solely within a framework of basketball logic.

There are plenty of other factors to consider, and chief among them are the financial realities of keeping a player like Gay (who is owed $37.2 million over the next two seasons after this one) on the books with so many other costly pieces already in place. Gay’s massive contract is very much of a different time, both in terms of salary standards (as it predates the current collective bargaining agreement) and the Grizzlies’ specific needs. Memphis gifted Gay such a lucrative deal on the heels of its first winning season in four years, and overpaid on the basis of his potential, that a luxury tax-induced headache was inevitable for the team’s new ownership and management. Gay’s salary is by no means empty, but as the least crucial player in Memphis’ starting lineup, he holds an auspicious post as theoretically the most movable commodity.


I say “theoretically” because the very reason Gay has become a burden to the Grizzlies is precisely what makes moving him so tricky. Gay is making $16.5 million this season, and he stands to erase the future cap room of any team to which he’s dealt. Trade rules also require that another team line up salary to meet a pretty specific range: large enough to qualify as a legal trade, but small enough to absolve the Grizzlies of their $4 million tax burden. All of this must be accomplished without acquiring any equivalent salaries or redundant players, and in a way that could be appealing to two (if not more) teams.

The trade machine may make managing an NBA team seem easy, but the guidelines in play here vastly limit the realistic trade partners, not to mention pare the return in virtually every potential deal. Making a trade for tax-motivated purposes rarely yields the same payoff as a strict talent-for-talent swap. It would be one thing if Memphis were looking to move Gay for better depth or a better fit, but the one-sided financial nature of any swap for Gay basically assures that Memphis will be in some way shortchanged.

That makes many of the most realistic potential deals less than enticing, especially when Memphis could, in theory, clear $4 million in salary through other means. The Grizzlies could deal some combination of Marreese Speights, Tony Wroten, Quincy Pondexter or Wayne Ellington to help clear the tax line at minimal cost to their rotation, and no one should be surprised if that winds up being the superior option to trading Gay.

There’s already a report floating around (courtesy of ESPN Radio in Minneapolis) that the Minnesota Timberwolves turned down a trade offer involving Gay almost immediately, and I’d doubt very much if this were the last offer reported as refused by either the Grizzlies or a potential trade partner. Memphis is checking the market, but that doesn’t mean they’re inclined to give away one of their best players.

The Grizzlies might need to get creative in coordinating a multi-team deal that could appease the interests of several parties with somewhat clashing interests. Sacramento, Toronto, Golden State, Phoenix and Minnesota have supposedly expressed interest in acquiring Gay, but none — even the Wolves — are a perfectly clean match; we could concoct deals that get both the Grizzlies and their trade partner some semblance of what they want, but nothing so compelling as to get all parties to sign on the dotted line. Adding more teams to the mix only creates more needs and more variables, but perhaps it could also introduce much-needed flexibility. Jared Dudley and draft picks won’t get a deal done, but an extra ball-handler from a third team might. Marcus Thornton strikes me as a piece that the Grizzlies may find interesting, and perhaps a third team could supply salary filler more interesting than Francisco Garcia. There are endless possibilities along these same lines, which is more than we can say of the more limited pool of potential acquisitions should Memphis only work one-on-one deals.

That’s supposing the Grizz are really all that interested in dealing Gay at all. The general vibe seems to indicate that they’ll listen to offers and pitch their own on occasion, but this is by no means a player that has to be moved. As Zach Lowe mentioned in his piece on this subject for Grantland, Memphis is still a team on the very fringes of the title discussion — a place that many basketball thinkers and general managers feel is sufficient enough to hold course. They’d be a long shot to even make it out of the West, but let’s not overlook how much damage this team is doling out if it finds an offensive groove or hits the right matchups. Those preferable top-tier opponents are dwindling with the Spurs, Clippers, and Thunder looking better and better, but teams this good typically need to be coaxed into such a significant trade, even with a tax penalty looming.

The bottom line is this: There’s a world of difference between expressing a willingness to trade a player and actually getting a deal done, especially with manageable tax-dodging alternatives in Memphis’ back pocket. The long-term finances would need some additional pruning, but there’s no rush to liquidate a player as valued as Gay before the deadline, and no motivation for the Grizz to take anything less than what they deem to be acceptable value. We can fully expect the rumor mill to continue spinning, and for all manner of potential deals to be brought to the conversation. But Gay, even while somewhat inessential on a Memphis team that doesn’t always know what to do with him, has no reason yet to pack his bags. Rumors of his availability made waves because a very good team is open to dealing a named player, but the hurdles inherent to trading him away still make the cobbling together of a perfectly balanced deal a bit of a long shot.
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I'm on my phone, but someone needs to post the audio of Hollins interview from earlier today. Interesting points made with ignorance mixed in.
 
Tillery.

Hollins made the entire hoops blogosphere sigh with some of his comments.
 
Good win tonight. But why didn't memphis foul tp9 before he get the ball up the court in those dying seconds of the 4th
 
Ziostilon said:
Good win tonight. But why didn't memphis foul tp9 before he get the ball up the court in those dying seconds of the 4th
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I'm not sure. My entire section was screaming it :lol:

Good win though.

Rudy may not have a great game every night, but he presents a matchup advantage almost every game, and in the playoffs that's key, and he seems to always play equal or near equal when going up against the top sfs (Durrant, Lebron, Melo), the kind of players we will see in the playoffs.
 
Good game Memphis fans. I didnt get to watch it, but it looked like a great one
 
 
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