Grizzlies Keep Rocking and Rolling in Memphis
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Memphis may not seem like much of an outlaw town, but since moving there from Vancouver, the Grizzlies have broken most of the rules regarding NBA team building and won in the process.
One of their first moves on American soil in 2002 was to hire Jerry West, the league legend (and logo) who had been retired for several years after building two editions of Laker championship squads. That was curious, but not especially shocking. What followed either raised eyebrows or outright dismayed hoops analysts. West brought in Hubie Brown, who had not coached in 16 years, back to the sidelines after an 0-8 start to the 2003-04 season under Sidney Lowe.
The team, everyone reasoned, was years away from competing for a playoff spot, so the addition of a 69-year-old coach seemed like little more than a publicity stunt. Wrong. In Brown’s first full season with the team, the Grizzlies won 50 games and a spot in the playoffs, and did so by using a 10-man rotation. When Brown suddenly split just 12 games into the 2004-05 season, West replaced him with Mike Fratello, another veteran coach who had been in the broadcast booth for years, and the team made the playoffs for the second straight season.
Sadly, the Grizzlies’ postseason life wasn’t as eventful as their regular seasons: They were swept in the first round each year. So this off-season, a time when most teams were seeking to get younger and taller, the Griz went out and made their roster older and shorter. By now, observers shouldn’t be surprised that Memphis is throwing conventional wisdom in the dumpster. Nor should it amaze anyone that the moves have worked so far. The Grizzlies are 9-5, with a win over a stellar Cleveland squad and a thumping of the Suns in Phoenix. On Saturday night, they went to Dallas and ended the Mavericks’ seven-game winning streak with a 112-92 win. It was Dallas’s worst home loss in more than four seasons.
The Griz have won 95 games in the last two years, so winning nine of 14 shouldn’t stand peoples’ hair on end. But given the roster makeover, it is a mild shock. During the off-season, the Griz sent most of their best players not named Pau Gasol elsewhere and imported players with question marks so big they might as well have been part of their jersey number. The departed included power forward Stromile Swift, point guard Earl Watson, small forward James Posey, shooting guard Bonzi Wells, and point guard Jason Williams.
Their replacements arrived with labels like old, infirm, or unproven. Point guard Bobby Jackson, 32, has missed 89 games in the last two seasons. Jackson shares the point with Damon Stoudamire, also 32 and a poor defender, which seems like a bad fit for Fratello’s defensive style. Swingman Eddie Jones is 34, ancient for a perimeter player, and his offensive production was already in decline entering the season.
These three are joined by four holdovers – forwards Mike Miller and Shane Battier, power forward Gasol, and center Lorenzen Wright. Third-year swingman Dahntay Jones has also gotten the first steady burn of his career. Wright, Miller, and Battier are solid but unspectacular players and Gasol is an All-Star. In all, this team is old and short by NBA standards. Only a devoted Griz fan could argue that this bunch amounts to a .642 team. Most prognosticators predicted they’d lose 44-48 games.
There have been three keys to the Grizzlies early success: Their defense has been better than projected, Battier and Eddie Jones are shooting the lights out, and Gasol is playing like a superstar. Further, the newcomers have bought into Fratello’s defensive schemes, with the team ranking ninth in Defensive Efficiency, allowing only 103.8 points per 100 possessions.
Stoudamire, Eddie Jones, and Jackson have done a stellar job wreaking havoc on the perimeter, forcing 18.3 turnovers a game, third in the league. The other good news is that the Grizzlies are finally starting to give Gasol major minutes. He’s playing 38.1 minutes a game, nearly 20% more than the last two seasons, and his averages have increased to 19.8 points, 8.9 boards, and 2.6 blocks per contest. That production has in turn drawn defenses inside and created better shots for Eddie Jones and Battier, the second and third leading scorers on the team.
The bad news is that Battier’s 56.6% field goal percentage and Jones’s 43.5% from three-point range are well out of line with their career averages (in fact, Jones is presently shooting better from behind the arc than he is from inside it). As the law of averages exerts its gravity on their performances, the Griz’s mediocre offense, 16th in Offensive Efficiency at 105 points per 100 possessions, will decline.
Ultimately this team should begin to resemble Fratello’s Cleveland squads – slow paced units that succeeded on the strength of perimeter defense and one or two solid attackers. That won’t be enough to match the 50-win season they enjoyed two years ago, but barring major injury – and for any team with Bobby Jackson in the rotation, that’s a major if – they should defy the punditry and win 45 games again.
Still, it’s hard to get excited about this squad. Their ceiling for this season will be to extend past a first-round playoff opponent, but then it declines until cap flexibility arrives in the summer of 2007. It’s not a rosy outlook, but defying such forecasts has become the Grizzlies’ stock in trade.