It’s that time.

During the next few weeks, countless NBA prognosticators will spill thousands of words explaining why this season’s top teams are just like last season’s top teams. And for the most part, they are right. With a few predictable changes, like Boston moving into the Eastern elite after the summertime acquisitions of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, there shouldn’t be that much movement among the top teams.

On the other hand, similar sentiments were probably expressed about baseball in March (few imagined that the National League Championship Series would come down to Arizona and Colorado). In addition, more than a few NFL visionaries are checking their lenses now that Chicago and New Orleans, last season’s NFC finalists, are stumbling around the at bottom of their divisions. And let’s not even begin to discuss college football, where South Florida outranks USC in the BCS standings by 12 spots.

Compared to football and baseball, the NBA does have less volatility, but some teams are going to defy expectations and move up a notch or two on the totem pole.

Charlotte was the hip pick early on and for good reason; the Bobcats went 33–49 last season despite subpar years from most of their key players. But the season ending knee injury to forward Sean May has made most of their enthusiasts rethink that prediction. Atlanta is also an emerging pick on the basis that they’ve simply accumulated too much talent to keep losing 50 games a season. I like both the Hawks’ and the Bobcats’ chances to move up a bit, but I think the Memphis Grizzlies will trump their improvement.

I’m a little surprised that the Grizzlies aren’t getting more love from the punditry. Consider the Grizzlies’ last four seasons:

2003–’04 50–32

2004–’05 45–37

2005–’06 49–33

2006–’07 22–60

Okay, which season looks like the fluke to you? Last season was a nightmare for Memphis on almost every front. Their star player, center Pau Gasol, was injured during the summer World Basketball Championships and missed the first third of the season. Rookie pointguard Kyle Lowry impressed for 10 games before suffering a season ending injury. Forward Shane Battier was traded away for rookie Rudy Gay, who was slow acclimating to the NBA. There were ownership struggles involving the sale of the team. GM Jerry West stepped down, and coach Mike Fratello was let go after a miserable 6–24 start.

Given all that turmoil, 22 wins was something of a small accomplishment. But this wasn’t a case of an old team going over the hill all at once. The Griz are a young team; only one key player, point guard Damon Stoudamire, is past his prime. Everyone else on the roster can be expected to improve their games, and some players like Gay can be expected to take a big step forward.

My optimism about the Grizzlies is based mostly on their collection of talent. Gasol and Lowry are back, and neither suffered an injury that should be a chronic problem. The draft brought Mike Conley Jr., widely regarded as one of the two best point guards to come out of college this decade (Chris Paul is the other). They traded for European backcourt sensation Juan Carlos Navarro who, with Gasol, has made Spain an international powerhouse. They added power forward Darko Milicic, whose game was starting to develop nicely in Orlando last season. And finally, they added top Phoenix assistant Marc Iavaroni to coach all this new assemblage.

The new coach, who apprenticed under Mike D’Antoni, the master of small ball, should be adept at dealing with one potential problem: Their collection of forwards — Gay, Milicic, and Hakim Warwick — is a tad thin and green. Iavaroni will keep things at an up tempo pace, which should be a good match for the plethora of young talent on the roster, and it will minimize matchup problems in the halfcourt sets. Still, a team with so many personnel changes needs a few weeks of the regular season to figure each other out. But the backcourt trio of Navarro, Lowry, and Conley figures to be top notch and, if all works well, the Grizzlies new GM Chris Wallace should be able to move Stoudamire to a team such as Miami that needs some savvy backcourt presence to fuel a postseason run.

Context will work for and against the Griz revival. On one hand, they play in the rugged Southwest Division, which means many games against the perennial title threats in Dallas and San Antonio as well as strong teams from Houston and New Orleans. But Memphis’s other conference foes are weaker than last season: Minnesota, Seattle, Portland, Golden State, each of whom finished ahead of the Grizzlies last season but traded away a key cog for little in the way of immediate returns. In addition, Elton Brand’s injury takes the Clippers out of the playoff mix.

In other words, assuming that the Western Conference’s top six teams remain somewhat stable, the battle for the final two playoff spots could come down to a dogfight between the Lakers, Warriors, Hornets, and yes, the Grizzlies. And that should mark a substantial rebound from a 22-win season.

mjohnson@nysun.com