How to enjoy Memphis Grizzlies preseason basketball
By Greg Cassoli
4. Envision your wildest dreams
This recommendation is applicable in all contexts. I practice it in every single preseason game I consume, regardless of what teams are involved. If you watch the preseason for any substantial amount of time, you’re going to see plenty of players that just aren’t ready to contribute to winning basketball games in a meaningful way, but they will show glimpses.
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Bursts of athleticism, a hot stretch of shooting, maybe even just a single impressive play — these are things you should allow yourself to get excited about more than you might come the regular season. The stakes are low, which means you can buy into Dillon Brooks as a future star, or this being the year that Chandler Parsons will stay healthy, or the dream of JaMychal Green turning into a high-volume shooter.
What’s the worst that can happen? Someone fails to live up to your hyperbolic fantasies. You knew what you were getting yourself into. Let the regular season crush you with its realism when it comes. You deserve five games of playful self-delusion before things ratchet up a notch.
And, if one of your dreams comes true, you can claim to have seen it coming before anyone else. Let’s be clear though. You probably shouldn’t share your wildest dreams for the team in the public record. There is no need to tweet, for example, that Tyreke Evans is going to be an All-Star this year.
This is simply a suggestion that if he goes 5-for-7 from deep during a preseason game, you need not immediately brush it aside as a small sample size outlier. The game isn’t likely to offer many more engaging opportunities than internal musings on a world in which Evans is a 71.4 percent shooter from beyond the arc.