It’s been a long holiday season for the Memphis Grizzlies. What’s going on and is there anything they can do to turn it around?
In the United States, the holiday season lasts from Thanksgiving until New Year’s. For many, it’s a time to visit friends and family, eat lots of great food and, perhaps most importantly, have lots of days off.
But all good things must come to an end and that return to work from vacation euphoria puts many of us in a holiday hangover. The alarm starts going off again. A cold, morning walk to the car. Traffic. Annoying coworkers. It’s difficult to get back into the routine again, but eventually you can snap out of it.
What happens when you don’t though? Every morning is a drag, every small annoyance turns into a larger irritation and everything just looks bleak. For the Memphis Grizzlies, they’ve been playing in this mode for the last month and a half. They’ve quickly gone from a solid playoff team to playoff hopeful. If they don’t turn this around quick, the playoffs are going to be miles away in their review mirror.
You can track the Grizzlies “beginning of the possible end” to one date: Nov. 27, when they lost to the Toronto Raptors, 122-114. Losing to one of the NBA’s top teams wasn’t a big deal, but Marc Gasol‘s ankle injury was.
Through the Grizzlies’ first 21 games of the year, Gasol was averaging 17.4 points and 9.2 rebounds a night while shooting 46.4 percent from the field and 44.4 percent from downtown. It’s been ugly since then: 11.2 points and 7.5 rebounds per game while shooting 36.4 percent from the field and 22.9 percent from downtown.
In turn, the team’s record has trended downwards. After the Raptors loss, the Grizzlies sat at 12-8 — not world-beaters by any means, but still strong enough for sixth in the Western Conference. Since that loss, the Grizzlies have gone 6-14, dropping them to 13th in the conference standings, 3.5 games behind the current 8-seeded Los Angeles Lakers.
There are two big reasons behind Gasol’s drop-off: He’s on the wrong side of 30 and he’s injured. Big Spain is just weeks away from his 34th birthday and third among centers in minutes per game with 34.1.
This is more minutes than spring chickens like Joel Embiid, Karl-Anthony Towns, Steven Adams, Andre Drummond, Deandre Ayton(!!!), Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic, John Collins and many more. It would be great to see Gasol hovering around where someone like Al Horford is — 17th in the league among centers with 28.5 minutes per game.
It’s no secret Gasol and Mike Conley are the engines of this team, but other players have to step up while the big man is slowing down. Conley, may the basketball gods bless him with an All-Star nomination, has played incredible all season long, averaging 20.3 points and 6.2 assists to go along with his 42 percent shooting and 35.8 percent clip from downtown.
But everyone knows the saying “two great basketball players a great basketball team does not make” (or something like that). However, the team has taken a collective nosedive straight into Beale Street. Looking at their team numbers before and after Nov. 27 is downright scary. From here on out, Nov. 27 will be known as TP-Day or Turning Point Day.
To begin, the Grizzlies have scored 100-plus points only six times since TP-Day, with three of those coming in losses. Before TP-Day, they scored 100-plus 13 times, going 8-5 over that stretch.
Defense has been a bigger issue. In games where their opponents topped 100 points, the Grizzlies were an even 6-6 in this scenario. This was a good record for the team, as they would like to hold opponents to the high 90s if possible. After TP-Day though? (Adjusts glasses, throws glasses out window, gets new glasses, smashes head against keyboard, forced to buy new glasses) It’s 2-13. 2-13!
Everyone knows the Grizzlies are never going to blow teams off the floor offensively, but they could still put up a fight, right? Before TP-Day, the Grizzlies were scoring 103.6 points per game. It was 29th in the league, but at least it was over 100. Since then? A measly 98.5 points per game. In turn, their offensive rating has plummeted as well going from 106.5 (21st in the league) to 102.1 (29th in the league).
OK, that’s not the worst thing in the world (denial), the Grizzlies are a great defensive team! Grit-N-Grind baby! It should be a relief to Grizzlies fans that they still are a top-10 defense, sitting ninth with a defensive rating of 106.9.
The problem is, that’s down a full 2.0 points from TP-Day, where they were fifth with 104.9. Saving you the math, their net rating has gone from +1.6 (12th in the league) to -4.8 (23rd), a 6.4 swing. In a vacuum, the Grizzlies’ defensive rating is really good! Twenty-one other teams would love to be ninth in the league. But when your offense is as poor as the Grizzlies’ O, even the slightest dip is catastrophic.
So what’s been causing this offensive dip? A few things. The first is the Grizzlies have gotten worse in shooting the 3-ball. They never took a ton of 3s, but they were hitting them at a 36.6 percent clip before TP-Day. They weren’t bombers, but efficient 3-point shooters who took open looks and made them. Since TP-Day? That number has dipped to 32.2 percent, last in the league.
Other areas look bleak. The Grizzlies used to be a great team controlling their turnovers, 13.4 per game (third in the NBA). That number has slipped to 14.5 a game (17th). Once again, the slip for any other team isn’t awful, but when your margin for error is so small, it hurts over the course of a game. On a smaller note, this terrible rebounding team has somehow gotten even worse, going from a 47.3 percent rebounding rate to a 46.7 percent rebounding rate.
This is a lot of bad news to digest and there may be good news on the horizon. The Grizzlies made a “bold” trade for Justin Holiday, sending off Wayne Selden, MarShon Brooks (the right Brooks this time) and two second round picks.
Holiday may be able to bring in that needed scoring punch off the bench and gives the Grizzlies another long, athletic player who can defend. He may even move into a bigger role since Shelvin Mack has forgotten how to play basketball since December. Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff has even turned to Jevon Carter to provide minutes. But Carter is a high-energy defensive player who would have trouble hitting water while falling out of a boat. Holiday needs to play consistent minutes, get in a rhythm and score the ball.
So what else can the Grizzlies do now? For starters, they need to give Marc Gasol some rest. It’s tempting to keep relying on Gasol, because, well, the team relies on Marc Gasol, but Bickerstaff is going to have to get more out of his other players not named Mike Conley. They will badly need Gasol *if* they make the playoffs, but he’s no use to them playing hobbled.
One of the ways to do this is shifting more of the game plan to Jaren Jackson Jr. Jackon’s numbers took a dip in December, but the young forward should be playing more to give the Grizzlies a chance. He’s only averaging 25.6 minutes a game this year, and it’d be nice to see him get that number up to 30.
See what a Jackson and Conley two-man game can do while Gasol takes a breather. While we’re on young talent, the return of Dillon Brooks could help as well. Oftentimes, the Grizz have looked rather sluggish — and not the kind of sluggish that comes from the league’s slowest team, the “meh” kind of sluggish. Brooks and Carter can give a boost of energy to a team that desperately needs it. Relying on them over the whole game is risky, but a solid boost of energy can help.
The Grizzlies’ offense isn’t going to become great any time soon, but they’re going to have to return to their defensive roots if they want to turn this thing around. January is going to be a tough month, as they’ve got a brutal schedule, facing only two teams outside the playoff race. If January is another December, Grizzlies fans will just have to start planning for looming changes and a possible tank job to retain their top-eight protected draft pick.