Grizzlies embrace today during a delicate moment
Marc Gasol redirected the first basketball-related question he faced Monday, even though it was perhaps the most obvious one.
How good does it feel to be back for a new season after what the Memphis Grizzlies went through last year?
Gasol didn’t agree with the premise, he said, because “the past … is irrelevant.”
He’s right, in some ways, and it’s why the dawn of a new season and events like the annual Media Day the Grizzlies held Monday at FedExForum are full of unbridled optimism and promises of exciting moments to come.
It’s a day when general manager Chris Wallace says, “we’re an all-in, go-for-it team” and “a contrarian team” in today’s NBA, and your first inclination is to think maybe this will work. Maybe Memphis can make
the playoffs again in a loaded Western Conference.
It’s a day when Chandler Parsons declares himself healthy again, and you begin to consider how soon it will be until he’s back to being the player he was before all the knee injuries, or at least close to it, even if he said the exact same thing last year at this time.
It’s a day when every word spoken by Yuta Watanabe, one of the Grizzlies’ new two-way players, is dissected by more than a dozen Japanese media members and you seriously ponder whether Memphis could have its own version of “Linsanity” soon.
It’s a day when Mike Conley says things like, “I’m here for life” and “Memphis is who we are and who we’ll always be,” while describing how much he and Gasol have accomplished together in this city, and you wonder if there’s a way father time could just avoid these two because they still mean so much to this town, and this franchise.
It’s a day when 22-year-old Dillon Brooks jokingly says Conley and Gasol “are like 40 years old,” and rookie Jaren Jackson Jr. lectures reporters on his new favorite Netflix show (Ozark) and Japanese anime cartoons, and Gasol simply embraces the give-and-take between young and old on this roster.
“A breath of fresh air. A new swag, they call it,” Gasol said. “It’s fun and I love it, and I think we need it.”
He’s also right about this, of course, because the past can’t be escaped, and it usually informs the present.
About an hour before Gasol spoke to reporters, Brooks sat in the exact same chair and depicted a locker room scene a year ago that resulted in significant personnel changes this offseason.
How it went from a team full of smiles and diligent workers during the first month of last season to a place that felt “really dead,” Brooks said.
“You could feel the aura,” he added. “It’s hard to get through that and try to get back to winning when the aura’s all changed and guys disperse and there’s no chemistry and guys are just out there playing.”
It’s what makes these delicate times for the Grizzlies.
Because, quite frankly, the city’s NBA team became mostly an afterthought in this market once the drama surrounding former coach David Fizdale’s firing subsided. All the memories from those NBA playoff runs, all the local equity built during the Grit ‘n’ Grind era, temporarily faded with the franchise actively trying to position itself for a better draft pick.
None of that goodwill is gone yet, but suddenly you could see a scenario where it might be.
Talk radio seemed more interested in Tubby Smith’s job security than whether the Grizzlies won or lost. The legion of fans who embraced unlikely cornerstones like Zach Randolph and Tony Allen started showing up to FedExForum simply to see the superstars on the other team.
And now, with Penny Hardaway resuscitating the excitement surrounding Tigers basketball, sports fans here will have even more choices.
So it’s imperative that, even if the optimism oozing from team officials Monday doesn’t result in a return to the postseason, the Grizzlies remain competitive this entire season. The moves made by Wallace and his front office, and the expectations coach J.B. Bickerstaff and his players are embracing this preseason, suggest the franchise understands all the dynamics at play.
This is still a franchise that has qualified for the playoffs in seven of the past eight seasons. In Conley’s mind, all the injuries and turmoil of last year were an anomaly born from circumstance, not the end of an era.
That this year, “we’re getting back to who we are,” he said.
Because oftentimes the future, much like the past, can be irrelevant to the present.
Just ask Gasol, who fielded a question Monday about the $25 million player option on his contract that might or might not make him a free agent after this season.
“I cannot promise you anything, or what the future is,” he said. “What I can tell you is how much I’m going to put in this season and how much I care about the success of the team.”