Hardaway must keep the fanbase believing
The words were superimposed over an image from inside a conference room at the Laurie-walton Family Basketball Center. There on a flat screen television was the game film of the Tigers’ loss to Auburn the day before, paused with Memphis up 33-30 and 3:11 remaining in the first half.
Penny Hardaway was dissecting what happened in the program’s latest disheartening setback, well aware that lots of people were dissecting him.
“I appreciate the fans who are being patient,” the Memphis coach wrote on Instagram Sunday. “It is a marathon and not a sprint.”
Hardaway was asking for patience without actually asking for patience from a fan base that has waited patiently already. So patience, in this case, might as well be belief.
Do you still believe in Hardaway? That’s been at the core of the Hardaway era since the moment he accepted the job in March 2018. That’s the part critics never fully grasp whenever a Tigers’ loss inevitably turns into a referendum on Hardaway’s coaching acumen.
Hardaway got Memphis to believe in Tiger basketball again, to believe another Final Four run is possible. He got Memphis to believe enough to buy tickets and he got recruits to believe enough to come from all over the country to play here. It’s a metric and an achievement that can’t be judged solely on wins and losses, and can’t be overlooked.
Plenty of Memphis fans still believe. Not all of them. Not as many as before this season, before the Tigers ended non-conference play with a 4-3 record. But plenty. They want to believe because there may be no better Memphis sports story than Hardaway leading Memphis to a national cham
pionship.
Each loss, though, each explanation that doesn’t make complete sense, erodes at that belief little-by-little. Particularly the losses that should have been wins. Like the three losses this year.
When Hardaway says “offensively, we’re good enough” immediately after his team commits 18 turnovers, misses 16 of 27 layup attempts, goes 11 of 23 from the foul line and shoots below 40 percent from the field, like the Tigers did against Auburn, a little bit of that belief disappears.
When Hardaway says the players “have to make up their mind to do it,” as if he’s done everything he can to fix this, a little bit of that belief disappears.
When Hardaway says all that, and then he says he changed the offense after the first two losses of the year in South Dakota, and then says he’s changing the offense for a second time in two weeks after a third loss, like he did Tuesday, a little bit of that belief disappears.
When Hardaway says in the preseason the players understand their roles now, and then seven games into the season sophomore D.J. Jeffries says he and his teammates need to learn “we’re playing for Memphis, not for ourselves,” a little bit of that belief disappears.
Each time the same mistakes keep happening, each time different versions of the same explanation are given, each time nothing really changes, a little bit of that belief disappears.
That’s what this season has become. A disjointed, coronavirus-influenced litmus test of how much belief Hardaway still warrants. The answer will, thankfully, be an objective one with a clear delineation point.
Memphis should be an NCAA Tournament team for the first time since 2014. That’s not to say the Tigers will be. Who could state that at the moment, given the hole they’ve dug themselves heading into Wednesday’s conference opener at Tulane?
But the expectations didn’t change simply because Memphis looks as disorganized and erratic as it did last season. This roster, even without Evansville transfer Deandre Williams, is good enough. The pressure is on Hardaway to be good enough. To be better than what he’s been so far.
It’s not the same type of pressure other coaches face. There is no ultimatum here. This is not Ncaa-tournament-or-bust in the traditional sense.
Though Hardaway is in the final year of his initial contract, the assumption is that he will be the Memphis basketball coach next year if he wants to be. He deserves a second contract considering he saved this program from dire financial straits.
But every Memphis coach since Gene Bartow who made it to Year 3 earned a bid into the NCAA Tournament by Year 3.
It’s an important distinction not because Hardaway is comparable to any of his predecessors besides maybe Larry Finch, and not because his job is on the line. It’s important because patience only goes so far if nobody believes anymore.