‘OUR CONLEY YEAR’
Conley crucial to Griz, but questions of durability, decline loom in contract year
PICK AND POP: Point guard Mike Conley crucial to Grizzlies, but questions of durability, decline loom in contract year.
Welcome to Our Conley Year.
What Marc Gasol has passed through, Mike Conley now enters. This season, it’s Conley’s enormous face, shielded in plastic, that looks down over the FedExForum plaza. This season, it’s Conley’s contract year, his return expected but not yet confirmed, his unlikely departure a certain subject of helpless speculation.
Long the quiet leader of this core, the Booker T. guiding these MGs, Conley’s shift into the spotlight has been wellprepared: The mask, his playoff performance with it, the story around it, has lent him, for the first time really, some drama and color commensurate with his teammates. Conley now has an aura.
It’s become somewhat common over the past couple of seasons — and not merely among Memphians — to refer to Conley as a “Top 5 point guard” in the NBA. But it’s also still, even with Derrick Rose’s injury-fueled tumble and Tony Parker’s age-driven decline, just a little bit of a stretch. Conley is a mortal at a moment when the top talents at his position seem like something more. There’s an otherworldliness about Steph Curry’s shooting, Russell Westbrook’s rim-attacking savagery, Chris Paul’s cold, cruel control, John Wall’s locomotive size and speed, Kyrie Irving’s heaven-is-a-playground scoring.
Conley, by contrast, is perhaps the best of the rest, a testament to what more tangible talents can become when honed by years of work and incremental improvement. The strength of his game is its diversity. If Conley never overwhelms, he’s also the rare player who checks off every box at his position, who takes nothing off the table. He scores and distributes, shoots and finishes, operates an offense and spearheads a defense, leads and defers in appropriate, delicate balance.
His personal style is rooted in subtlety. A handle that manages to be tricky without being flashy. Defense that disrupts rather than stifles. Darting into the creases of a defense rather than exploding through them. Hesitation dribbles and ambidextrous scoops. Even Conley’s three-point signature
— the three-finger salute — is built on a gesture of outward respect rather than inward celebration.
But the questions that have lingered throughout the Grit-and-Grind era remain: With Parker’s decline, Conley now seems to be the best point guard in the NBA’s best division, but can he also be the best perimeter player on a true contender? And does he have enough help to hold up seven months into an NBA season?
As he enters his age 28 season, and hurtles toward free agency, Conley’s trajectory is a mystery.
In 2013-2014, multiple “advanced” hoops metrics, such as “wins above replacement” and “real plus-minus,” actually did have Conley rated in the Top 5 at the position. But that wasn’t quite the case a year ago, when his assists ticked down, his turnovers ticked up and his defensive impact slid from the same all-NBA level.
Was his battery of injuries the reason, or was 2013-2014 simply Conley’s career season? If so, will the Grizzlies, next summer, be looking at the prospect of bestowing a long-term max contract to a small guard at that point two years removed from his peak?
That dip acknowledged, Conley’s game has roughly plateaued over the past three seasons. He doesn’t seem primed for the kind of mini-leap Gasol made last season, which resulted from a transformation of both body and on-court usage. A continuation on that plateau for several more seasons would be more than acceptable, and that’s probably (hopefully?) likely. But as a 6-foot-1 guard approaching 30, with plenty of wear and tear, a downward tilt might be more likely than an upward surge.
And that wear and tear has to loom large in the Grizzlies’ anxiety closet, with the preseason likely renewing old concerns about the team’s backup point guard situation.
Conley is now the franchise leader in minutes played, but his durability is an issue that blooms each spring. Last April, he was limited by foot, ankle and wrist injuries in the playoffs even before a freak collision with C.J. McCollum fractured his face. The Grizzlies shouldn’t want Conley to log 82 games this season even if health allowed it. Last season’s 31.8 minutes per game was Conley’s lowest since 2008-2009; there’s a danger of that number creeping back up more from necessity than design.
Last season, the Grizzlies went a surprising 8-4 in games that Conley missed, but Nick Calathes has returned overseas, Beno Udrih is 33 with active injury concerns and second-year third-stringer Russ Smith has been predictably spotty in the preseason.
Udrih’s deadly midrange pullup can carry an offense for stretches, but his penchant to hunt shots rather than run offense seems to sometimes rankle teammates. He had ankle surgery over the summer and was shooting 1-10 in the preseason before tweaking the same ankle last week. While he’s been sitting since, Udrih is expected to be ready for the regular season, though.
Smith got an extended look over the weekend, operating as a starter Friday night against the Thunder and as the primary backup on Sunday against the Timberwolves, with his 56 minutes yielding “good and bad” as Dave Joerger put it after Friday’s game.
Smith got buckets (10-21 shooting, 9-17 inside the arc) and picked pockets (6 steals), but also had more turnovers (9) than assists (8). Smith might be one of the quickest players in the league, which generates excitement, but the same stature that abets his speed can cause problems, as you could see on Sunday when he was taken advantage of on defensive switches and when going after 50-50 balls in the air rather than on the floor. As a playmaker, he has a tendency, as Joerger noted, to seek to set up shooters even when the right pass may instead be to set up someone else’s assist.
Smith’s learning on the job, and while his speed and defensive peskiness could yield a greater upside down the road than what Udrih still has left, there’s no telling when or whether those skills will garner enough results to warrant a switch. As is, it’s hard to imagine Joerger being comfortable with Smith in a rotation role right now. At some point this season, Smith will have to be ready for that or the Grizzlies will need to be in the market for more point guard help.