Bahamas trip just a part of Penny’s plan

Memphis’ Hardaway wants team to have head start

Lance Thomas said he wants to go to the beach because he hasn’t seen one since he was 5 years old.

Alex Lomax said he wants to take a cruise.

Tyler Harris said he wants to jump off a boat, or maybe ride a Jet Ski for the first time.

Penny Hardaway said he just wants them to remember the Bahamas like he remembers riding scooters around Honolulu and seeing the clear blue water of Maui for the first time 27 years ago.

“I had never been to Hawaii before,” Hardaway said of the Tigers’ games as part of the Maui Invitational during the 1992-93 season, “and I have never forin gotten that trip.”

When the Memphis basketball team lands in Nassau on Monday to play four exhibition games at the Baha Mar Resort, he wants this collection of talented freshmen and young holdovers to tour the island, experience a new culture and create memories next week that will carry over into this season featuring the highest of hopes.

And he didn’t want to do it last year. That is important to remember as everyone back in Memphis prepares to decipher box scores and scour social media for highlights of the first (untelevised and unstreamed) games involving Hardaway’s No. 1 recruiting class.

He had the option to take the Memphis basketball program on a foreign trip like this last year when he took the job. Former coach Tubby Smith already

had a trip to Canada in the works before he got fired. College teams are allowed to go on these once every four years, and Memphis last went on one in 2014 with Josh Pastner.

But no matter how badly Hardaway wanted to win big in year one, he always knew year two was when it would become more sensible.

It was a calculated and strategic decision made in those chaotic early days on the job, and, just like about every move he has made since becoming a college coach, it involved more selfawareness than most anybody outside Memphis knew Hardaway possessed.

Because it was a decision rooted in more than the fact that last year’s team featured five seniors mostly recruited by Smith.

“Not only did I know I was going to have a different team, but I knew that I would have a year – and our staff would have a year – under our belt before we went,” Hardaway said. “I felt like it would be more beneficial for this year’s group to go than last year’s.”

It was this quality, this recognition of what’s what, that stood out even more than the physical specimens on the court when Hardaway briefly opened up practice to the media Tuesday afternoon.

(And holy cow this team appears to be so much bigger and taller and athletic than last year, even if we saw only 15 minutes worth of ball-handling and shooting drills).

Yes, the 10 extra practices and four exhibition games will provide this vaunted freshman class a potentially crucial head start heading into a season this entire city can’t wait to begin.

But ahead of this Caribbean adventure, it’s encouraging that the man leading them into this jungle of preseason expectations seems to have a good handle on reality.

It’s refreshing to hear Hardaway say he wants “some of these games to be hard,” that he’s wary of these freshmen getting “a false sense of what it’s really like” if they just have four blowouts in the Bahamas.

It’s interesting to listen to him discuss his goal of having a team ranked among the top 20 in the country in defense this year, or how this goal led him to study the defensive principles of defending national champion Virginia, Texas Tech, Cincinnati and Houston this offseason. It’s fascinating that he mentioned the possibility of using a different starting lineup in each game next week, or that he’s going to be watching to see what players are cheering for their teammates from the bench during these games.

The basketball, in a lot of ways, is secondary on the checklist of things this team chock full of talent needs to achieve next week.

“I just want to accomplish how we said when we first came in: No egos,” Lomax said. “Make sure we come back the same way we left – as a family.”

That can happen on a court, or on a beach, or on a boat.

Or, in Harris’ case, jumping off one. “It’s got to be a good height, though,” he said. “Something thrilling.”

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto

JOE RONDONE/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL Memphis guard Tyler Harris dunks past the defense of assistant coach Mike Miller during practice Tuesday at the Laurie-walton Family Basketball Center.