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Memphis Grizzlies: 3 things that have gone right so far

Five games in, Mike Conley believes the Grizzlies are close to where they thought they’d be.

“If you’re asking if we expected to be 3-2, I think we expected to be 4-1,” the veteran guard said Monday. “We feel like we let one go. So, we’re not just happy at 3-2. We know we can be a lot better and have a long way to go.”

Mike Conley

Less than a year after missing 70 games with an injury, the 31-year-old veteran has played in all five games and averaged 36 minutes per game.

During that time, he has been every bit the conductor Grizzlies fans have known and loved for so long. Conley leads the team with 19 points and six assists per game.

“We’re asking him to carry a huge burden, and he’s been willing to do it,” he said.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s in that top-tier of guards, no doubt about it,” he said. “He’s a guy that embraces all the challenges, whatever you ask him to do.”


Defense first

The Grizzlies made their plans to thrive on the defensive end of the floor abundantly clear throughout the off-season.

They’ve made good on those plans thus far. Memphis is allowing 101 points per game, the second-fewest in the NBA. Bickerstaff’s club has created more turnovers than its opposition in all five six games this season.

“We’re starting to build the foundation of who we want to be,” he said. “Right now, we can hang our hat on where we are defensively and figure that’s who we have to be. We can still improve there, which is a good thing. There are things we see on film and that guys are aware of, which will help us take even bigger steps.”


Triple-J



The plan was to keep a deliberate pace in bringing him along.

But Grizzlies rookie Jaren Jackson Jr. – at 19, he's the second-youngest player in the league this season – has had to grow up quick. The former Michigan State star admits things haven’t gone perfectly. But far more has gone right than wrong since taking on the increased load. Jackson is scoring 13 points per game and hauling in 5.6 boards on average. He also leads all rookies with 1.4 steals per game. His primary bug-a-boo, though, is the foul trouble Jackson has stayed in so far. He is averaging a whopping 4.4 fouls per game.

Memphis is 4-2, with wins over Utah and a reeling Washington team last night. They’ve had a somewhat easy schedule, but still, through two weeks, this Memphis team looks legitimate.

How are they doing this? Is it vintage Marc Gasol coming back? Or outlier play from their supporting cast? The answer is a mixture of both. Here are three reasons for Memphis’s early success — and why it might be here to stay.

1. An absolutely vintage Grit-and-Grind play style

Memphis fell apart last year in large part because their defense cratered, ranking 26th in the league in defensive efficiency at 110.2 points allowed per 100 possessions, per NBA.com. They’ve gone back to their roots, as J.B. Bickerstaff has favored a return to the grinding pace of yore, with his team ranked 27th in the league.

This style of play favors the Grizzlies’ current roster set-up. J.B. Bickerstaff so far is translating principles of power football into basketball terms. Limit possessions. Protect the ball. Take the easy points when you get them, and play strong fundamental defense that capitalizes on shutting down efficiency at the expense of the rare breakdown. It’s effective and consistent. In a year of offensive explosion, Memphis is going the opposite direction by controlling the margins.


2. Garrett Temple is the league’s most underrated player

so far, it’s been their other major acquisition that’s paid the most dividends. Memphis nabbed Temple from Sacramento in exchange for Deyonta Davis, Ben McLemore, and a second-round pick, an absolute steal of a deal for one of the league’s most under-appreciated players. Temple’s stats to date: 14.3 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 1.3 assists per game on 45/52/86 shooting splits.

A 78.6 effective field goal percentage on catch-and-shoots probably isn’t sustainable, but Temple provides what the team hasn’t had since Courtney Lee was in town — a reliable off-movement shooter who provides support for the team’s more ball-dominant creators.

Defensively, Temple fits so well into Memphis’s defensive system. Temple’s quietly been one of the league’s most reliable two-way wings over the past four years. His addition to Memphis so far has been fantastic, helping to unlock lineup versatility the team hasn’t had through the entirety of the Grit-and-Grind era.



Triple-J

The Michigan State center hasn’t been perfect so far, but he’s had his flashes, and that could be something that helps swing this nice start into sustainable success.

Jackson’s averaging 11.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game, and his finishing has been pretty decent to start the season. He has flashed the same off-the-dribble prowess that he showed at Michigan State, and his defense on space has been promising as well.

Entering Monday night’s game against the Jazz in Memphis, the Grizzlies are 5-0 at FedExForum, making them the last team in the Western Conference undefeated at home…

The 5-0 home start is the second-best in franchise history, trailing only the 2014-15 team’s 8-0 home start. Memphis started 13-2 overall that year. Crowds of 17,000 or more packed FedExForum for six of the eight games that were part of the prolific beginning to a 55-27 season…

With the addition of Kyle Anderson on the wing, and the return of a healthy Mike Conley, Memphis has taken its rightful place among the league’s top defensive units. Its second-ranked defense this season would be the team’s best finish since 2012-13, when it posted a ludicrous 99.7 defensive rating on its way to a Western Conference Finals appearance.

The Grizzlies’ defensive acumen this season is fueled by a conservative approach on both ends of the floor. They rarely turn the ball over and don’t crash the offensive glass, instead opting to get back in transition and wall off opponents’ full-court drives to the rim. This continues in the half court, as the team drops Gasol and their other big men deep in the paint in pick-and-roll defense and rely on their perimeter length and the math of a two-point pull-up jumper to work in their favor.

For the most part, it’s worked.

However, the biggest problem Memphis has defensively: They give up a ton of corner three-point attempts. One in ten of their opponents’ shots are a corner three, the second-worst rate in the league. They’re on pace to be tied with the 2015-16 Milwaukee Bucks for the worst rate this decade.

The trade-off between helping from the corners and allowing big men to get rolling to the basket has been around as long as the pick-and-roll itself. The high pick-and-roll is as popular as it is because it puts the defense in an impossible situation, stuck between helping onto the roll man and sticking to a shooter in the corner. As the league has gotten smarter with its spacing and better with its outside shooting, that choice becomes even more difficult for defenses.

At the very least, the Grizzlies’ aggressiveness in the paint has paid dividends. Memphis ranks seventh in defensive points per possession scored by pick-and-roll roll men and are about average in frequency as a proportion of overall defensive possessions, according to Synergy. They force a ton of turnovers in these spots as well, using their length and active hands to swipe down on big men around the basket or steal a kickout pass to that open man in the corner.

If opponents regress to the mean in their three-point shooting, especially from the corners, that could create some trouble for a Memphis team that has focused so heavily on walling off the paint and helping from the perimeter.

The Grizzlies Don’t Care About Your High-Powered Offense

Memphis is thriving by playing lockdown defense and blending its vets with new additions



When Marc Gasol, Mike Conley, Garrett Temple, Kyle Anderson, and rookie Jaren Jackson Jr. have shared the floor this season, Memphis has scored just 91.5 points per 100 possessions. As a point of reference on just how bad that is, the Atlanta Hawks, the team that ranks dead last in the NBA in offensive efficiency this season, are scoring 101.1 points per 100 possessions this season.

That Grizzlies lineup actually has a positive net rating.

An almost hilarious level of offensive ineptitude just hasn’t mattered, because a lineup full of length and defensive smarts has just suffocated dudes, resulting in a microscopic defensive rating of 88.7.

In the midst of an offensive revolution, Memphis is winning with a bottom-10 offense and a top-five defense. As the rest of the league pushes the tempo with reckless abandon, the Grizzlies stay 10 toes down in the mud, ranking last in the NBA in both pace—more than 10 fewer possessions per 48 minutes than first-place Atlanta, according to NBA.com/Stats—and average time elapsed per offensive possession, according to Inpredictable. The Grizzlies are taking and making more 3-pointers per game than they have in franchise history, but relative to the bombs-away league they live in, they’re still comparatively conservative: they’re 22nd in makes, 24th in attempts, and 19th in the percentage of their total offense generated from beyond the arc.

The Grizzlies are basically content to play like it’s 2013. Tony Allen and Zach Randolph aren’t around to kick Chris Paul in the face and choke-slam Blake Griffin, but for now, at least, zigging while the rest of the league zags seems to be working.

Before last season, the Grizz had outscored their opposition when Conley and Gasol shared the floor for eight consecutive seasons; that trend has held true so far this season too. With the duo in form, Memphis can weather a lot. It is the grand truth of this era of Memphis basketball: when Conley and Gasol are healthy, the Grizzlies are a problem. It’s a long season; how long that good health lasts remains to be seen. So far, though, so pretty damn good.

If the Grizzlies winning two games at Utah didn’t convince you to get back on the bandwagon, if knocking off Denver when it was atop the Western Conference standings didn’t convince you Memphis will contend for a playoff spot again, if dealing Milwaukee its first home loss Wednesday night didn’t convince you this team is ready to be relevant again, what exactly are you waiting for?

It’s still November, still the same time of year when everything fell apart last season, still just eight wins in 13 games. But there’s something about these Grizzlies.

It’s time to stop dipping your toe in the water and just jump in.

It’s time to realize the Grizzlies are “officially being slept on,” as ESPN announcer Mark Jones put it on Twitter Wednesday night. “Ambien level slept on.”

rottweiler93 wrote:I love that memphis is back on the map. Huge fan of them as well. They are keeping their pace and not worrying about jacking up 3's.

The play basketball like how I like. Defense and inside shots.