Let me give you my take on it. We never had a great PG or a great Center in those playoff years. Damon Stoudamire came too late and then when he went down with the eventually career ending knee injury that was really the end of the Pau era, in my mind, in Memphis. That combined with Gasol's broken foot at the 2006 FIBA tournament. That was the swan song.
sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2576375‎
Sep 6, 2006 - Pau Gasol will have surgery Friday to repair a broken bone in his left foot. ... his left foot last week while playing for Spain during the FIBA world ...
Jason Williams went on to win a Championship with James Posey and the Miami Heat but we know he was just a role role role player with 3 other hall of famers: Mourning, Shaq, Dwade. The Grizzlies had the glue guys, the character guys, the defensive guys, and they had their "star", Pau Gasol but woudln't any NBA student admit that Gasol is at best a second banana on a championship team but despite the Allstar appearances he is really just a "STAR" and not clearly the unanimous ALL NBA power forward even at his peak. In truth he took us as far as he could with a team that was in a small market that couldn't sustain going over the cap for long periods of time and never attracts premeire free agents in the history of the franchise.
The things that made us successful were about team offense, team defense, and a great combination of team players. In that in that era of the NBA that feature "me first" players like TMAC, Allen Iverson, Baron Davis, Steve Francis, Stephon Marbury, Latrell Sprewell, and other wannabees like Al Harrington, MIke Bibby, Zach Randolph (yes he was a me-first guy back then obviously), etc etc. Those Grizzlies were the polar opposite of that. They played a deep rotation and they were fundamentally sound with role players like Brevin Knight, Dhantay Jones, Earl Watson, Brian Cardinal (when he was good), Mike MIller - etc. It won Hubie Brown coach of the year and MIller 6th man of the year. It also got respect around the league for Pau and Kevin Garnett once called him the best power forward in the game ( this was when he was in Minnesota and legitimately the #1 player in the league so it was high praise).
Look how many players from that era on the Grizzlies have championships: Shane Battier (2), Mike Mller (2), James Posey (2), Jason Williams, Brian Cardinal, Pau Gasol (2). Pretty good.
Now the question I return to is why we never got over the hump? Well like I said it's tough when the only free agents you can get are (undeveloped) James Posey, Brian Cardinal, Damon Stoudamire (too late), Bobby Jackson, Bo Outlaw, and Chucky Atkins. Despite that we made some incredible trades those years with Jerry West GM wheeling and dealing. he really did pull off some great moves those years: trading Shareef Adbul Raheem for Pau Gasol + Lorenzen Wright + Brevin Knight, Drew Gooden and Gordon Giricek for Mike Miller, Wesley Person for Bonzi wells, trade for Jason Williams. Miraculous considering how abysmal our draft history has always been. the Gasol trade we made originally should be listed as one of the most one-sided trades in history. Atlanta never really recovered from that one. We ended up with 3 rookie of the years and so recall it was a young unit growing up and they got bounced easily from the veteran teams they faced against SAN Antonio, Phoenix, and Dallas. Spurs were multiple Champions. Dallas featured an unstoppable Dirk Nowitzki and we had no one on the gym that could compete with 2006 Dirk.
Oh and to return to my first point - yes we had a decent PG in JWILL and Earl, Bobby J, Brevin Knight (actually he was not on the team during playoff run), but we didn't have a "bad ass" like the other big playoff teams of that year and Jason Williams was a wild thing back then and he made bad decisions and was trigger happy, called his own number, hence the trade to Miami for Eddie Jones. And at Center we had a guy that's really a college center at 6'10" and you never saw him play quality minutes for any other team after Memphis. He's a guy fans all love but I tell you he was a weakness. He played adequate D and rebounding but provided zero on the offensive end. Just keep out of the way of Pau. At the time Shaq / Duncan / Ming were dominating. I think it was our achilles heel and we never had a completely competitive roster at all 5 positions in those years like we do now with BIG SPAIN and Mike Conley running the show. It's funny / sad ironic that Lorenzen Wright would actually be a more ideal 5 these days than when he was playing here. That was always my critique back then for why we didn't win and then those guys were blown up for Eddie Jones and Damon Stoudamire and we know they were has-beens and Jones certainly came up short of expectations...