Why the Grizzlies are just as great a story as the Suns
If you're an NBA who was looking forward to the epic Western Conference playoff race of 2013-14 coming down to the final night of the regular season, or you were enamored with the great story that was the 2013-14 Suns, chances are you were quite disappointed by the Grizzlies spoiling the fun on Monday night in Phoenix.
With a thrilling victory over the Suns in another great West matchup, the Grizzlies clinched the final playoff spot in the West - and in the NBA for that matter - with two days of the season still remaining, while ending the playoff hopes of one of the most surprising teams in recent memory.
The Grizzlies are a defending Western Conference finalist and came into the season seen as fringe contenders, and so clinching the No. 7 or No. 8 seed (which will be decided by Wedesnday's regular season finale against Dallas) doesn't seem like nearly as great a story as the Suns squeaking into the playoffs would have been. After all, this is a Phoenix team that positioned itself to join the great 2013-14 tank race and was predicted to lose 60-plus games. Instead they almost won 50.
But despite the differences in expectations, the Grizzlies' season has become just as great a story as the Suns' campaign.
This is a team that got off to a shaky start, lost its best player and reigning Defensive Player of the Year for seven weeks to an MCL sprain in November, were five games under .500 in mid-December, were given less than a one percent chance of making the playoffs by a system developed by their current Vice President of Basketball Operations, and had to navigate all of that, with success by the way, with a rookie head coach (Dave Joerger) in one of the toughest Western Conferences ever.
When Marc Gasol returned from his knee injury on January 12, the Grizzlies had just come off of a win over the Suns, but they were still 16-19 on the season, 11th in the Western Conference standings and 4.5 games behind eighth place Dallas.
As it turned out, that W over the Suns and Gasol's return sparked a remarkable turnaround the rest of the way, as Memphis has gone 34-13 since January 10, with wins over the Suns (twice), Thunder, Rockets (twice), Clippers, Blazers, Bulls, Pacers and Heat mixed in. They've been the third-best team in the league over that three-month stretch, behind only the Spurs and Clippers, and that it took them until April 14 to solidify a postseason berth despite such excellence is only further proof of how ridiculous the West was this season.
During his pre-game media scrum in Toronto in mid-March, Joerger spoke about how much pressure was involved in every game in the unforgiving West race:
"We talked about that coming back from the All-Star break, and we just try to break it up into weeks. We say 'look, we've got two games this week, we got three games this week, we've got four games this week. The only one that matters is the one in front of us.' I know it's a cliche but it just is that way for us. Otherwise what you start doing is you start saying, 'we've got to go 19-4.' And then you lose and you're like 'holy cow so we've got to go 19-3.' Whatever it is, you'll just drive yourself crazy so we just really try to stay in the moment and focus on the task at hand and really try to focus on playing well."
Later he added:
"The mental stress is that you're in the West, and you're going to look ahead and you're going to see six, seven, possibly eight teams get 50 wins. So when you're sitting there at 10-15, you're like 'holy cow,' I'm doing the math again, I'm going 'Okay well we've got to go 40 and whatever,' and that's the mental stress for coaches."
He has little chance of actually winning the award this year, but how Joerger and his team have handled that stress in his first year on the job as an NBA head coach should see him get at least a few Coach of the Year votes.
The Grizzlies have gotten the job done over the last few months the same way the grit-and-grind team earned its reputation over the last few years - with suffocating defense - as since that January 10 turnaround, Memphis is one of only three teams (along with the Bulls and Pacers) to allow less than 100 points per 100 possessions.
They're going to be heavy underdogs against either the Spurs or Thunder in the first round (and there's still a chance they could play the Clippers), but with that returned to form defense, with a healthy Gasol, a surging Zach Randolph and arguably the best set of complimentary pieces that they've had during their successful years, the Grizzlies are as dangerous a low seeded team as exists in this year's postseason.
The fact that they are merely a low seed looking to crash the postseason party may seem like a disappointment considering last year's results and the expectations coming into this year, but that they are a playoff team at all in a historically strong conference considering the adversity they faced earlier this season makes the Grizzlies one of the stories of 2013-14. Yes, even in comparison to the surprising Suns.