HOOP DREAMS: How The Memphis Grizzlies Will Win The 2017 NBA Title


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Welcome to Hoop Dreams, a season preview unlike any other you’ll read before the 2016-17 season tips off. The premise is simple. We’ll be providing 30 of these fictional forays because it simply stinks that only one team can win the title each year. The list of contending teams seems to shrink with each campaign, and we wanted to provide something to those fans who only get to dream of Larry O’Brien during the offseason. Before October, every team can win the NBA title. Don’t believe us? Then keep reading. – Ed


The Memphis Grizzlies were already the undisputed world champs of cornball local advertising, and the royal family of blues and barbecue. They lived and labored and endeavored at the former epicenter of music and pro wrestling, the land of two kings: Jerry Lawler and Elvis Presley. With their uncompromising commitment to old-school, hardscrabble hoops, rarely has a team so fully embodied the blue-collar spirit of its community (crumbling infrastructure and all).

But going into the 2016-2017 season, they were old and getting older. They were coming off major injuries to their core players, their style of play was increasingly anachronistic in the contemporary NBA, and the basketball intelligentsia had understandably declared that their proverbial championship window had long been shuttered.

There were just too many variables to the equation. Would Marc Gasol’s problematic foot hobble him all season? Would Chandler Parsons’ ongoing knee issues render him a non-factor? Would Zach Randolph still be able to thrive coming off the bench? Would the team’s well-documented offensive woes torpedo their title hopes once again?

That last part was one of the biggest challenges for new head coach David Fizdale, who had the unenviable task of preserving the Grizzlies’ Grit-N-Grind mentality while simultaneously dragging them into the 21st century. He’d made the rather embarrassing faux pas of comparing the newly-acquired Parsons to LeBron James prior to the season in a monumental overstatement of his skillset. Yet Parsons would prove to be a key ingredient to their success.


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His abilities as a slasher and shooter acted as a release valve for the Grizzlies’ gummed-up spacing, helping to counteract Tony Allen’s well-known deficiencies on offense and allowing him to focus his efforts on the other end of the floor, where he would once again be named First Team All-Defense.

In fact, the Grizzlies as a whole would re-establish themselves as one of the NBA’s premier defensive stalwarts, finishing with the league’s third-stingiest efficiency rating. That was contingent on Gasol getting back to normal and finding his footing (as it were) as the savvy paint presence and rim protector that earned him Defensive Player of the Year in 2013. Few NBA centers are smarter at guarding the pick-and-roll than Gasol, who even at his size has the uncanny ability to hedge hard on the ball-handler and get back into position just in time.

But it wasn’t just his defensive aptitude that made the Grizzlies so formidable. Gasol has always been a creative low-post scorer, and his abilities as both a passer out of the double-team and a reliable mid-range threat were a stark reminder of how good the Grizzlies are when their best player is at or near his peak.

Of course, the engine running this machine was always Mike Conley, i.e. the highest-paid basketball player in NBA history. It wasn’t his fault Grizzlies management presented him with a giant Publishers Clearing House check to remain with the team the previous summer, but the burden of expectation that came with it fell squarely on his shoulders. It was a challenge he met head-on.

After years of hovering around the fringes of the All-Star team, Conley turned what had become a perennial snub into his inaugural appearance, joining teammate Gasol in the coaches’ selections for the annual week-long festivities in New Orleans. His scoring ticked up from around 17 points per game to a little over 20, while his assists numbers climbed near the double-digit mark. He’d always been a serviceable outside shooter, but this was the season where he increased both his volume and his efficiency, doing wonders for Fizdale’s schemes.

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Depth was a major concern going into the season, what with 39-year-old Vince Carter and 35-year-old Zach Randolph being the most recognizable names rounding out their second unit. But in a more limited role, Randolph proved that he could still abuse defenders in the post. It was something Dave Joerger experimented with late last season to promising results, and it very nearly earned Z-Bo the Sixth Man of the Year award when all was said and done.

It also ended up being a breakout season for former D-League high-flier D.J. Stephens, who relished the opportunity to return to the city where he spent his college career, instantly becoming a fan favorite. Carter – who knows a thing or two about aerial antics – took a special interest in Stephens, working with him diligently throughout the season to help him round out his game and become a more complete player while at the same time understanding how to leverage his athleticism and use it to his advantage.

The 2015-2016 season, with its plague of injuries and inevitable first-round exit, was firmly in their rear-view mirror. They looked more and more like the team that made the Western Conference Finals in 2013, and after a 54-win season and a fifth-place finish in the standings, they did exactly that, knocking off both the Rockets and the Spurs in the first two rounds en route to a rather poetic showdown with their old rivals the Los Angeles Clippers (who themselves had just stunned the Warriors to earn their first trip to the Conference Finals).

As in years past, it was a grueling, seven-game bloodbath that featured three overtime games (with two of those going into double-overtime), several flagrant fouls, and some of the ugliest basketball the world has ever witnessed, which of course is a thing of beauty to the Grizzlies and their fans. They would take Game 7 at home in The Grindhouse, effectively putting the Lob City era in LA in limbo.

Out East, the Atlanta Hawks – thanks to favorable early-round match-ups – made a bewildering run all the way to the Conference Finals, leaving both league brass and network execs in white-knuckle dread of an Atlanta-Memphis Finals showdown (i.e. the Crunkest and least-watched Finals of All-Time). But alas, it wasn’t meant to be.


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The Cleveland Cavaliers easily dispatched them in five games, earning themselves some additional R&R as the Western Finals slugfest stumbled along, punch-drunk, for nearly two-and-a-half weeks. Surprisingly, that worked in Memphis’ favor, as the Cavs came out lethargic in Game 1 while the Grizzlies feasted on them like so much freshwater salmon.

Game 2 would be a different story with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving posting tandem 40-point performances, but the Grizzlies would come roaring back in Game 3 to maul the Cavs like they were a group of hikers who’d wandered into dangerously-close proximity of their bear cubs.

They’d split the next two games, giving the Grizzlies an opportunity to close them out at the Q in Cleveland, but LeBron simply wouldn’t allow that to happen as he logged perhaps the greatest Finals performance of his career – 57 points, 14 rebounds, and nine assists – to set the stage for a Game 7 showdown back at the Grindhouse.

Despite being at home, nobody gave the Grizzlies much of a chance, and that was understandable given their lack of Finals experience in contrast to LeBron and the Cavs’ recent success on those scenarios despite overwhelming odds. But they would underestimate the ferocity of an animal like the Grizzlies when they’re cornered.

Memphis would turn to their bread and butter and put on one of the most stifling displays of defense ever seen in the post-season, forcing 17 turnovers, which they converted into 18 fast-break points, and pestering the Cavs as a team into just 33 percent shooting from the field overall. They didn’t fare much better on offense, narrowly winning by a margin of 92-88, but it was enough to get the job done and seize the title as perhaps the most unlikely NBA champions of the modern era.

Local authorities had been bracing themselves for either outcome. They never could’ve anticipated what happened next. Despite the Bacchanalian revelry that went all night and stretched into the next day, starting on Beale Street and eventually spilling over into downtown and Tom Lee park by the river, it was by far the most peaceful night of the year up to that point, according to police reports.

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