Memphis Grizzlies, NBA NEWS
Grizzlies’ Season Was a Fraud
Published by MoonDog on April 18, 2008
The Memphis Grizzlies completed their second consecutive season with a record of 22-60, tying them for third-worst in the NBA. Just as the franchise entered last offseason, the Grizzlies have a myriad of issues that will need to be addressed prior to the start of the 2009-10 regular season.
Most notable among those decisions will be the fate of head coach Marc Iavaroni. Speculation is swirling Iavaroni may be fired after only one season at the helm. General Manager Chris Wallace and team owner Michael Heisley are scheduled to meet with Iavaroni in the near future to discuss his fate, as well as the direction of the team.
Iavaroni is under contract through the 2009-10 season, as is each of his assistant coaches. But to place
blame solely on the shoulders of Iavaroni is misguided considering the state of flux the team has been in since their arrival in Memphis prior to the 2001-02 regular season.
The Grizzlies troubles began long before Iavaroni was named head coach last offseason. During the 2002-03 season, Hubie Brown was hired to coach the Grizzlies. Brown won the NBA Coach of the Year Award during the next season when the Grizzlies made the NBA playoffs for the first time in team history in 2004.
When Hubie Brown resigned amid controversy during the 2004-05 campaign, then Grizzlies GM Jerry West hired Mike Fratello to assume the coaching duties. Despite the team having a losing record at the time, Fratello was able to guide the Grizzlies to their second consecutive playoff appearance. Fratello lead the Grizzlies to the playoffs for a third consecutive year during the 2005-06 season, only to be swept by the Dallas Mavericks.
It was during the 2006-07 regular season that the Grizzlies began to take a downward turn. Prior to the season, Jerry West traded Shane Battier to the Houston Rockets for their first round pick, Rudy Gay and Stromile Swift, a former Grizzlies’ player who’d signed with the Rockets as a free agent after the 2005 season.
Things worsened when the Grizzlies’ best player, Pau Gasol broke his left foot while playing for Spain in the World Championships. The Grizzlies started the season 5-17 without Gasol, and then went 1-7 after he returned to action. Sporting a 6-24 record, Fratello was fired and replaced by Tony Barone, Sr. as interim coach.
Barone was the team’s player personnel director and had never coached an NBA game. The Grizzlies finished the 2006-07 season with the league’s worst record at 22-60, and Jerry West announced resignation from his position as the team’s general manager shortly after the end of the regular season.
Iavaroni was hired on May 30 last year after serving as an assistant under Mike D’Antoni with the Phoenix Suns for five seasons. Iavaroni envisioned bringing the Suns’ up-tempo offense to the Grizzlies, an offense that had proven to be wildly successful in Phoenix.
But there was only one problem. The Grizzlies didn’t have the talent to run the Suns’ offense. Moreover, the Grizzlies didn’t have the talent most other rosters in the NBA had. On June 18, 2007, the Grizzlies named former Boston Celtics GM Chris Wallace as the team’s General Manager and Vice President of Basketball Operations, replacing the retired West. It was at that point the Grizzlies began making terrible offseason personnel moves.
On July 12 last year, the Grizzlies signed former Detroit Piston and Orlando Magic forward Darko Milicic
to a 3-year, $21 million free agent deal. Milicic’s career had been a failure prior to his arrival in Memphis and continued to be a failure throughout the course of this past season.
For the $6.5 million Milicic earned this season, the Grizzlies received 70 games played, 7.2 PPG and 6.1 RPG. Not exactly the stuff legends are made of. Once considered to be a force in the European leagues, Milicic has never acclimated his game to the NBA. Unless the Grizzlies can move him during this offseason, they’re on the hook for the remaining two years and $14.5 million.
On July 24 last year, Wallace made another questionable signing, inking former NBA player Casey Jacobsen to a one-year $770,610 deal. According to GM Chris Wallace, Jacobsen is a player Iavaroni wanted on the roster. “Coach Iavaroni worked with Casey in Phoenix and our assistant coach Andy Greer was with him last year in the preseason with Houston. Having coaches who have first hand experience with a new player is an advantage, and we are fortunate that our coaching staff has that familiarity with Casey.”
What exactly were Iavaroni and Greer familiar with? That Jacobsen was a wash-out during his brief three-year NBA career? After being released by the Houston Rockets before the start of the 2006 season, Jacobsen spent the past two seasons playing in Europe. Much like Milicic, playing and being successful in the European leagues doesn’t necessarily equate to being successful in the NBA.
Between Milicic and Jacobsen, the Grizzlies spent nearly $7.271 million this year to get two players that combined to average 4.6 PPG and 3.65 RPG – not exactly a cost-effective result. Suffice it to say, the Grizzlies first two major offseason moves were nothing short of disastrous.
One offseason move that did bear fruit was the signing of Juan Carlos Navarro. Originally drafted by the Washington Wizards in 2002, Navarro decided to stay with his current team FC Barcelona for whom he had played since the age of 17. Pau Gasol’s success with the Grizzlies swayed Navarro into signing with Memphis for one year at $538,000.
Navarro was the only offseason acquisition that produced acceptable results. In fact, Navarro was worth more to the Grizzlies than the other offseason acquisitions combined, appearing in all 82 games averaging 10.9 PPG, 2.6 RPG and 2.2 APG. Navarro’s status with the Grizzlies is uncertain, having departed immediately after the final game for Spain to rejoin his family.
Wallace’s in-season personnel moves were just as bad if not worse. On February 1 of this year the Grizzlies traded Pau Gasol to the Los Angeles Lakers for first round draft picks in 2008 and 2010. In addition, the Grizzlies received another failed experiment in the person of Kwame Brown, first-year player Javaris Crittenton and the draft rights to Marc Gasol, Pau’s brother who is currently playing in Europe.
To hear Iavaroni tell it, the Grizzlies trading Gasol was a foregone conclusion as part of the team’s plans for the 2007-08 season. Ron Tillery conducted an interview with Iavaroni published in The Commercial Appeal on April 17 in which Iavaroni states, “This is part of the original plan.” “We wanted to make a serious run at something great. We felt we needed to do that by opening cap space and the most viable option was to open up a lot with Pau.”
“Pau’s a great player but I think people within the organization felt we had to do something significant. Was part of the plan finishing in the lottery with a good chance of getting the No. 1 pick? Yeah, it was. It’s one of those things. Did we want to lose games on purpose? Of course not. Did we lose games because of manpower? Yes we did. But the plan was we’re going to struggle this year but we’ll have something we can build on beyond.”
So let me get this straight. Memphis purposely gutted their team in an effort to become a lottery participant and knew they were going to take this direction prior to the season beginning. Do you suppose the fans who spend their hard-earned money to attend the games would have liked to know that when the season began?
In my book, that’s called fraud. For the Grizzlies organization to perpetrate such a fraud is unfathomable. To enter a season knowing you’re going to do everything possible to be one of the worst teams in the NBA is gutless. To wave the white flag before you even get a chance to evaluate some of the new additions and the core group of young players on the Grizzlies roster is beyond stupid.
I don’t have a problem with the theory of creating cap space. What I have a problem with is the fact we weren’t told of the team’s plans prior to the season beginning. While the fan base may not have agreed or liked the decision, at minimum they would have been prepared for it. Furthermore, had the Grizzlies announced their plans from the beginning, at least fans could accept the fact the organization had been forthright with them. As it turned out, it makes Heisley, Wallace and Iavaroni look like common con artists.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, at the end of the final regular season game in which the Grizzlies lost to the Denver Nuggets, 120-111, Iavaroni and several players spoke about developing a mental toughness and better defensive skills during the offseason. What?
For a team that gave up an average of 106.9 PPG, defense is certainly an area the Grizzlies need to improve upon. But why did they decide they needed to improve after the season ended? Is defense not something that is worked on during training camp? Are the Grizzlies practices during an 82-game regular season devoid of defensive drills?
Perhaps a lack of defense was part of the “master” plan as well. Make bad offseason personnel moves, trade your best player during the season, don’t play any defense and oh yeah, let’s not tell anybody about it until after we finish with a 22-60 record.
I’m not a basketball genius, but it seems the Grizzlies have a lot of work and explaining to do. At this point if Wallace and Iavaroni keep their jobs beyond today would be a miracle, but I suspect both will be gainfully employed as the Grizzlies enter next season. Perhaps the team’s next brilliant plan will be a decision to cut every player above 6’5” so they can finish with the worst record in NBA history.
With a 15.6% chance of winning the overall number one pick in the NBA Draft Lottery, Memphis can only hope that some of the incredibly poor decisions of this past season aren’t repeated.
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