Season Preview Grizzlies

[KG-MVP21]

This they didn't need.

During an impressive showing throughout the World Championships in Japan, Grizzlies leader Pau Gasol broke a bone in his left foot and will likely miss the first third of the regular season after surgery.

This is especially devastating news for the Grizzlies because after a third straight year of being swept out of the playoffs, the team decided to try going with a more athletic roster this season while also jettisoning two longstanding members of the club in Shane Battier and Lorenzen Wright. This season, the Grizzlies were already expecting to go in a new direction from recent years, but Gasol's injury is forcing them to go into a far newer direction than they had thought.

As it stands, the Grizzlies were a fairly efficient regular season team that struggled playing against the elite teams in the NBA. That issue was consistently magnified in the playoffs as they have failed to win even a single game in the post season in team history. The Memphis brass decided that their fundamentally sound club would have to do a better job of featuring Gasol by making the team faster and more athletic, very much like how Gasol's gold medal-winning Spanish national team was put together.

Without Gasol, however, this squad looks downright pedestrian. Damon Stoudamire is coming off of a season-ending knee injury and is entering his eleventh year in the league, and there is no telling how this injury, coupled with his aging body, is going to hold up this season. Eddie Jones will once again start in the backcourt alongside Stoudamire, but his 35-year old body is beginning to slow, and the once dominant defender is now running to keep up with the younger guards in the league.

The starting forward spots are now a huge issue, also, as rookie Rudy Gay will likely now be paired with one of two athletic but unskilled big men, either Stromile Swift or Hakim Warrick. Swift flamed-out in his debut season with the Rockets last year when he was finally given the chance to play consistent minutes after three haphazard years in Memphis. Warrick, on the other hand, has yet to play consistent minutes in the NBA after his rookie year, but also did little to command more consistent minutes with his play last year, either.

At centre sits Jake Tsakalidis, and he alone. No other player on this roster is taller than 6-9 aside from Gasol, and while a guy who played 14 minutes per game last year shouldn't be expected to log anything significantly higher this season, the alternatives once he sits down pretty much amount to getting dominated by opposing team's other bigs. Not very enticing.

The good thing is, once Gasol returns, this team doesn't look all that bad. If Gasol can start at centre like he did in at the Worlds, then this team is a nice, fast unit that can look to Gasol to put lots of points on the break or in the half-court. Jones goes back to being a spot-up shooter to protect Gasol from collapsing defenses. Swift and Warrick become rebounders (hopefully) who can use their athleticism to get hustle points and blocked shots. Most importantly, however, it allows Gay to become a rookie again, who can afford to make mistakes and learn while trying to adjust to the NBA game in his debut season. He could be a real bright spot for this Memphis team going forward, but putting too much pressure on him too soon could screw up his confidence for a while, which would do neither the team nor him any good.

Of course, there is an x-factor on this team, too, and that's Mike Miller. He'll likely come off of the bench again this season after winning the Sixth Man of the Year award for doing it last year, and his scoring punch will be a much needed weapon with or without Gasol in the lineup.

This team is not a high-scoring ball club, and they need all the help they can get putting points on the board, especially with Battier's inside-out game now working in Houston. Miller could wind up in the starting five to start the season to take some of the pressure off of Gay, but without him on the bench, the second unit looks, at first glance, to be wholly unreliable at scoring the ball.

The start of this season is a write-off for this team. Their real season starts in January when they get Gasol back full-time. If they can stay afloat through the first two months of the season, then that's a bonus. If they can't, then they'll get an extended preview of what their 07-08 attack will look like, with plenty of time to fine-tune before the season starts.

PROBABLE STARTING LINEUP (with Gasol)

PG - Damon Stoudamire

He came out blazing last fall, looking like he was the ideal leader for this quick-start Memphis club. They were 17-10 when he went out with an injury, and the team never completely recovered from the loss. It may well turn out that he is fully recovered from his injury and could take on a lot of the scoring load for the team like he used to do in Toronto and Portland. While it's unlikely he'll ever completely regain his 'Mighty Mouse' form completely, his sheer abilities as a scorer haven't been needed in so long people forget how capable he was at the job. If he can find some of that mojo to start the season off, it could be HUGE boost for this Memphis squad. If not, he can hardly be faulted for not getting his 33-year-old body to act ten years younger. Either way, getting him back at all will make this team better, no matter how much scoring he is able to contribute.

SG - Eddie Jones

Going into his thirteenth NBA season, Eddie Jones is quickly becoming one of the elder statesmen of the game. His shooting percentages were down last year, as was his scoring output, and defensively he just isn't fast enough to keep up with most guards, regardless of how smart a player he is. Jones will be the go-to leader for this team while Gasol rehabs his foot, and his on-court savvy will be counted on plenty to keep the Grizzlies' heads above water. He's still got some years left in the tank before he drifts off into the NBA twilight, and so long as he's manning the starting spot on this roster, he's going to be squeezed for every ounce of game he has left.

SF - Rudy Gay

You'd better believe the Grizzlies have faith in Gay if they traded away Mr. Professional Shane Battier to nab him. Gay has many questions surrounding him coming into his rookie season, but one of them is not the talent he brings to the floor. Were it not for questions regarding his work ethic and big-game play, Gay could have easily jumped to number one in last June's Draft. As it stands, though, he ended up traded to Memphis and it could be quite an adjustment for the 6'9" forward to make. Coach Mike Fratello still runs old school half court sets on almost every play down the floor, and Gay is at his best when he's uncaged and allowed to sprint down the court and use his limitless athleticism to soar over defenses to score. The Grizzlies new attack, however, is supposedly going to include more open-court maneuvering, and so this season might be as much about Fratello learning Gay's game as Gay's learning Fratello's. It could turn out that this was an ideally suited match, and we'll find out next spring. Until then, Gay will have the season to do what fellow Husky Charlie Villanueva did last year, which is prove his naysayers wrong game after game after game.

PF - Stromile Swift

Swift was ready and willing to bolt Memphis when he reached free agency last summer. He'd seen his minutes yo-yo and his game untapped (he felt) and when Houston offered him a chance to be their starting power forward, Swift had his bags packed and was gone before he could even say goodbye. Well, it didn't even take the whole of training camp for the Rockets to realize that Swift was no starting power forward in their system, and he was benched in favor of Juwan Howard and never really got his game going the way he promised he could. He was shipped back to Memphis less than a year after he left, and was reportedly less than impressed with his fate when he was notified. This year, Swift will be looked at to provide a serious dose of athleticism to a historically earth-bound team. He is going to have to at least double his per-game rebounding average from last year, and he's going to have to prove that six years in the league have been used to find some amount of polish to his notoriously raw game. Everyone else in the league has pretty much written this guy off, so it's up to him to show everyone why Memphis would want him back at all.

C - Pau Gasol

When he returns, he's going to be asked to take over in the pivot like he should've been doing for years. His game is ideally suited for play down low with his myriad of moves around the basket and his ability to block shots at will. The Bearded One did a lot last year to elevate his reputation in NBA circles with his rugged play, a new wrinkle to his squeaky-clean image from years prior, and when he returns to the lineup he's going to have to do more of the same to help give this haphazard assemblage some focus on the floor. He's going to have to work his tail off in every aspect of the game to keep this team from sinking out of importance in the improving Western Conference. This is the team Jerry West thinks suits Gasol better than the one he had last year, but Gasol has made no secret about his displeasure with the team's losing thus far in his career, and if this group of players doesn't get Gasol out of the first round soon, things could get ugly in Memphis long before they get any better.