Memphis Grizzlies took long road to conference finals

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY Sports

MEMPHIS — Looking back, Jerry West calls it "one of the lowest points in my life" as an NBA executive. It was May 22, 2007 and West was sitting in a television studio in Secaucus, N.J., a long way from the kinds of playoff games the Memphis Grizzlies are now winning.

At stake, West thought, was the most precious of opportunities in the NBA: The chance to draft a transcendent star and build a title contender in one of the league's smallest markets. The Grizzlies had suffered for that chance by going 22-60 — the NBA's worst record by two games — but the payoff was supposed to be either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, and surely Memphis' luck wouldn't be bad enough to miss out on both.

But when NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver opened an envelope that revealed Memphis had slipped all the way to the No. 4 pick, West sat stone-faced, seething at a lottery system he has always detested.

"If you don't get one of those players, and I call them branded players, you know you're probably going to have to wait for a while," West, now a consultant for the Golden State Warriors, said by phone Thursday. "When you get a branded player, and you know who they are in the league, those guys are ticket-sellers. They help a franchise so many little ways other than winning."

Since moving from Vancouver in 2001, the Grizzlies' pursuit of a branded player has been a fool's errand: poor draft decisions combined with horrible lottery luck. Whether it was missing out on LeBron James by one spot in 2003 (and ending up with nothing) or picking Hasheem Thabeet instead of James Harden and Stephen Curry in 2009 or swapping Kevin Love for O.J. Mayo at the 2008 draft, Memphis has not often thrived on the night small-market franchises need most to succeed.

But even though the Grizzlies haven't followed quite the same playbook as the Oklahoma City Thunder, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs, whose rosters were largely built around draft successes, they were able Thursday to celebrate the pinnacle of their franchise, reaching the Western Conference finals for the first time.

"It's very gratifying from the standpoint that these are firsts for this franchise," general manager Chris Wallace said. "I was with the Celtics for 10 years, and there isn't a whole lot you can do there that hasn't been done before. These are all firsts and people are so hungry for a winner in Memphis, how the city has rallied behind the Grizzlies is satisfying."

Though Memphis is the NBA's second-smallest television market, the Grizzlies' roster was in some ways built in the image of a city much larger, heavy on trading, free agency and contracts roundly criticized for being too generous. Only one starter, point guard Mike Conley, was a Grizzlies draft pick and only two other players on the roster, reserve forward Darrell Arthur and barely-used rookie guard Tony Wroten, were draft night acquisitions. As a result, the Grizzlies' payroll began the season over the luxury tax threshold until a series of trades — most notably, the one that sent Rudy Gay to the Toronto Raptors — brought relief.

That, of course, doesn't tell the entire story. The Grizzlies were able to acquire stars — in unconventional ways: Zach Randolph as a Los Angeles Clippers cast-off, Marc Gasol as a lightly-regarded piece of the trade that sent his brother Pau from Memphis to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2008 and Tony Allen as a free agent the Boston Celtics didn't regard as worthy of a three-year deal.

Along with Conley, whom the franchise patiently developed, they formed a core that has blossomed into one of the NBA's best defensive teams over the past three years. Meanwhile, Wallace has flipped other assets for key role players along the way and the Grizzlies found enough offense in these playoffs to get past the Clippers and Thunder and become a legitimate title threat.

"It's a unique group," Wallace said. "We were very young when this whole team started; we got older all the sudden, and now we have three starters over 30. When (coach) Lionel (Hollins) took over, we weren't very good defensively and there was a real strong emphasis placed on getting better defensively. And Tony Allen came aboard and he made a big, big impact.

"(Former owner Michael Heisley), to his credit, he pushed the philosophy to take risks. We're not going to get to where we want to be by doing the accepted thing laid out in front of us and we took some risks. More of them worked out than not, and some hit pretty big."

But it wasn't so clear-cut when West stepped away from the franchise in 2007 during a highly frustrating period in its history.

After three consecutive empty playoff appearances — the Grizzlies were swept in the first round in 2004, 2005 and 2006 — Heisley decided to strip the roster down and start over. Shane Battier, Pau Gasol and Mike Miller, the cornerstones of that success, were all eventually traded. Attendance suffered, with the Grizzlies able to sell little more than hope in their future lottery picks and salary cap space.

And when the lottery denied them a chance at Oden or Durant, something of a pall fell over the franchise.

"The expectation was you could get a franchise pillar at No. 1 or No. 2, and the ping-pong balls never really bounced Memphis' way," said Tom Penn, the Grizzlies' assistant general manager from 2000-07 and now an ESPN analyst. "It ended up with (Al Horford) at No. 3 and Conley at No. 4. Then they did bounce Memphis' way (in 2008) and they jumped up to No. 2 for Thabeet. But they weathered all that."

Lottery heartbreak is so ingrained in Memphis, they could play it as a song on Beale Street. In 2003, the Grizzlies entered the lottery knowing they could either keep the No. 1 pick, which was obviously James, or they'd have to ship it to the Detroit Pistons to complete a 1997 trade involving Otis Thorpe. Five teams finished with a worse record than the Grizzlies, but they moved up to No. 2 and never got to make the pick. (Detroit took Darko Milicic, but Memphis likely would have picked Carmelo Anthony.)

"It was a crusher at the time," Penn said. "A tough pill to swallow."

So was the Thabeet pick, which Memphis acknowledged was a bust after a season and a half. Likewise, the Grizzlies took Xavier Henry at No. 12 overall in 2010 and only played him in 38 games before he was traded for backup big man Marreese Speights. Though Mayo was a productive player on two Grizzlies playoff teams in four seasons, he never developed into a star and left as a free agent last summer.

On the whole, though, Wallace has clearly made more good moves than bad, and now the Grizzlies are reaping the benefits. The draft lottery is next Tuesday, and it doesn't look like they'll need to worry about it again for a while.

"To me it's thrilling for the people I know there, for the fans of Memphis who have been really good (even though) our teams didn't give them anything to cheer for like they have this year," West said. "The coordination they have defensively gives them a chance against any team, I don't care who it is, and I think they know it. It's a very, very good team. It's thrilling to see all the things they've done there come to fruition."