Chris Herrington

chris.herrington@commercialappeal.com

Last week was one of the best and, by the end, certainly one of the most unexpected weeks in Grizzlies history, regular-season division. The stretch included a double-overtime thriller, the emotional return of Zach Randolph, and an escalating six-game win streak without not only Mike Conley but four other players who were in the team’s projected 10-man rotation as the season approached. After four straight one- or two-possession wins against likely lottery teams, the Grizzlies got their first post-Conley win against a probable playoff team when they beat Portland, denying the Blazers a playoff tiebreaker advantage. And then the exclamation point: A dismantling of the NBA’s best team, the Golden State Warriors, Saturday night at FedExForum.

Grizzlies Game Day: Gasol to rest during Cleveland game

Fluke? The losses could certainly begin to pile up just as fast, especially with a home/road back-to-back against the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers starting this week. But the Grizzlies recent performance seems to have revealed two things that are real and true: A team defense that has returned to elite status even in the absence of several rotation players and a center(piece) in Marc Gasol who has returned to being a Top 10 level player in the league.

Let’s entertain a comparison of two seven-footers, each in their age 32 season:

Player A

Points per game: 19.9

Rebounds per game: 6.2

Assists per game: 4.1

“Stocks” (steals + blocks) per game: 2.5

Three-point attempts per game: 3.6

Shooting percentage: 46

Three-point percentage: 44

Free-throw percentage: 80

Player Efficiency Rating: 21.8

Usage Rate: 26.2

Rebound Rate: 10.4

Assist Rate: 17.1

Turnover Rate: 8.5

Player B

Points per game: 23.0

Rebounds per game: 7.0

Assists per game: 2.6

“Stocks” (steals + blocks) per game: 1.1

Three-point attempts per game: 2.3

Shooting percentage: 52

Three-point percentage: 39

Free-throw percentage: 89

Player Efficiency Rating: 23.5

Usage Rate: 25.5

Rebound Rate: 12.0

Assist Rate: 11.2

Turnover Rate: 8.1

Player A is Marc Gasol, who turns 32 next month. Player B is Dirk Nowitzki in 2010-2011, the season in which he led the Mavericks to a surprise championship.

These profiles aren’t exactly mirror images, but they are similar, both in shape and quality: Good shooting with range. High usage. Low turnover. Middling rebounding. Gasol hasn’t been quite the all-around shooter or scorer Nowitzki was, even if he’s actually out-shot him so far from three-point range.

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The two biggest changes to Gasol’s game this season — extending his shooting range and increasing his offensive burden — have nudged his game toward Nowitzki’s. Gasol has been flirting with Dirk’s trademark one-legged fadeaway for a few seasons, but now he’s added the pure face-up range (Nowitzki has actually never shot quite this well from beyond the arc and only recently this frequently) and taken on a comparable offensive onus, across 48 minutes (Gasol’s usage this season dramatically higher than his recent norms, but in line with Dirk’s prime) and also in the clutch.

During this six-game win streak, Gasol’s had a triple-double, a season-high scoring total, two double-digit fourth-quarters to lead late double-digit comebacks, has twice hit go-ahead free-throws late in the fourth quarter and concocted this bit of overtime-forcing outrageousness:

For years, Nowitzki was my answer to the common “who do you want taking the last shot?” question. This season, Gasol, perhaps reluctantly, is forcing his way into that discussion. He’s improbably tied with four other players, all guards (and one Mike Conley) for most made three-pointers in “clutch” play (last five minutes, score within five) this season. Half of those — more than any other player — have come in the final minute of a one-possession game.

Overall, Gasol is the only non-guard among the Top 10 in clutch scoring. Dirkian territory.

Individual offense is about finding the right balance between usage and efficiency. Gasol had gaudier shooting percentages early in his career, when he played more as a traditional center. But he wasn’t producing enough, leaving too much offense to less talented shooters and playmakers. This season, Gasol has sacrificed a little bit of efficiency for much more production, and he’s carrying an offense that’s struggling overall in the absence of multiple talents only headlined by Conley.

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Early this season, there was talk of Conley being a go-to scorer and Gasol, as the lone team captain, being the leader, but with first Zach Randolph transitioning to the bench and then Conley going down to injury, it’s forced a union of those split roles, a recalibration of the pecking order to put Gasol in a place he hasn’t always been comfortable before: The man in every way.

The Grizzlies overall offense — and Gasol’s workload — will benefit from the return of Conley and others, but giving Gasol the rare Dirk-like responsibility of carrying a team’s offense from the frontcourt may pay dividends down the line.

One of the things sports traffics in is hope. If your team is blessed with a MVP-level alpha dog and another All-Star sidekick or two, you hope for a title. If your team is bad, you hope for some franchise-altering luck in the draft lottery. If you’re the kind of second-tier contender the Grizzlies have been for the bulk of the grit-and-grind era, you hope to catch the right breaks.

Examples of teams without the typical title template breaking all the way through are rare, but it has happened. For the bulk of this run, the Grizzlies’ dreams have rested on the model of the Detroit Pistons, who rode their own defensive-minded “core four” to an unlikely title in 2004.

But with the resiliency of a six-game winning streak in the absence of Conley keeping the Grizzlies in the mix for decent seeding and with Gasol blooming into a new kind of offensive force, maybe the Grizzlies should look to a different example: Those 2010-2011 Dallas Mavericks.

NBA names Gasol Western Conference Player of the Week

The model for this daydream is more of a blend, of course. Those Mavericks were ranked in the 6-10 range in both offense and defense. The Grizzlies’ current lack of balance (#1 defense, #27 offense) is still more akin to the Pistons, though more extreme. This daydream dissipates if Mike Conley doesn’t return to something approaching the career-peak form he started the season with, and if, as the season wears on, the Grizzlies offense doesn’t ramp up more than the defense inevitably slips.

The other question, of course, is whether Gasol can keep this up. If his shooting and scoring has shifted toward but still falls a little short of the Dirk model, the rest of his game far surpasses what Nowitzki's was: Gasol’s the finest frontcourt playmaker in the NBA, and while his scoring has progressed, the even better news might be that his defense has reclaimed much of its former groove. With JaMychal Green in the starting lineup and often taking on the primary frontcourt assignment, Gasol has returned to directing and backstopping the team defense in the manner he did during his Defensive Player of the Year peak, reversing a worrying individual and team decline last season.

There are players this season putting up more eye-popping stat lines, but there are few having as a profound a total impact on basketball games. That Gasol is, so far, having not only his best season, but one that constitutes something of an evolutionary leap, as he approaches age 32 and recovers from a broken foot, is astounding. I wrote or said (who can remember anymore) before the season that despite the hoopla over Mike Conley’s contract and Chandler Parsons’ signing, that Gasol’s return was the most important storyline for the Grizzlies. That for the team to be anything close to what it wants to be, Gasol had to be its best player. He’s so far exceeded all expectations. The hope now is that the rest of this injury-impacted team can catch up with him, and that this burden doesn’t prove too great.

It’s about what’s bigger than basketball.

Appropriately, amid the best week (so far) of his best season, Gasol reminded us of this:

If “basketball” is about games and series of games, the outcomes of those games and seasons, then what’s bigger than basketball takes on different forms. And as good as Gasol is and as palpably competitive as he is, one of his finest qualities is that he seems to grasp the ultimate limitations of these outcomes.

One thing that’s bigger than “basketball,” and what is meant by it here, is the care and concern, the love and trust, that builds over time among teammates. Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph have put in years together. JaMychal Green, an undrafted player nearly past his expiration date when he finally broke through, cut his NBA teeth in their shadow and then replaced one in the starting lineup to pair with the other. He has been touched by them both. This moment, with Randolph willing a key defensive rebound, in his first game back from his mother’s unexpected death, was an instinctive, human one:

Fans have come to thrill to these displays of teamwork and mutual commitment as much as to victories for their own sake — though, to be fair, they would not thrill to this in the absence of victories.

Another way that it’s all bigger than basketball is as a civic enterprise — the union that occurs around the games, whether in the arena, around the water-cooler or via social media; the off-court investments, charitable or otherwise; the way the enterprise changes a city’s sense of self. But the wider meaning inherent in Gasol’s assertion isn’t quite that.

The games are a drama, played out on the court and, for most, primarily on their screens, like any other TV show. But sports teams, much like bands, are uniquely well-designed to dramatize community, and illustrate how individuals can find their best selves within a community context. (I did a longer riff on this here.) No major sport does this as well as basketball (perhaps soccer?), where small groups of players interact in a constant flow. And despite their lack of championship pedigree, no current basketball team does this as well as the Grizzlies, not with Tim Duncan moving on in San Antonio.

Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph and Tony Allen have played seven years together as a quartet, six-years-and-counting of playoff battles, marriages, births and now death. No other foursome in the current NBA has this kind of collective public history. They come from different places, different backgrounds and they are distinct, often colorful, personalities, but they have found their greatest selves in concert with each other.

This is not hometown exceptionalism, Memphis fans: Your team really is special.

Kevin Lipe, at The Memphis Flyer, wrote about this really well last week. I can’t top this, so I’ll share it:

There are times when the Grizzlies feel ancient, like some foreign thing that used to make sense but doesn’t anymore, like The Grizzlies Epic is in cuneiform on tablets no one knows how to read anymore. Then, it feels like the right thing to do is to burn it to the ground and start over, to break the continuity with the past that sometimes feels like being tied to a millstone. But then, on a Tuesday night at a poorly-attended game against one of the weakest teams in the league without three of their best players, missing five guys to injury, something like that happens, and it clicks. This is why they won’t do that.

Several years ago, Bill Simmons wrote a tome called “The Book of Basketball” built in part around an assertion by Hall of Fame point guard Isiah Thomas that “The secret of basketball is it’s not about basketball.”

Thomas was talking strictly about the internal relationships among players (and coaches) and about how these personal dynamics mattered more to the outcome of games and seasons than most on the outside realized. He’s right. But this truth might be restated via a Gasol Doctrine: The secret of basketball, for players and fans alike, is that it's bigger than basketball.

It’s also about what’s smaller than basketball.

But if Marc Gasol understands that what he’s a part of is bigger than mere basketball, one reason this particular basketball fan treasures Gasol is that he also seems to grasp the value of that which is smaller than basketball, smaller than the outcomes of games and seasons.

This is why Gasol sometimes seems perturbed even after wins. He’s always in pursuit of a kind of platonic ideal of basketball perfection, possession-by-possession. Gasol has often talked up the Spurs, and while the Grizzlies have a looser, crazier personality all of their own, there’s more than a bit of the Spurs’ “pounding the rock” ethos to Gasol.

But this commitment to the game’s granularities is not without fun. It also manifests in a delight in the small wrinkles, tangents and asides in which attentive fans revel. This is the Gasol of sacramental displays (the kissing of the ball, the crossing of the chest, the post-whistle soccer practice), of novel post-shot celebrations, the one who invents new kinds of passes on the fly. I wrote last week, briefly, about Gasol’s passing as a kind of self-contained universe.

Though he’s never articulated it this way, there’s an ethos at play here too, a union of big and small: I think Gasol loves to pass because it’s the one part of the game in which creative personal expression is most put to the service of others. It’s the place on the court where individuality and community merge.

Continuity might partly explain clutch.

One of the stories of this Grizzlies season is a carry over: The team’s ongoing tendency to exceed “expected wins.” In the NBA, point-differential and win-loss record tends to correlate, with divergence generally considered more noise than signal. But this pattern is hard to ignore:

Grizzlies Expected Wins/Real Wins Year by Year:

2016-2017: “Expected Wins”: 13, Real Wins: 17, Differential: +4

2015-2016: “Expected Wins”: 35, Real Wins: 42, Differential: +7

2014-2015: “Expected Wins”: 50, Real Wins: 55, Differential: +5

2013-2014: “Expected Wins”: 46, Real Wins: 50, Differential: +4

2012-2013: “Expected Wins”: 54, Real Wins: 56, Differential: +2

2011-2012: “Expected Wins”: 38, Real Wins: 41, Differential: +3

There’s no a clear-cut explanation for the Grizzlies’ tendency to overperform this expectation. They’ve tended to be a slower-paced team with a good defense and a middling offense, which leads to lower scoring games, and perhaps this has something to do with the volume of close games they play. But it doesn’t explain their tendency to win those close games. There’s thought to be a randomness to the outcome of games that come down to only a few possessions. And yet:

Grizzlies “Clutch” Net Rating/Rank:

2016-2017: +30.4 (2nd)

2015-2016: +12.0 (7th)

2014-2015: +14.2 (5th)

2013-2014: +26.2 (1st)

2012-2013: +8.4 (9th)

2011-2012: +14.4 (6th)

These are things that are sometimes credited to coaching, but, for the Grizzlies, close-game execution has been fairly consistent across three different coaching regimes. I’d offer the theory that the team's continuity has something to do with this. That that which is bigger than basketball comes into play.

Despite constant roster and coaching change around them, the continuity of the Grizzlies' core four has fostered a stability that manifests itself in defensive trust and offensive acceptance, a team that has a greater ability than most to lock in defensively during tight moments and that has a certainty and faith about its crunch-time offense that’s rare among non-star-driven teams.

The focus of this crunch-time success tends to be on shot-making, with Mike Conley and Marc Gasol both among the most productive crunch-time scorers in the NBA this season. But while the Grizzlies’ clutch offense has been good this season, the defense has been better. Speaking of which ...

The core has subcomponents.

Like any group of friends, the Grizzlies core often splits into subgroups — duos, especially — with their own specific characters.

Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph — the “Brothers from Another Mother” (so sayeth Brevin Knight), the “Big Trains from Memphis” (so sayeth me) — have historically been the Grizzlies’ most evocative buddy tandem, a modern-day Bill Laimbeer/Rick Mahorn whose meaning is rooted in their background differences in race and privilege, in the union of hardscrabble Marion and beautiful Barcelona.

Marc Gasol and Mike Conley has been its own thing — a pick-and-roll partnership like a modern-day Stockon-to-Malone, a brainy, versatile pairing that’s risen together from the middle of the team’s pecking order to the top together, while mirroring each other in their off-court journey to domesticity. (There’s a reason “Mike Conley’s Dad Jokes” works so well.)

There’s also Tony Allen and Zach Randolph, the team tough guys who’ve bootstrapped their way to success and contentment. Allen is a wild man who defers to Randolph. To say Allen always passes the ball to Z-Bo is a joking exaggeration born out of real observation. There’s a big guy/little guy, measured/chaotic balance here that leads you (or at least me) to reach beyond basketball for illustration. I’ve proffered Public Enemy’s blend of frontman Chuck D and jester Flavor Flav in the past. There’s just a hint of Robert DeNiro/Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas.” Maybe a little Groot/Rocket from “Guardians of the Galaxy”?

Grizzlies' Allen gets groove back on both sides of basketball

But with Conley out and Randolph now anchoring the team’s bench, the Grizzlies' clutch-driven current win streak has shifted the spotlight to a different core duo that has never really developed their own persona: Tony Allen and Marc Gasol.

With the Grizzlies rising to the very top of NBA defensive rankings largely on the strength of both Gasol and Allen reversing what many expected to be an unavoidable decline, it’s been a reminder that Gasol and Allen have always been the foundation of a defense that’s always been the foundation of the team.

Men of the Matches

Marc Gasol was the Player of the Week in the NBA, so he’s obviously been the best player for the Grizzlies. But additional credit must be paid here to both Tony Allen and JaMychal Green.

In the team’s six-game winning streak, Allen averaged 13 points and 8 rebounds with 2 steals while shooting 56 percent from the floor, and making his greatest impact, in full Agent of Chaos mode, in the fourth quarters.

In addition to the resurgence of Tony Allen Doing Tony Allen Things, one apparent change in Allen’s game is paying dividends: He’s generating the fewest percentage of his points from mid-range in his career and the greatest percentage in the paint, exchanging erratic jumpers for a newly crafty post game.

Green is, of late, rebounding at the level needed to thrive in his current role, averaging 10 points and 13 rebounds during the six-game streak, and, as mentioned before, his emergence as a high-level defender (doing good work this season on bigger players as varied as Karl-Anthony Towns and Kevin Durant) has had a catalytic effect, freeing Gasol to focus on the gestalt of team defense.

Those “clutch” numbers we talk about with Conley and Gasol? JaMychal Green is third, league-wide, in clutch minutes played (because Grizzlies) and has the best plus/minus in the NBA in those situations.

Tweet of the Week

100 (or so) Word Previews

At Cleveland Cavaliers (Tuesday)/Vs. Cleveland Cavaliers (Wednesday):

Well, once, maybe, if we’re lucky. The Grizzlies carry a six-game win streak and a victory over the current Western Conference leaders and defending Western Conference champs into a meeting with the current Eastern Conference leaders and defending NBA champs. But unless we get a repeat of the kind of heroics last seen when the Grizzlies were in Cleveland (The Tony Allen/Lance Stephenson Wonder Twins Game), the fun times might end tonight. Marc Gasol did not make the trip, which is probably for the best, as he’s been playing heavy minutes of late and loading him up on another back-to-back probably was not wise. Having a refreshed Gasol at home on Wednesday night when Cleveland is on the road for the back-to-back gives the Grizzlies a better chance at a split.

Cleveland has the NBA’s third-best offense this season, but their defense has been a little leaky (17th) and their depth has taken a little hit this season. While Lebron James is always the show, I feel like the interesting subplots here are in the frontcourt: Can the Grizzlies handle Kevin Love better now with JaMychal Green in the starting lineup? And how do the Cavs confront a more aggressive, more perimeter-oriented Marc Gasol? On the perimeter, with Kyrie Irving and Lebron both capable of exploding, where do the Grizzlies decide to deploy Tony Allen? Do rookies Andrew Harrison and Troy Williams respond as well defensively here as they did against Golden State? These games could go bad for the Grizzlies — that seems likely tonight — but there could be a lot to learn here.

Vs. Sacramento Kings (Friday): This is shaping up as the most interesting Grizzlies game of the season against a lottery team. Sacramento is the model of mediocrity: They’re 9-15, close enough to a playoff spot to chase it but probably not good enough to get it. They’re bad but not terrible on both ends of the floor (17th offense, 21st defense). But they’re an interesting mediocre, especially on their first trip to Memphis this season: Dave Joerger facing off against the coach who replaced him. The two best true centers in the NBA, Marc Gasol and DeMarcus Cousins, adding a new chapter to their recurring Battle of the Hosses. (This, truly, is alone worth the price of admission.) The awkward joint returns of Rudy Gay and (hey, back in the news) Matt Barnes.

Vs. Utah Jazz (Sunday): The Jazz have been something of the anti-Grizzlies over the past couple of seasons, winning less than their overall production would suggest. This season, they’re one of only four teams in the NBA currently in the Top Ten in both offense and defense, joining the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers. Where they haven’t been able to join those teams yet is in the Top 4 of the Western Conference, as the Jazz still lag behind the Rockets, Grizzlies and even Thunder at 15-10.

But the Jazz have won eight of their past 10 games, the only losses by single digits against the Warriors and by a single point to Miami. And their projected starting lineup of George Hill-Rodney Hood-Gordon Hayward-Derrick Favors-Rudy Gobert has still played only 12 minutes together this season. I’d still place my bets on Utah to be a top-four seed this season. But they played without three of those starters in their most recent game, so both teams may be limited in this one.