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The Memphis Grizzlies' Personality Transplant Is Going Great

The Grit and Grind Grizzlies have been one of the NBA's most distinctive teams. But in a league that's changing fast, they knew they needed to adapt. They did.
Photo by Justin Ford-USA TODAY Sports

For the Memphis Grizzlies over the past half-decade, Grit And Grind has been a way of life. As the NBA transformed around them into an uptempo haven for pace-and-space bombing, the Grizzlies stayed true to what made them contenders in the first place. Over the last four years, the team has never finished above 26th in pace, and as the Lionel Hollins era turned into the Dave Joerger era, the team never finished outside of the league's top nine in points-against-per-100-possessions from 2010-11 through 2014-15. The team defended hard, scowled to beat the band, and scrounged together just enough offense to make a Western Conference Finals trip in 2013 and a pair of second round playoff appearances.

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The Grizz averaged 51.6 wins per year over that time, but never quite escaped "contender" limbo to emerge as a realistic threat for a championship. It wasn't out of the question for them to make a run to the Finals in any of those seasons, but it never seemed like it was in their control. They needed the right matchup, or an unsustainable run of shooting at just the right time, or a lot of luck. There are far worse places to be in the NBA than a perpetual state of distinctive, admirable pseudo-contendership. But after a while, all that consistency can start to feel claustrophobic; a lack of upward growth can give way to a feeling of inertia and dormancy.

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Then 2015-16 hit, and hit hard. Memphis finished 42-40, but was so decimated with injuries that it set records for rostered players in a single season. The Grizzlies backed into the playoffs and were unceremoniously swept by San Antonio. This gave them an early start on what seemed like one of the most important offseasons in franchise history. There was a coach to retain, or not. There was the question of whether Mike Conley would be willing to sign on as the cornerstone of an aging and transitioning roster whose core only had Marc Gasol signed beyond the 2016-17 season. And, above all, there was the question of whether it was time to rebuild from the ground up if Conley decided he'd rather move on.

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Conley stayed and Joerger left, but the more important answer, to that final question, is a resounding "no." In fact, there might not be a team in the NBA that has transformed its persona as rapidly as the Grizzlies have this offseason. After a coaching change, a terrific draft, and a stellar free agency period, the Grizzlies have undergone an offensive transformation so thorough that it puts them directly on track for a full personality transplant within two years. After a half-decade of defense-minded success, the Grizzlies look poised to become an offensive force in years to come.

The first step came before the season ended. After repeated power struggles and requests to interview elsewhere, Joerger was fired, and replaced by former Miami Heat assistant David Fizdale. Fizdale is best-known around the league for his ability to communicate with stars and bench players alike, but he is also regarded as a strong Xs and Os mind who particularly excels on the offensive end. He understands that the roster he'll inherit is still a defensive one, but already he's discussing changing things toward the more modern NBA game.

When you consider the possibility of giving Tony Allen instructions. Photo by Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

"They already have some ingredients in place to have a running team, a team that can at play at a higher pace," Fizdale said at his introductory press conference in May. "I don't envision this team as Golden State by any means from the standpoint of getting up and down the court and launching a ton of threes. But when you have a team that has defensive habits like the Memphis Grizzlies already have, that have been built by the coaches that have already come through here, and the kind of toughness and the ability to rebound the ball defensively like that, you put Tony Allen in that mix as a disruptive defender, Mike Conley as a steals guy—there's no reason we shouldn't be getting that ball off the glass, getting steals, and getting the ball up the floor a lot faster. I'm going to space the floor a little differently, there were some things we did in Miami that were useful and helpful. But at the end of the day, we've got to make sure our defense is creating offense."

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In conjunction with the coaching change, the front office has made moves to reflect that renewed focus on the offensive end. That began at the draft, when the team selected Wade Baldwin, a combo guard out of Vanderbilt who can back up Conley at the point and also play in some lineups with him at the two due to his size at 6-foot-4 with a 6-foot-11 wingspan. He's still a work in progress in terms of his ability to create for his teammates in an efficient and effective way—he has a tendency to get downhill too quickly, and doesn't change his pace or direction well enough yet with his dribble—but he hit over 40 percent of his threes in each of the last two seasons, and knocked down catch-and-shoot jumpers at a 62.3 effective field-goal percentage last year, which was good for the 87th percentile nationally. Baldwin should help the team space the floor in a wide variety of lineups due to his versatility and length.

In the second round, the team traded the future first-round pick it got in the Jeff Green deal earlier this spring for picks No. 31 and 35, which they used on Deyonta Davis and Rade Zagorac. Davis was considered a potential lottery pick coming into the draft—he was invited to the draft's green room—but ultimately fell out of the first round due to concerns over his work ethic. He's a promising upside play as an athletic, 6-foot-10 forward who rebounds and defends, and if his apprenticeship with the team's veterans works out, he could end up as a solid replacement for Zach Randolph at some point within the next couple of seasons. Zagorac was a late-first, early-second round level prospect whose calling card is his creativity and ability to score from the wing. It's a skill set that the Grizzlies seriously have lacked over the last few years, and he filled a legitimate need for the team at the time of his selection.

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But that was then. Since draft night, the Grizzlies showed a new willingness to spend, and effectively retooled in free agency. They signed Conley to the largest contract in NBA history—something that would have been somewhat unthinkable just a few years earlier in a small-to-mid market like Memphis—then signed Chandler Parsons to a maximum deal of four years, $94 million. That's around $247 million guaranteed spent in a matter of hours, and a massive shift in organizational direction, a major message sent about Memphis' ability to acquire marquee players.

Shown here: a player doing things that Memphis Grizzlies players generally do not do. Photo by Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

We already know what Conley means to the Grizzlies. He's the team's metronomic heartbeat in the backcourt, having endeared himself to Memphis fans forever in last year's playoff series against Golden State by playing through a broken orbital bone in his eye socket. Parsons' fit, however, is still more theoretical. Still, it's easy to see where his compatibility with the rest of the roster will help. First and foremost, Parsons should provide necessary floor-spacing that the team lacked in recent years. The team finished 25th in three-point attempts and 29th in accuracy a year ago, which significantly hindered their offense. A season ago, Parsons hit 41.4 percent of his 251 attempts, and is a legitimate perimeter threat that must be defended expertly away from the basket. Once the defense is forced to close out on him, Parsons is one of the better players in the NBA at making a quick decision and attacking bigger defenders off-the-dribble before they are able to adjust and get back into defensive position.

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More than that though, Parsons adds a new playmaking dynamic that the offense was painfully missing over the last few years. The 6-foot-9 forward has developed the ability to operate out of the pick-and-roll from the wing, a skill that the Grizzlies have really missed in recent years. He can act as a secondary ball-handler to take pressure off Conley and force the defense into different looks, and can create plays both for himself around the basket as well as with his improving passing acumen. During his stint with the Mavericks, Parsons developed a valuable knack for getting his big men the ball, both around the basket off of a roll as well as away from the basket in pops; these are skills that should compliment Gasol and Brandan Wright well.

Early in the year, Parsons was mostly just comfortable hitting the roll man near the basket. But as he and Dirk Nowitzki began to develop a rapport, Dirk started to slip screens in order to get just an extra split-second of lead time on the defense, and Parsons became adept at timing those plays well. It's a skill that should translate especially well to playing with Gasol, who's one of the smarter players in the league at knowing when to slip screens and when to make contact.

With Parsons, Conley, Zach Randolph, and Gasol on the floor, it's easy to imagine these Grizzlies as one of the more unselfish teams in the league, just a year after finishing 25th in assist rate. Instead of having multiple weak links or one-dimensional offensive players on the floor in crunch time, it's likely there will only be one. Memphis has always made teams work on offense; they will no longer give them a break on the other end.

Add all of this up—and factor in a lottery-ticket two-year, $6 million deal for well-travelled wing James Ennis, who finished a nine-game sample down the stretch with the Pelicans by scoring 16 points per game—and the Grizzlies should be markedly different in 2016-17. Last year, the team entered the season with Conley, Gasol, Randolph, a passel of question marks on the wing, and some looming doubts about the long-term viability of the roster. This season, they come in with three pieces, Parsons on the wing, a shiny new point guard prospect, and a core that's signed through 2020. Given the injury concerns surrounding Conley, Parsons, and Gasol, there's a chance that this entire thing backfires. But when you're building a team in a not-so-major market, all you can ask for is short-term success and a long-term plan for contention. This summer has gone a long way toward providing both.

It's hard to imagine the Grit and Grind ideal fully disappearing any time soon—not as long as Randolph and Tony Allen, each of whom only have just one year left on their deals, are around. That being said, the Grizzlies are officially on the track toward transitioning successfully out of that era, and merging with the modern NBA. The Grizz have been among the most steadfastly slow teams in the entire league for the last half-decade, on purpose, but their deft on-the-fly re-imagining couldn't have happened any quicker.

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