<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Forgive me if this post — my first since before Christmas — is more optimistic than a 9-22 team that’s lost 12 of their past 15 games warrants. I was out of town for all of the Christmas-New Year’s stretch and was spared a three-game losing streak in which the Grizzlies lost by an average of more than 20 points a game, all against division rivals, twice at home, and were booed by the home crowd. The last two games I’ve seen were the ones that bracketed that streak — a disappointing but not demoralizing loss at home to Philly where Andre Iguodala did his best Travis Outlaw impression with the game winner and a big win last night at Indiana. And those two games suggest, more than anything this season, what this team could and should be but certainly hasn’t been so far: A “star” finally rounding into form with two 30-10 games (I know Pau Gasol apparently had a terrible game against the Hornets over the holidays, but his play has been generally trending up for the past several weeks, even with the toe-injury hiccup), an emerging star in Rudy Gay that’s an impact scorer at least 80-percent of the time, and — FINALLY — a real point guard running the show with the return of Mike Conley. Reading box scores and game reports from afar during this recent bad stretch, I started thinking about the reasons why this team has been so much worse than even ostensibly realistic onlookers expected. I know fans apparently booed Gasol, the ultimate whipping boy for all things wrong with the team, but, despite having his least effective season so far, I don’t think Gasol’s been one of the bigger problems this season. (Which doesn’t mean there isn’t a strong rationale to trade him.) The biggest problem has probably been coaching. I thought Marc Iavaroni was a great hire at the time and he impresses me personally. And I still think he has a chance to be a great head coach. But there’s no denying that he’s struggled more than anyone expected. With the NBA generally thought of as a player’s league, I think coaching is sometimes undervalued. Two of the teams that have exceeded my own expectations this season are the Pacers (whom I expected to be among the league’s worst teams) and the Magic (whom I expected to be around .500 despite the presence of Dwight Howard). What do those teams have in common — new, proven veteran coaches in Jim O’Brien and Stan Van Gundy. Those coaches have maximized their talent, much as Hubie Brown and Mike Fratello did here. Iavaroni is not a proven veteran coach, but a rookie head coach, and he’s looked like it. This team’s talent isn’t great, but it’s much better than its record and when a team underperforms, the onus has to fall first on the coaching staff. Beyond that, the two biggest factors to explain the losing that I came up with were these two inter-related problems: Poor point-guard play and poor turnover differential. In today’s NBA — a smaller, quicker game with tighter hand-check calls — it seems that the point guard has more impact on winning and losing than any other individual position, with a strong correlation between quality point guard play and won-loss record. For evidence look at point-guard rankings based on John Hollinger’s PER stat (an imperfect but generally useful indicator of overall play, especially on the offensive end) and compare them to team success. With Hollinger’s PER, he sets the league-average to 15. Of the 8 teams with starting point guards sporting n PER of at least 18.0 (Hornets, Pistons, Suns, Raptors, Spurs, Mavs, Warriors, Jazz), all have winning records. Of the 9 teams with starting point guards with a PER of below 13.0, only two — Nuggets and Hawks — have winning records. In both cases, those teams have all-star level scoring guards (Allen Iverson and Joe Johnson, respectively) who are the team’s primary ball-handlers. Damon Stoudamire ranks 26th out of 30 starting point guards in PER (ahead of Houston’s Rafer Alston, Miami’s Jason Williams, Chicago’s badly slumping Kirk Hinrich, and Minnesota’s Sebastian Telfair) and on a team that really needs its point guard to run the show. The Grizzlies don’t have Iverson or Johnson or Tracy McGrady or Dwyane Wade to take up the slack. They have Mike Miller. Kyle Lowry has been slightly better off the bench, but has also regressed from his quality play early in his rookie year — worn down and exposed by the grind of his first full season, he looks better suited to be an energy guy in the Earl Watson mode than a full-time starter. Together, Stoudamire and Lowry have given the Grizzlies among the poorest point-guard play in the league. And that is probably the biggest reason for the team’s abysmal turnover differential, which, at -3.4 is by far the worst in the league. (Seattle is next at -2.2.) This might sound like too technical a point to make for a team struggling so much, but it’s a small element that has a big impact. The Grizzlies have been a bad rebounding team this season (currently 27th in rebound rate), but this team has been bad on the boards for years. When the Grizzlies made the playoffs, under Hubie Brown and, to a slightly lesser extent, under Mike Fratello, they partially negated their rebounding problems by having a strong (under Hubie) or at least respectable (under Fratello) turnover differentials. Put simply: The team gave up a few possessions a game on the boards, but got some or most of them back by winning the turnover battle, taking care of the ball offensively and forcing turnovers on the defensive end with (again, under Hubie, particularly), an aggressive, deflecting style. This season, instead of a positive turnover differential mitigating the team’s poor rebounding, a negative turnover differential has instead compounded the team’s rebounding problems. The result has been a gulf in scoring opportunities that has been too much to overcome. Just look at the difference between the Grizzlies field-goal attempts per game and those of their opponents in the three playoff seasons compared to this season: Year Griz-Opp. 03-04: 81.2 - 79.9 (+1.3) 04-05 76.5 – 75.8 (+0.7) 05-06: 74.7 – 75.3 (-0.6) 07-08: 79.9 – 86.6 (-6.7) You can’t let you opponent get nearly 7 more shots a game and hope to win unless you’re a really solid defensive team, which the Grizzlies (28th in field-goal percentage defense) most definitely are not. Given how crippling poor point-guard play and a league-worst turnover differential has been for a team already struggling defensively and on the boards, nothing could be more encouraging than the return and elevation of Mike Conley. (And keeping the rookie in the starting lineup at 30+ minutes a night is a good step to alleviating some of those coaching concerns, too.) In his first NBA start last night against the Pacers, Conley was splendid, racking up 8 assists and 3 steals to only 1 turnover (a traveling call) in 35 minutes. Unlike Stoudamire (a shooting specialist, allegedly) and Lowry (a energy and defending specialist, ditto, sadly), Conley is a pure point guard who impacts both ends of the floor. Per-minute, Conley has so far generated both more steals and (far) fewer turnovers than the other point guards (and, obviously, assists). Having him on the floor puts less playmaking pressure on Mike Miller, who has a higher turnover rate (14.9) than anyone in the rotation not named “Darko Milicic.” Essentially, Conley has a chance to single-handedly cure the Grizzlies’ turnover-differential problem. With Conley presumably ensconced in the starting lineup permanently, the Grizzlies have a dynamic point guard for the first time since Jason Williams left town. And you could see the difference last night. The team moved the ball better and the primary scorers got the ball in good spots and good rhythm and responded: Gasol with 30, Gay with 24, Miller with 19. Conley’s assists were rarely flashy last night — though one fast-break dime where he led Mike Miller with a bounce pass while blocking the path of a looming defender showed a glimpse of the kind of vision and timing J-Will had at his best. Instead, he routinely put the ball in the hands of the team’s best shooters (Miller and Gay, particularly) in position to rise up for open shots. He ran the team. Conley will get better shots for everyone and take ball-handling and playmaking pressure off everyone. He makes the Grizzlies a viable running team instead of a team that wants to be a viable running team. There’s a false assumption that fast-paced play feeds turnovers, which may be true with poor point-guard play. But, with a good, well-equipped point guard running the show, a quick tempo tends to discourage turnovers. Golden State and Phoenix, for instance, are third and fifth in turnover rate, respectively. (The Grizzlies are 28th.) Pairing Conley and Lowry (who hopefully can recapture his rookie energy with fewer minutes) also allows the team to exert defensive pressure at the point guard spot for 48 minutes a game. He can transform everything — both the competitive quality of team play and the aesthetic quality of team play. The game just looks a like better with a real point guard out there. Now, I know it might sound like I’m writing Conley’s induction speech for the hoops hall of fame here, but I’m not. He’s a 20-year-old rookie point guard. He won’t play as well as he did against Indiana every night, and fans have to be prepared to allow him to experience some growing pains. With the Grizzlies far too deep in the hole to even think about the playoffs this season, there shouldn’t be a problem allowing Conley to play his way through the bad stretches. And I don’t think he’s the next Chris Paul — the MVP candidate down the highway has rocketed past those potential comparisons this season. But Conley is legit. His ball-handling, quickness, court vision, passing skills, and poise give him an all-star-level skill set. He’s the team’s fourth-best player already (after Gasol, Gay, and Miller) and would probably pass Miller on that list by this time next season. He looks like a Tony Parker/T.J. Ford hybrid in the making. Last night’s game was the first this season that the Grizzlies put their ideal starting lineup on the floor — Conley-Miller-Gay-Gasol-Darko. And, even though the win was against a mediocre team in the middle of a bad stretch, you could still see how the parts fit: You had three complementary scorers — inside (Gasol), outside (Miller), and slasher (Gay) — with a real point guard facilitating good shots. And you had a quality post defender (Darko – whatever his struggles in other areas this year, he’s probably the best post defender the team has had) taking defensive pressure off Gasol. Ideally, maybe you replace Miller with a sniper who’s a more rugged defender (someone in the Raja Bell mode), but that’s a team that can and should be pretty decent. It’s far too late to make a run this season and big changes (potentially including Gasol and Miller, more thoughts on that later) may well make a lot of sense. But, with Conley finally in the lineup, the Grizzlies should start resembling a respectable basketball team again. And, with Conley and Gay developing alongside one another, should start to give fans a sense of hope for the future.</div> Source: Beyond the Arc Blog
