Kiwi Steve in the NBA #8: At Season’s End
The Memphis Grizzlies came to an inglorious conclusion as they were bounced in the first round by a seventh seed. Steven Adams didn’t play a single game after the month of January and that whole situation has been kept annoyingly murky. Without him their youthful brashness got exposed by LeBron James and his Los Angeles Lakers and now all the neutrals seem to hate the Memphis Grizzlies, revelling in their downfall. It’s been a strange few weeks, that’s for sure.
It’s best not to focus too much on the hive mind NBA hot takes industry. The same folks who are shredding this team now were boosting them up not so long ago, these things swing in roundabouts when the whole economy is built around disposable opinions. Like, no dramas with Joel Embiid winning the MVP award as inevitably did happen... but the amount of Nikola Jokic slander that’s been hurled around as if he was some kind of imposter and not the best player on the planet (top three, undoubtedly, only the true haters can deny it) was absolutely baffling. Now the Memphis Grizzlies are in that spotlight. Luckily this too shall pass.
Without Steve-o playing there hasn’t been much point in keeping up the regular articles about him but with the season in the rearview there’s suddenly a fair bit to catch up on. The impact of not having Adams out there. The Lakers series in general. The reversal of public opinion around this team. Dillon Brooks. The Grizzlies moving into next season and beyond. But first, an injury update.
The Knee Of Steve
Among the many bummers of Steven Adams being injured for so long was that he didn’t end up doing an exit interview. Those yarns are always one of the highlights of the season, the light-hearted tone mixed with genuine analysis of the campaign that was always lends itself beautifully to that particular self-deferential charisma of Funaki. Sadly he didn’t appear to be with the team for their game six defeat in Los Angeles (at least he wasn’t visible on the bench as he usually has been) and thus he didn’t pop up at the podium a couple days later either. His offseason had already begun.
Ah well. But one bloke who did do exit interview duties was general manager Zach Kleiman and he had some educational words to offer. There still hasn’t been any proper update to the diagnosis of a posterior cruciate ligament sprain, which required a stem cell injection about a month ago, but after having to deal with a mix of radio silence and weirdly vague comments like this...
... there does now seem to be some clarity about Adams moving forward. No surgery required. Just a long-ish term rehab programme which should have him ready to rock by the start of next season. Supposing that all goes to plan, of course.
“We’ve been been consulting with experts just making sure, we’re putting a pin in the plan before we put anything out. The plan for Steven is a rehab plan in place that Steven’s going to be diving into. The target for Steven is to return at the beginning of next season. That’s the hope for everyone going into this offseason.”
“To clarify on Steven, the approach is non-surgical. Not a procedure, just a dedicated rehab plan that we’re putting in place with the target being that Steven will return at or around the beginning of next season.”
Now we know.
Rather significant issue with that, however, is this timeline does not match with the rumours that Adams was going to end his national team holdout and play for the Tall Blacks at the upcoming FIBA World Cup in August. Legitimate whisperings from reliable sources had built up some hope... but if the Grizzlies are setting him up to be ready in October then he’s surely not going to be allowed to divert from that path in September, nor is he expected to be ready then anyway. Adams himself isn’t really one to take that risk either.
Other Grizzlies players are expected to go to the World Cup – Santi Aldama is in line to make the Spanish team while Dillon Brooks should have a shot at the Canadian team (although he won’t be a Grizzly by then). Brandon Clarke is also Canadian but same as Adams his injury is going to keep him out. Might even get a bro or two on the American team (Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr?) who have been drawn to play against the New Zealand side, along with Greece and Jordan, in pool play. It’s a stink one but you can’t do much about injuries. They happen. Just gotta deal with ‘em as they come along.
The Value Of A Starting Centre
This was a wild season and Steven Adams’ absence down the stretch was definitely not the only issue. Brandon Clarke was also ruled out for the season. Ja Morant had to sit in the naughty corner for a couple of weeks. Actually, the latter worked out okay for them in the long run as it forced the Grizzlies to play through Jaren Jackson Jr which is part of what helped them steady the ship to lock down that second seed.
In hindsight that wasn’t ideal because it served them up against a resurgent and retooled Los Angeles Lakers... although we all know that would’ve been a different story had Adams been available. In an earlier Steve-o yarn we chucked up some Memphis Grizzlies team stats with and without Steven Adams based on the first eleven games after his injury. Now we can serve up the full season splits and you can already guess it does not make for pretty reading...
MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES BEFORE/AFTER STEVEN ADAMS INJURY
A couple of those numbers stayed quite similar. That they kept it nice and steady in opposition second chance points and opposition points in the paint is one of the better indicators of why Jackson went on to win Defensive Player of the Year. Extra pressure on him with the starting centre and also the main backup both injured yet he continued to dominate the defensive rim... and with a boost in offensive touches you can make a similar case (though not nearly so emphatically) up the other end of the court too. Their own PITP did drop without Steve but not drastically. Remember that Ja Morant gets about a third of those per game and he missed time also.
The extra JJJ scoring had a bit to do with the field goal percentage holding firm. JJJ responded to Morant’s suspension by averaging 25.5 points on 56% shooting the rest of the way – with the Grizz going 10-4 over that stretch and Jackson didn’t play in two of those losses. It was enough that Morant made claims about this being Jackson’s team now and how he was willing to play off the bench so as not to disrupt that rhythm. Clearly the bro was getting carried away but the shift in balance was undeniably helpful. This team lost six of the first seven games post-Adams injury. From Adams getting hurt up until the Morant suspension, JJJ was scoring 18.3 points on 46.4% field goals. Compare that to what happened after Morant’s suspension. This wasn’t a random hot streak. This was a specific (and necessary) shift in focus that had a positive outcome upon the team.
The three-point accuracy went up too. Not by much and the overall ranking actually went down. But the percentage rose. However that’s misleading because they traded for Luke Kennard at the deadline and LK shot a disgustingly good 49.4% from deep over the full season. That’s the best average in the entire league for players who attempted at least 30 deep shots (Kennard attempted 269 of them). So think about that for a second. The Grizzlies added one of the very best triple threats in the league... and their team average only went up by 0.2%? Yeah, this was a sneaky decline in disguise.
Just like how their points per game dropped off, their offensive rebounding plummeted, their overall rebounding went from the best in the business to mid-table mediocrity, both offensive and defensive ratings had big chunks eaten out of them, second-chance points disappeared, and most of all they didn’t win nearly as many games. He may not be an All Star, he may not have a max contract, he may not even be everybody’s cup of tea as a non-scoring big man... but Steven Adams makes the Memphis Grizzlies much better. Proof. Pudding. Therein.
Fun fact: Steven Adams finished 15th in the NBA for offensive rebounds this season with 214 of them. He only played 42 games. Nobody who played as many or fewer minutes than him had more than 138 ORebs (Andre Drummond).
Elimination... And Beyond
With the very clearly proven influence of Steven Adams missing, the Grizzlies lost to a strong Lakers team in six games. Got blown out in the closer. Just didn’t have the capacity, thus the better team emerged victorious. Seems weird to say about a seventh seed against a second seed but the quality of those two franchises across the majority of the regular season was not reflected in who they were come playoffs time. Grizzlies got worse due to injuries and distractions. Lakers got much better due to some clever trades at the deadline and also that LeBron James bloke switching into playoff mode.
However the main man of the series was not LBJ. It was Anthony Davis who was utterly uncontainable, the Lakers outscoring the Grizz by 69 points in the 218 minutes that AD was on the court for during that series – the best mark of any individual player throughout all of the first round series. Meanwhile the Grizzlies did have one secret weapon of their own: Luke Kennard. Except that Kennard only played 107 mins despite having a +39 which literally made him the only Grizzly with a positive on-court plus/minus. He was injured for the hefty game six defeat which explains some of that but he was also shamefully underused through the first few games by coach Jenkins.
There’s little chance that Steven Adams could’ve single-handedly contained a future Hall of Famer like Anthony Davis... but he obviously would have helped. His presence would also have freed up JJJ a lot more, as Jackson didn’t again score 20+ after getting 31 in game one. Basically, if your starting centre is missing and the opponents have a superstar big fella then you’re in danger.
Hence it’s crazy how much folks have overreacted to the Grizzlies elimination. A lot of that is snobbery from people who didn’t like Dillon Brooks trying to be the big man talking trash to the king. After all, this is a team that had already gathered up plenty of haters for their perceived cockiness. It’s all good fun. None of it has crossed the line, not even the poking the bear stuff. We want heroes and villains in our sports as it makes everything that much more exciting. The problem is that the Memphis Grizzlies didn’t back it up with wins.
But that wasn’t because of misplaced arrogance... they lost because they had a really disrupted second half of the season, especially when it came to injuries. There are plenty of concerns out there. Taylor Jenkins has been thoroughly out-coached in their last couple playoff series exits. They don’t have enough jump shooting. Their youth/inexperience becomes much more of a hurdle in the playoffs. Perhaps also there was a feeling that things would flow smoother after making the second round last year, that it’d be exponential growth from there. If so then they’ve had their wake-up call now. There were also discipline issues with Morant, sure, but those were dealt with and now it’s up to Morant to do better. Don’t blame that.
Another point: all the talking heads demanding that the Memphis Grizzlies need more veterans... they probably do. It would’ve been nice to find a way to keep Danny Green and clearly they missed having Kyle Anderson on the bench. But Steven Adams is a veteran leader for this team. He wasn’t playing. This wasn’t the representative Memphis Grizzlies. They’re in a much more positive place than The Narrative suggests.
Including this Dillon Brooks stuff. Brooks put himself into the position of being the focus of attention with his comments about guarding LeBron James. Alas, that didn’t work out so well for him. Nor did it help that he dodged the media as soon as things started to go astray. Then the series ended and pretty soon there was news, via Shams Charania, that the Memphis Grizzlies would not be bringing impending free agent Brooks back “under any circumstances”.
Savage wording there, especially as the free agency period doesn’t start for several weeks. That in turn led to armies of social media commenters (and Kendrick Perkins – Steve-o really needs to have a word with his old teammate because that bro has lost his damn mind) going at the Grizzlies for ‘scapegoating’ DB... which is funny considering how the same people scapegoated him during the Lakers series. But actually there was no evidence that the organisation had been the ones to leak that news to old mate Shams. In fact generally speaking Shams is rumoured to get a lot of his scoops from players and agents, whereas his arch nemesis Adrian Wojnarowski is more of the team front office guy.
Having said that, this was Dillon Brooks’ agent in response...
So we don’t know exactly what’s going on there. But what we do know is that Brooks has been a well-liked member of the Grizzlies organisation and while he can run hot and cold on the court his defence is widely respected enough that he just bagged NBA All-Defensive Second Team honours.
Nah, the reason they’re not bringing him back has nothing to do with his attitude or the team culture or chemistry or any of those easy target ideas. The reason he’s not coming back is about basketball. This is a team with known three-point deficiencies and Brooks shot 32.6% from deep this term. Ja Morant also sucks from the perimeter and Steven Adams doesn’t have range (at least not that he deploys in games) and you can’t really have a starting five with only two reliable jump shooters in the modern NBA. To make matters worse, Brooks shot 34.9% from the field in last year’s playoffs and 31.2% from the field in this year’s playoffs – seriously inefficient in the biggest moments. That is why he’s being let go. None of the dramatic takes. Purely basketball.
Also maybe a wee bit of financials too. Ja Morant’s new contract kicks in next season and Jaren Jackson’s has already hit while Tyus Jones, Brandon Clarke, Luke Kennard, and Steven Adams are on eight figure salaries (Jones for next season alone, the rest for at least two more), plus Desmond Bane is eligible for an extension this offseason. There are ways to wrangle these things together but basically the Grizzlies would be up against a monster tax if they kept both so they’ve chosen Desmond Bane over Dillon Brooks... as pretty much every organisation in the league would have done in the same situation.
Other than that... the roster is pretty well set. They’ll probably take the team option on Xavier Tillman’s deal and beyond that Brooks is the only notable free agent. Could be some trades but knowing this team you can expect them to have intentions of internal growth taking them to the next level. Zaire Williams. David Roddy. Santi Aldama. Kenneth Lofton. Jake LaRavia. There are some solid prospects there so we’re probably just looking at a free agent wing defender who can shoot threes. Ideally an experienced fella to balance out the youth.
Fact is, the Memphis Grizzlies may have flamed out in the playoffs but the trajectory hasn’t changed. They’re still an exciting young team with designs upon competing in the West for many years to come. Switch up their starting small forward and harmonise the offensive scheme, that oughta do the trick as long as they can keep the main lads healthy – which in fairness has been very rare for this franchise, with all of their starters suffering extended injury lay-offs over the last two years alone. Evolution rather than revolution is the aim of the game.
Wild thing is we’re two years into the Steven Adams x Memphis Grizzlies thing and Adams has played a mere 114 playoff minutes across three series. If you think that doesn’t make a difference then you’d better read this page over again from the start.
SLAM DUNKS
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