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Hollins’ Ouster Puts Memphis’ Brass Squarely On The Hot Seat

June 10, 2013  ·  10:22PM


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HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – RIP, GnG?

Lionel Hollins, the gruff, old-school head coach who delivered the embraceable blue-collar, Grit-and-Grind identity to the once-floundering Memphis Grizzlies, is officially out. And the organization’s new ownership group, led by young tech billionaire Robert Pera and his analytics-charged management team headed by CEO Jason Levien, is officially on the hot seat to keep a good thing going.

The apparent choice to replace Hollins has been his understudy, Grizzlies assistant Dave Joerger. Joerger is credited as the architect of Memphis’ stone-cold defense and would take over a club that won a franchise-best 56 games and appeared in its first Western Conference finals.

“On behalf of the Grizzlies organization I would like to thank Lionel for his service and hard work in helping this organization throughout his years in Vancouver and Memphis,” Levien said in a statement. “We have begun to identify our next head coach, who we feel can best move us forward.”

Where will the staunch Hollins, 196-155 in four-plus seasons with Memphis, land? Perhaps with the stylistically opposite Denver Nuggets. Reports out of Los Angeles have him on the Clippers’ long interview list for this week.

Lionel Hollins, Mike Conley

Lionel Hollins was key to the development of point guard Mike Conley.

But back to the Grizzlies. Memphis is a fragile small market and Hollins, along with key player acquisitions by general manager Chris Wallace – who took a back seat to Levien and is reportedly a top candidate for the GM job with the Sacramento Kings — turned a second-class citizen to its FedExForum co-tenant, the Memphis Tigers, into the pride of the city.

That’s rare stuff. Even so, Memphis’ attendance ranked 19th out of 30 teams this season. They played to 91.8 percent capacity. Only 13 teams played to fewer home fans (in terms of arena capacity) and only three were playoff teams — Indiana, Atlanta and Milwaukee.

“One thing I think is very unique about [our] market which helps us is that we’re the only game in town,” Levien, a former agent and former assistant GM with Sacramento, said last month in an interview during the second round against the Oklahoma City Thunder. “So if you’re in L.A., you’re competing with all these pro sports teams and all this other entertainment. If you’re Memphis, the FedExForum is the spot. The Grizzlies are the team. And even though it’s a smaller market, we need to do a better job of commanding that attention consistently, but we think that’s an advantage for us.

“The great thing about Memphis also is we’re in the Southeast. This is a basketball city, this is a basketball region. Even though SEC football is big all around us, people love basketball and a lot of that is the Tigers’ tradition. So we are very cognizant of the fact that we are growing on the backs of the Tigers and what they built here in terms of the love of basketball.”

The Grizzlies’ plan is to keep growing, to widen their fan base by expanding television deals into regional markets such as the recent TV and radio deal into Little Rock, Ark. To sustain and grow attendance and increase television reach — which often creates new sponsor opportunities, ticket sales and other revenue streams — Memphis must keep a winner on the floor.

Levien has major decisions ahead and tough ones in shaping a team under the constraints of the salary cap. A coach is No. 1. Then comes whether to re-sign defensive specialist Tony Allen. The free-agent swingman is affectionately called “The Grindfather” by fans who wear T-shirts bearing that name in the style of the “The Godfather” logo from the movies.

Will Levien shop Zach Randolph, who turns 32 next month and is owed $34.3 million over the next two seasons? Randolph became a beloved figure in Memphis as well as a two-time All-Star under Hollins, who deserves credit for sticking with and developing point guard Mike Conley and 2012 All-Star and 2013 Defensive Player of the Year Marc Gasol. Does Levien prefer the Grizzlies move away from the Grit-and-Grind foundation and to a more up-tempo attack to mirror the rest of the West?

Levien said he had begun earlier in the season the process of calling every season-ticket holder to share his vision for the club.

“The thing I’ve noticed in Memphis is they were down for so long they want to know that you want to win,” Levien said. “And If they think that you are serious about it, and that you have a process, and that you have a strategy and that you really want to win, I think they’re with you and they’re excited about that.”

Dismantling the structure of an operation that reached new heights is risky business. Mark Cuban took apart a championship team (his reason being to better deal with the changes of the new CBA) and two years later the Mavericks are out of the playoffs. Memphis doesn’t possess the longstanding fan goodwill (or deep-rooted corporate sponsorships) as Dallas does to sail through a public relations storm of a precipitous fall.

And its players that are locked up don’t want to even think about that.

“I’ve seen both ends of it,” Conley, who went 22-60 as a rookie, said during the West finals. “We were terrible, the support was pretty bad and now we’ve seen it hit an all-time high and I don’t want to go back to what it was before. Trust me. It would be huge if we could just stabilize what we have and just keep moving forward.”

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Posted in 2013 The Finals / Comments (48) /

Karl Badly Wanted This Nuggets Team To Change Playoff Fortune

June 6, 2013  ·  2:20PM

HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – Apparently it was a bad year to coach your team to a franchise-record number of wins.

George Karl, Vinny Del Negro and Lionel Hollins each guided their respective clubs to new regular-season heights and now the coaches of the West’s playoff seeds 3, 4 and 5 all might be shown the door. Del Negro, who led the Los Angeles Clippers to a franchise-best 56 wins and a first-ever Pacific Division title, was first to be told he won’t be return.

Hollins, a lame-duck coach all season like Del Negro, led the Memphis Grizzlies to a club-record 56 wins and a first-ever Western Conference finals, and also likely sealed VDN’s fate with their first-round playoff win after the Clips held a 2-0 lead. Still, before Hollins could even reflect on the season that was, he was told by the organization’s new brass to talk to whichever team caught his fancy.

Then Thursday morning news hit that the Denver Nuggets will part ways with recently crowned Coach of the Year Karl after nine seasons and a franchise-record 57 wins. Karl, apparently unwilling to enter next season under the final year of his deal as his two counterparts did, has lost that power struggle and is out.

Hollins remains the lone wolf that isn’t all the way out. At least not yet as Grizz ownership/management figure out what they’re doing.

Now the 62-year-old Karl, who has twice turned back cancer, will be coaching somewhere else next season if he so chooses, perhaps even Del Negro’s attractive old gig with the Clips (considering Chauncey Billups‘ affinity for Karl and Chris Paul‘s trust in Billups, this could be a scenario that ensures the free agent CP3′s return to the Clips. Billups is also a free agent).

Karl dearly hoped that this season’s Nuggets would be the team to turn his inexplicable postseason fortunes around. In eight previous seasons under Karl, Denver had advanced past the first round just once. The 2008-09 team with Carmelo Anthony lost to the Lakers in the West finals. Before and after, with Melo and without, it’s been one-and-down.

This year was different, he wanted to believe. He had a complete team that played his up-tempo style to perfection and could run-and-gun any opponent off the floor. Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari were emerging as stars. Andre Iguodala provided the perimeter defense his teams lacked in the past. They had depth, they had belief and they had the West’s No. 3 seed.

They managed the latter despite Gallinari being lost for the season in early April to a torn ACL, and Lawson missed chunks of time late in the season with plantar fasciitis, making his playoff-readiness uncertain.

When the Nuggets — who recently lost general manager Masai Ujiri to the Raptors — visited the Dallas Mavericks on April 12, it was obvious how much Gallinari’s injury — and at the time Lawson’s ailing foot — had shook Karl’s faith in the possibility of a long playoff run.

“All year long the league has seen this, the national image of the Nuggets, that they’re not a playoff team, they’re not built for the playoffs, they can’t do this, they can’t do that,” Karl said, lamenting on the season-long criticisms of his club. “And I just wish we would be healthy just to show some people so we could tell them to shut up. Now I don’t know what percentage we’re down, but a full tank would be better than a three-quarter tank. The matchup that we get I think we’re going to be excited about and I’m confident that we’re going to play well in the playoffs.”

The matchup that they got was the upstart, sixth-seeded Golden State Warriors, who beat the shorthanded Nuggets in six and then put one heck of a scare into the eventual West champion San Antonio Spurs.

Who knows what happens if Gallinari is healthy and the Nuggets are playing at full strength.

Injury misfortune aside, it was quite a season. So good that just 29 days ago, Karl tweeted this message:

That was his last tweet until today:

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Report: Clippers Targeting Pacers’ Shaw

June 5, 2013  ·  9:50AM



MIAMI – The Los Angeles Clippers might have solution to whatever problems have been created with prized point guard Chris Paul recently.

Former Lakers and current Indiana Pacers’ assistant Brian Shaw is at the top of the Los Angeles Clippers’ wish list, according to Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com, along with Memphis Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins. One of these guys could help give the Clippers some much-needed stability in their coaching situation with free agency less than a month away:

Shaw is considered the team’s top choice at this point, multiple sources said. His youth, championship experience with the Los Angeles Lakers and player development skills, which have been showcased by his work with Indiana’s Paul George and Lance Stephenson, have intrigued the Clippers management and players. He also received strong reviews from Clippers forward Lamar Odom, who played under Shaw with the Lakers.

But since no candidate has formally interviewed for the position, or met with Clippers owner Donald Sterling, the situation remains fluid. The Clippers front office has done extensive background work on a handful of candidates: Shaw, Hollins, former Cleveland coach Byron Scott, former Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry, ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy and Denver head coach George Karl.

Van Gundy was previously near the top of the Clippers search, but talks with him have cooled recently, sources said. Karl is also still under consideration, but the Clippers have yet to formally ask permission from Denver to speak with him. Karl, the NBA’s Coach of the Year after leading the starless Nuggets to a franchise-record 57 wins, will enter the final year of his contract with a new general manager at the helm, following Masai Ujiri‘s departure to Toronto. A source said Saturday that his situation in Denver remains “unsettled.”

Convincing Shaw to leave the Pacers for the Clippers would be a coup for the franchise that has bungled the process since coach Vinny Del Negro was let go. But they have to move quickly where Shaw is concerned since he’s at the top of Brooklyn’s search list as well. Both jobs offer some interesting specifics for a first-time coach.

The respective owners, the Clippers’ Donald Sterling and the Nets’ Mikhail Prokhorov, have very different styles. And you better believe that will be a factor in Shaw’s decision-making process, depending on how quickly things process on both fronts.

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Hollins Wants To Stay With Grizzlies … What’s The Hold Up, Memphis?

May 30, 2013  ·  9:39AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – This is where the coaching carousel business starts to get a little silly.

The Grizzlies are coming off the greatest overall season in franchise history which included their first trip to the Western Conference finals. They have a solid roster and an excellent coach in Lionel Hollins, who has publicly expressed his desire to stick around and try to take the Grizzlies to that next level.

“Hopefully, I will be here,” Hollins said. “I love the guys. I love this city and the fans and everybody associated with the team. But we’ve got to be very, very realistic in what the future holds.”

When a man speaks like that, you have to wonder what’s not being said. What’s the hold up for the Grizzlies?

The Grizzlies are not going to publicly negotiate with their soon-to-be free-agent coach. And Hollins would be wise to use whatever leverage he has to get the deal he wants (and deserves). There are, after all, only four coaches in the league who can say they took their team to the postseason’s final four.

While a handful of teams around the league, including the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Clippers (L.A. owner Donald Sterling was reportedly at Game 1 of the Western Conference finals observing Hollins) are searching for the right coaching fit or the next Hollins or Frank Vogel, the Grizzlies have the guy that fits perfectly with their roster under contract until June 30.

If it’s just numbers they are dealing with in the negotiations, fine. Both sides want the best deal possible, and there’s still time to haggle over details. But if there is more going on here, if there are some philosophical differences between Hollins, Grizzlies CEO Jason Levien and his front-office staff, there is no telling where things are headed.

If the Grizzlies think that a different coach can get the same things out of Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and the rest of a team that, up until being swept by the San Antonio Spurs, looked like a team built to compete for a championship, they better be sure.

Proven commodities in the coaching ranks don’t always pan out in every situation (just ask the Los Angeles Lakers how that Mike D’Antoni thing is working out). Hollins has already shown what he’s made of. He didn’t take over an elite team, but the Grizzlies have become exactly that under his stewardship.

Why anyone would want to tinker with that chemistry, with that tangible success, is beyond me!

Hollins wants to stay in Memphis. He loves his team, the city and the direction the franchise is heading in with the new ownership and management.

Sounds like a slam dunk.

What’s the hold up?

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Spurs-Grizzlies, HT News / Comments (18) /

Hang Time Podcast (Episode 119) Featuring CNN’s Wayne Drash

May 29, 2013  ·  6:54PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS — The San Antonio Spurs were supposed to be over the hill. And the Miami Heat unstoppable.

Good thing they have to play the games.

Because our expectations of what we would see in the conference finals and what we have seen is totally different. The Memphis Grizzlies were no match for the might Spurs, getting swept in a Western Conference finals that was supposed to be a battle of heavyweights. Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and crew have more left in the tank than some of us realized.

The Heat and Indiana Pacers are deadlocked 2-2 in the Eastern Conference finals and it’s the Heat, and not the Pacers, who have looked extremely vulnerable in certain spots (especially down low, courtesy of Roy Hibbert and David West). LeBron James has been the best player on the floor night after night, but he’s going at it without the superstar help (where you at Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh?) he’s used to having with the Heat.

Then there’s the Lance Stephenson experience, a phenomenon that has to be witnessed live to truly appreciate the emotional roller coaster ride that is the Pacers’ fearless swingman.

In addition to playoff talk and coaching carousel news, we got the chance to spend a few minutes with CNN’s Wayne Drash, the co-author of a fantastic new book, “On These Courts.” The book, which started as a story on CNN.com, chronicles former NBA All-Star Penny Hardaway‘s return to his Memphis roots to help a friend with cancer coach at-risk youth and the magical journey that grew out of that relationship.

As always, there is never a dull moment on Episode 119 of the Hang Time Podcast … 

LISTEN HERE:

As always, we welcome your feedback. You can follow the entire crew, including the Hang Time Podcast, co-hosts Sekou Smith of NBA.com,  Lang Whitaker of NBA.com’s All-Ball Blog and renaissance man Rick Fox of NBA TV, as well as our new super producer Gregg (just like Popovich) Waigand and the best engineer in the business,  Jarell “I Heart Peyton Manning” Wall.

– To download the podcast, click here. To subscribe via iTunes, click here, or get the xml feed if you want to subscribe some other, less iTunes-y way.

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Blogtable: Warriors Or Grizz In ’14?

May 29, 2013  ·  9:40AM
Tony Allen and Lionel Hollins (Noah Graham/NBAE)

Tony Allen and Lionel Hollins (Noah Graham/NBAE)

Each week, we’ll ask our stable of scribes to weigh in on the three most important NBA topics of the day — and then give you a chance to step on the scale, too, in the comments below.

Week 31: The Spurs’ Chances | Better next year: Warriors or Grizz? | What ails the Heat?

Crystal ball: Which ’13 postseason darling comes out looking better in ’14, the Warriors or the Grizzlies?

Steve Aschburner, NBA.com: Golden State. Memphis has more work to do, notably settling its coaching situation – let Lionel Hollins leave at your own risk, Grizz! – and adding shooters. With enough duct tape, baling wire and prayer, Mike Miller might be a good start. But Golden State needs only to take the surgical route, the way it did adding Carl Landry and Jarrett Jack. Mark Jackson‘s ministrations seem to click with his guys, and having both Andrew Bogut and David Lee healthy (unless Lee winds up elsewhere) could leap-frog the Warriors past Memphis.

Fran Blinebury, NBA.com: Two questions: Are Curry and Bogut healthy for Warriors?  Is Hollins back with the Grizzlies?  Based on their track records, I’d have to assume Curry and Bogut will miss time and it will be costly.  I’ll assume Memphis’ front office isn’t dumb enough to let the best coach in franchise history walk out the door. So Hollins will keep the Memphis defense grinding on.  Edge to Grizzlies.

Jeff Caplan, NBA.com: Wow, there are so many variables at work here like who’s coaching the Grizzlies? If it’s not Lionel Hollins I really wonder what the fate of Zach Randolph will be. Memphis could be facing at an interesting transition if Hollins is not retained. My take is the majority of the players really love him, especially Mike Conley. At this very moment, there’s more continuity with the Warriors. The big question for that bunch is the ability of Andrew Bogut and Steph Curry to remain healthy. So judging this thing on May 29, give me the Warriors.

Stephen Curry (Noah Graham/NBAE)

Stephen Curry (Noah Graham/NBAE)

Scott Howard-Cooper, NBA.com: It’s very tough to say without knowing what happens in free agency — two important players (Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry) hit the open market for the Warriors while one important player (Tony Allen) and the coach (Lionel Hollins) for the Grizzlies. But for the sake of discussion, if you want to say based on the rosters of the moment staying in place, I’ll go Grizz. While Golden State has the youth that signals it will be better in the long term, Memphis of 2013-14 will defend and rebound at the highest levels, will be able to depend more on its best players (as I jinx Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, Mike Conley and Allen into injuries) and now have the confidence that comes with reaching a conference final.

John Schuhmann, NBA.com: Great question. I want to say it will be the Grizzlies, because I generally favor the better defensive team, and I think Memphis has a clear Achilles heel (perimeter shooting) that can be addressed in the offseason. But they also have some other (and significant) questions (fate of Hollins and Randolph) entering the summer and were the healthier team this season. If the Warriors can get close to a full season of Andrew Bogut, they can take another step forward defensively next year and possibly rank in the top 10 on both ends of the floor. So I guess my answer is Golden State.

Sekou Smith, NBA.com: My gut says Grizzlies but my head tells me the Warriors are better positioned heading into the 2013-14 season. So much of this depends on what the Grizzlies do with Lionel Hollins. Changing coaches on a team good enough to make the Western Conference finals would have a significant impact on what that team is capable of in the next season, particularly without any major roster changes. The Grizzlies’ core will remain intact for another season, barring any offseason surprises. The Warriors, on the other hand, have a higher ceiling for next season and potentially beyond. And Mark Jackson isn’t going anywhere. So they should be better team than the one we saw fall to the San Antonio Spurs if they just get all of their main contributors into training camp in good health. Both of their bandwagons should be full for next season.

Lang Whitaker, NBA.com’s All Ball blog: I still feel like Golden State is a season or two away from jumping into that next level of contender status, mostly because it’s going to be tough for the Warriors to make any significant changes until the summer of 2014, when they lose a couple of their heftier salaries. Memphis has its core, and if the Grizzlies can just find a consistent outside shooter to add to the mix for next season, they’re an even more dangerous team. Golden State might be better long-term with this crew, but for the immediate future, Memphis is nearly there.

Aldo Avinante, NBA Philippines: Both teams will certainly come back stronger and better but the main factor is their health. If Steph Curry’s ankles hold up the whole season, the Warriors will be battling for home-court advantage for the playoffs next year. Meanwhile, Memphis will hope that Zach Randolph will not regress and Marc Gasol will continue his growth as a player to have an even greater impact on the offensive end. With all that being said, I believe that Memphis will be a stronger team because of their depth and experience over the Warriors.

Pawel Weszka, NBA Africa: The Warriors. With so much youth and talent on their roster, I am not sure they have scratched the surface of future possibilities just yet. With David Lee healthy, Steph Curry ankle-problem free and more mature Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli (yes, another African to watch!), they will be top challengers in the West. If they can add some more strength in the middle, they will be a much tougher team to beat. This young Golden State team knows they had a great season and pushed the extraordinary Spurs to their highest level. They know they are hot. Do the Grizzlies?

Stefanos Triantafyllos, NBA Greece: The easy guess would be the Warriors. They have a young, talented core (Curry, Thompson, Barnes, Lee, Bogut) and only one true piece of the puzzle that needs a new contract: Jarrett Jack. They’ve put a strong regular season, a deep playoff run and a proven ability to fight through adversity under their belt, all of which will serve as excellent lessons for next year’s run. Their biggest issue was injuries, so if they manage to stay healthy, they can turn into one of the most fascinating teams of the West. The Grizzlies, on the other hand, have to deal with the their coach first, as many teams will try to lure away Lionel Hollins, who is free this summer. That’s the big question mark next to their name, as their three key players (Conley, Randolph and Gasol) are under contract and they have the base to build on this year’s success (don’t forget they forced two very talented teams into early holidays). But, compared to the young Warriors they have less room for improvement. No doubt about that.

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Hawks’ Drew Left On Coaching Carousel

May 29, 2013  ·  8:56AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Every time the music stops in this latest game of NBA coaching musical chairs, former Atlanta Hawks coach Larry Drew finds himself looking for a seat.

And yes, he is now officially a “former” Hawks coach as of Tuesday afternoon. That’s when the Hawks announced that they hired Mike Budenholzer, the longtime assistant to San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, to take over Drew’s old job. Budenholzer joins Jeff Hornacek (Phoenix) and Steve Clifford (Charlotte) as assistants who move over to the first chair next season. And there are still several more big-name assistants — Indiana’s Brian Shaw is the biggest, and he is not being allowed to interview for other jobs during the Pacers’ run — who could be in line to move up.

There are still vacancies in Milwaukee, Detroit, Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Los Angeles (Clippers) that need to be filled. Drew is a candidate in Milwaukee (he’ll interview for a second time this week) and is interested in the Clippers’ opening.

But as of this morning he’s still twisting in coaching no-man’s land after the Hawks filled his job without ever officially severing ties with the man who led them to three straight playoff appearances during his tenure. Drew was a Hawks assistant for six seasons before that, the final three of those culminating in playoff trips under then-coach (and now-Knicks coach) Mike Woodson.

Drew’s contract expires June 30 and he went into this process with a complete understanding of what Hawks GM Danny Ferry was doing. It’s not like someone snatched the rug from underneath him. Ferry is going for the complete franchise makeover, complete with 12 or 13 roster spots to fill in addition to Budenholzer and whatever staff he can put together.

Ferry made it clear that while he didn’t mind dancing with the coach he inherited last summer when he took over Atlanta’s basketball operations, he was going to keep an eye out for his own guy. His history with Budenholzer, both as a player and executive with the Spurs, was an obvious connection.

Drew understood that the chance of him returning to the job he did so well the past three seasons was slim at best. He fielded questions about his status all season, never once bristling at a process with an outcome that many of us saw coming the day Ferry was hired. All that said, it’s still bizarre for some to see a coach under contract, at least for another month, replaced by someone whose current job (at that time) required him to help prepare the Spurs for another long playoff run.

Bucks general manager John Hammond has to make the next move where Drew is concerned. His pool of candidates to take over in Milwaukee shrinks every time the music stops. Clifford and Budenholzer were reportedly on Hammond’s short list before being taken off of the market. And now Drew and Houston Rockets assistant Kelvin Sampson are believed to be the finalists.

Drew has 128-102 record as a coach and those three playoff appearances in three seasons working in his favor … not that it served him very well in whatever attempt was made to keep his job with the Hawks. Sampson has history with the Bucks, having worked as an assistant under former coach Scott Skiles for three seasons.

Drew’s coaching experience is going head-to-head with Sampson’s connection and the trend of assistants being elevated to top jobs. How much longer Drew remains on the coaching carousel depends on the which set of factors carry more weight in Milwaukee and perhaps elsewhere.

The coaching vacancy landscape can change in an instant — just ask former Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro. The Memphis Grizzlies have to decide what they’re going to do with Lionel Hollins, whose contract is up. He’ll be a hot candidate for several of these remaining openings if he and the Grizzlies decide to part ways.

That’s why if you are Drew, you want a seat now … before that music stops again.

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Parker Keeps His Word To Duncan

May 28, 2013  ·  1:15PM

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Maybe it really was just lost in translation two years ago when those forever aging San Antonio Spurs were kicked to the curb in the first round, a top-seed toppled by the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies, and Tony Parker reportedly told the French press that his team’s window had slammed shut.

After all, the Spurs had gone through a three-year ringer: a first-round dud to the Mavericks in 2009, a second-round sweep by the Suns in 2010 and then the embarrassment of the Beale Steet beatdown in 2011. Parker would later say that the foreign press must have had a slow news day, that he had made no mention of any closed windows. He was, he said, excited about the team’s future.

Fast forward and certainly nothing was lost in translation when Parker told longtime teammate Tim Duncan after last season’s West finals unraveling against Oklahoma City that he would return the resurgent greybeard, who used to carry this franchise the way Parker does now, to the NBA Finals for a shot at a fifth championship.

Promise fulfilled.

“I promised to him that we will go back, go back to The Finals and get an opportunity to win the whole thing,” Parker said late Monday night, emotion clearly swelling within. “I’m trying to do my best, trying to be aggressive every night, and I think everybody on the team, we really wanted to do it for him.”

The amazing Parker, masterful at driving the paint, has turned in a phenomenal postseason and a dominant performance in the stunning sweep of the Grizzlies completed Monday night. Parker obliterated counterpart Mike Conley and the Memphis defense for 37 points on a remarkable 15-for-21 shooting, and six assists. In the four games, the league’s most dangerous point guard — arguable if you wish — averaged an unstoppable 24.5 ppg and 9.5 apg.

Perhaps Chris Paul will still get the nod over Parker as the game’s best point guard, but Paul is fishing or surfing or whatever you do in Southern California when basketball ends. Paul still seeks his first West finals appearance.

Meanwhile, Parker is headed for a shot at a fourth title as part of the Big Three with Duncan and Manu Ginobili. Their first came a decade ago when Parker was a 21-year-old kid in his second season stateside. 

During Game 2 in San Antonio, cameras caught Memphis coach Lionel Hollins having a brief in-game moment talking to Parker: “I love the way you penetrate. Mike is learning from you.”

Conley certainly got schooled for four straight games.

“He was outstanding the whole series and he controlled the series with his penetration,” Hollins said of Parker. “He made shots, made plays. One game he has 18 assists, [Monday] he has 37 points. He was huge.”

He has the Spurs back in The Finals for the first time since 2007, the last of three titles in five seasons. Back then, Parker was named Finals MVP in a sweep of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Parker and Co. could well see James again — a different James leading a Miami Heat juggernaut that happens to be the reigning champs.

“This [winning The Finals] is the hardest one and we don’t know who we’re going to play yet,” Parker said. “But, we know it’s going to be tough.”

Even the Heat and their tremendous perimeter defense will have difficult task slowing down what might be the NBA’s most unselfish, precise and efficient offense.

San Antonio’s versatility is practically impossible to limit. The Grizzlies took away the 3-point shot in Games 3 and 4 and the Spurs killed them with backdoor layups. If basketball kept hockey assists, San Antonio would own the category. It starts with the incredibly quick, full-service point guard.

“He can look at a defense and he makes pretty good decisions now on scoring or distributing based on what he sees, where maybe in the past he was a little bit more one-dimensional, like, ‘I’m going to score or I’m going to distribute,’ ” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “And when you do that you can get a little stubborn. But I think these days he’s much more mature in the sense that he actually reads what’s on the court and so he’s a better basketball player than he was an earlier.”

Parker turned 31 earlier this month and is only getting better. His postseason is so far off the charts: 23.0 ppg and 7.2 apg. He’s shooting 47.5 percent and 37.5 percent from 3-point range, well above his career average.

Between Games 3 and 4, Popovich recalled the first time he saw Parker play during a Nike Hoops Summit in 2000. Parker’s French team was playing against America’s top high school talent that included future Grizzlies big man Zach Randolph.

“I asked, ‘Who is this guy?’ because he scored 20-something points on all the Americans, just sliced them and diced them and nobody knew who he was and nobody cared who he was,” Popovich said. “But he was pretty impressive so [general manager] R.C. [Buford] and I took a closer look.”

No translation was needed.

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Spurs’ Path To Success Still One Of A Kind

May 28, 2013  ·  11:50AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Don’t bother trying to get a peek at the blueprints. There’s nothing you can glean from San Antonio Spurs’ secret formula that will work for your team.

No two championship teams are built alike, unless you are the Spurs and all four of your title-winning teams have an identical foundation: Tim Duncan at the epicenter with coach Gregg Popovich and GM R.C. Buford at the controls.

Those same building blocks, along with future Hall of Famers Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, have allowed the Western Conference-champion Spurs to chase title No. 5 this season. This current Spurs team highlights a ridiculously rewarding 15-year run that transcends this “win-now-and-at-whatever-cost” era that has claimed so many other organizations that were unable to sustain a level of excellence with the same parts.

The only organization with a better championship track record during this same era is that other would-be dynasty in Los Angeles. But the while the Spurs are going to contend with either Miami or Indiana for the Larry O’Brien trophy next month, the Lakers entered an offseason of uncertainty with Kobe Bryant on the mend from Achilles surgery and Dwight Howard‘s free-agency drama looming. It makes you wonder what might have been if the Lakers had been able to manage the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe dynamic and if coach Phil Jackson had stayed entrenched in the organization from the time they started winning championships until now.

What the Spurs have accomplished, however, is not up for debate. They’ve defied logic, the odds and the age of their biggest stars to reach the opportunity to compete for another title when they could have torn those franchise blueprints up a half-dozen times and started over from scratch.

The contrast in styles between the Spurs and Lakers is startling, albeit with nearly identical results for two franchises whose accomplishments the past 15 seasons will come to define an era in NBA history.

The Spurs stuck to their principles with a meticulously crafted core of stars and a series of role players who generally played better in San Antonio than they did elsewhere. The Lakers tried to reinvent themselves regularly (selling their organizational soul in the process, some would say) to keep the pace with their rivals in South Texas.

Don’t forget, the Spurs tipped off the championship chase in 1999 with Duncan and David Robinson, followed by the first of the three straight Shaq-Kobe title teams a year later.

In a copycat league where everything from the locker room set up to the analytics department is modeled on a nearly identical template from organization to organization, no one has been able to build a sturdier and more consistent operation than the Spurs.

It starts with having a transcendent superstar like Duncan, whose arrival sparked the Spurs’ renaissance. Add in unwavering discipline in the front office and on the bench (in Popovich and Buford), some splendid ownership (Peter Holt) and a market conducive to staying the course (rather than overreacting to the usual ebb and flow of the league) and San Antonio’s success was born.

The Spurs haven’t been to The Finals since winning their fourth title in 2007. Six years? That is an eternity in professional sports. Not many franchises would have survived the fallout from their Western Conference finals flame out against the Oklahoma City Thunder last year, when their juggernaut rolled into that series and led 2-0 before losing four straight games. Not many organizations with championship expectations would have (or could have) stayed the course in those other non-Finals years as well.

There’s no doubt the San Antonio market helps. There isn’t a rush to tear things down every offseason just for the sake of remodeling. The Lakers have changed course countless times during the same 15-year span, spending countless millions to and running through a series of coaches and role players to help them flesh out championship teams led by O’Neal and Bryant and later Bryant and Pau Gasol.

The Spurs understood that even with a power-packed outfit like the one they fielded during Duncan’s prime that there was no guarantee they’d win it all every season. That’s an understanding the Lakers never seemed to grasp during the early and mid-aughts.

The Lakers, spoiled a bit by those three straight titles in 2000, ’01 and ’02, tried to remodel overnight after watching the Spurs’ 2003 run. So they signed future Hall of Famers Karl Malone and Gary Payton in an attempt to chase a fourth ring and fell hard to the Detroit Pistons in The Finals in 2004 — the same team the Spurs beat in seven games a year later for the title.

Fast forward seven years later and the Spurs have four main pieces from that 2005 team — Duncan, Popovich, Parker and Ginobili — still on top of their respective games.

Those are the building blocks for a dynasty … the Spurs’ way!

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Posted in 2013 Conference Finals: Spurs-Grizzlies, 2013 NBA Playoffs / Comments (95) /

Timeless Spurs Headed Back to the Finals While Emerging Grizz Now Seek Direction

May 28, 2013  ·  2:54AM


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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Paul McCartney played the FedExForum Sunday night and during one of his several
soliloquies to the sold-out crowd he marveled at the cross-generational audiences that come to hear him play, a phenomenon that transcends time and age to create a seemingly eternal, ethereal world.

Inside the same arena Monday night, another traveling road show continued to manipulate their own timelines of age and accomplishment. The San Antonio Spurs aren’t quite working on a half-century of brilliance like Sir Paul, but in sports years, the Gregg Popovich-Tim Duncan partnership is as apt a comparison as one will find in the modern sports world.

Think about it. When they won their first title in 1999, today’s college freshmen were in kindergarten. Teenagers then now have their own kids wearing Duncan’s No. 21 jersey just as they did. This is as unique as it gets: A transcendent player and a gruff, no-nonsense coach — add a crafty and clever general manager in R.C. Buford who helps to draft Tony Parker late in the first round and Manu Ginobili late in the second — and all these years later it’s the same as it ever was, the Spurs back in the NBA Finals like it was, well, yesterday.

Duncan and Pop will vie for a fifth championship in 15 seasons and a fourth comprised as the Big Three. They finished the job with a 93-86 win for a sweep of the overmatched Memphis Grizzlies in their maiden voyage to the Western Conference finals.

“To get over that hump and get back into the Finals is just an amazing feeling, honestly,” said the 37-year-old Duncan after going for 15 points, eight rebounds and four blocked shots. “Nothing’s promised. Teams continue to change. Teams continue to get better every year and we seem to make minimal changes and we continue to play and compete a high level.”

Too high for a Memphis team that is now, having completed a 12th season here, truly attracting a generation of its own basketball fans that cut their teeth with a college team that plays in the same building.

These four straight losses came entirely unsuspectingly after the Grizz took out the Los Angeles Clippers in six and then top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in five. But it can’t diminish the wild success of this group during a drama-filled season, and the 17th consecutive playoff sellout crowd that encouraged their blue-collar club to the final buzzer proved it by standing and loudly cheering them off into the abrupt offseason. (more…)

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