Team Dreams: The Grizzlies and the Disrespect of Respect
There are many things you can be in the NBA. You can be a perennial contender or an eternal laughingstock. Perhaps you’re a beloved upstart or a long-hated villain. The best thing to be is an unstoppable dreadnaught. The worst thing to be, quietly, is respected. The Memphis Grizzlies have been poisoned by well-wishers for years, and are slowly sliding to the bottom of this toxic pedestal. This may be the year when they finally plop into the gutter, which might be the best thing to happen to them in a very long time. The Grizzlies may finally escape the disrespect of respect.
“Why can’t you be more like him?”
The Grizzlies have not, for many years, been chided this way. The collective parent that is the NBA commentariat doesn’t tell Memphis they don’t stack up against the behaviors of their more well-behaved NBA relatives. The reason for this is simple: the Grizzlies are the team that everyone points to when they ask that question. Why can’t you be more like the Grizzlies, New York? Why doesn’t the Kings front office take some lessons from the “grit and grind” Grizzlies? Come now, James Harden, you should learn to give defensive effort like Mike Conley does. The Grizzlies are the backdrop against which all other teams and players are held up. As a backdrop, they never get a chance to come into focus.
They are trotted out as a paragon of respect, hard work and virtue by every NBA moralizer and den-mother in large part because nobody, really, feels that threatened by them.This is the inherent disrespect in the ongoing purity-praising “respect” that comes their way. Sure, the Grizzlies are good and, sure, they went to the Western Conference Finals that one time, But they haven’t been in the same conversation as the San Antonio Spurs, even after actually beating them in the first round as an 8-seed.
Much in the same way that your well-behaved cousin has lived a very bland and safe life, so have the Grizzlies found middling but consistent success. People admonish teams for not playing like the Grizzlies while ignoring that “makes the playoffs, gets to the second round half the time” is probably not the destiny any team is shooting for. To be certain, perennial playoff status is a fine and valuable outcome, much in the same way that managing an Ace Hardware is very decent and valid work. Neither, however, inspire jealousy or intensity from rivals and peers.
This year, the Grizzlies have lost Zach Randolph and Tony Allen, making them in many ways a shell of their former selves, at least in a spiritual sense. Mike Conley and Chandler Parsons are being paid historic sums, but remain questionable from a health perspective. They could remain in their treadmill of respectability or plummet, harrowingly, into the canyon of unintentional tanking. They have an off-ramp, whether they like it or not.
It may be that the only way to shed their veneer of platitudes and right-wayism from others is to take that plunge. If you ask me, almost anything is better than being the good son everyone respects so much without offering any real respect at all. We should all respect them enough to watch what they do next.
