The Grizzlies need MAJOR changes

The Grizzlies need MAJOR changes

I’m going to be honest and real y’all. Last night when I sat down to watch playoff basketball, my attention was set for the Pistons verse Knicks and the Clippers vers Nuggets. Those two series would have just been more entertaining that the 1-1 split and everything. So, I went into last night having the Thunder versus Grizzlies on the back burner as far as my attention span goes. Now, as the Knicks wrapped up their win over the Pistons and the Clippers and Nuggets got going, you peek over to the Grizzlies and you see early on they got a lead and it’s like, “Okay, okay, okay, Memphis. This is what I’ve been wanting to I want to I want to see y’all make these games interesting. Give us something to watch. And so I’m back focused on the Clippers versus Nuggets and I’m peeking over and I’m seeing that that lead is getting bigger and bigger and now I’m starting to watch the game a little bit and they’re turning the Thunder over and over and over. They got the Thunder looking a little uncharacteristic. So now it’s catching my my attention. So I go walk my dog. I come back and the the the Grizz are almost up 30 points. And I’m like, “Wow.” Okay, here we go. has a media personality, somebody that’s in this field creating content and everything like that. I say it all the time. I am looking for the best basketball. The better production we get, the better games we get, the more entertaining it is, the more I have to talk about. So, if it was up to me, every series would go seven games besides my Knicks or whatnot. So, I’m excited to see that the Grizzlies are fighting and they’re potentially going to win this game three and blowout fashion. And the crowd is electrifying. It looked like they got their swagger back. This is dope. Obviously, we know where everything else went. You have the Jawaran injury, which I’m going to pause and speak on for a second because I think this is becoming a bit of an issue in the community. I’ve already talked about fandom for the last few years and how toxic and crazy fandom has gotten. I think it’s reaching another level with situations like this and then situations like the Warriors versus Rockets where Jimmy Butler unfortunately was in a similar situation where he got hurt and had to leave the game prematurely and might not be able to play in game three. They’re saying again as a person who has no dog in a fight, as a person who is an analyst, who does content creation, who has a podcast, again I’m looking for the best basketball. I want every series to go seven. I do not enjoy seeing anybody get hurt under any circumstance. Even if it’s against my team, I don’t want to see nobody get hurt. That’s that’s just weird energy for me. Fans have to realize that things happen. This is professional basketball where guys are getting paid 20, 30, 40, 50, $60 million in a single year to play these games. These are billiondoll franchises, right? Like when you hear NBA franchise, you don’t think of it. These are businesses. This is like McDonald’s is a franchise. These are these teams are franchises that are billion dollars worthy. Guys are out there playing hard. They’re playing tough. It’s playoffs. It’s aggressive. Things happen. And though these are world class athletes, there’s just some things that you can’t prevent when you’re going top speed with the amount of strength that some of these guys have, with the amount of athleticism, the height, the weight. It it it’s just happens. And happens at lower levels. You can go up to LA Fitness Export Lifetime and go have a normal run and you’ll see somebody get hurt because things just happen on the basketball court. You know what I mean? It’s just one it’s it’s it’s sports. happens, but it’s it bothers me when fans just can’t accept what is. Everything has to be what it like it has to have some type of issue of somebody being a up person and it kind of gets annoying and it’s just like it’s it’s it’s exhausting. You have a situation like last night and you have everybody speaking on it and I walk away from the situation kind of baffled and mind-blown that there’s people that was trying to say that Lud Door did that on purpose and that he’s dirty and he wanted that to happen. And so I watched the replay over and over and over and over and over. I woke up and I watched it again today, even after watching it yesterday. And I sat there and I said, “You know what? Let me try to figure out like the possibility of somebody thinking that this is dirty.” And after watching it over and over and over, I walked away saying, “No, there’s there’s no way.” You are a damn fool. If you watch that clip and say that that man purposely wanted all of that to happen, he is running down full speed chasing Scotty Pippen Jr. with John Mar trailing him. And I don’t think he’s that aware of John because I don’t even think anybody thought Scottie Pippen would make the pass. They thought he was going to go up as Lou Door realizes after the pass and he’s turning around and he’s slipping trying to catch his own balance. Jaw Miranda is already in the air. It’s a bang bang play. Split second and boom, you have that injury. It happened so fast. Nobody was able to catch Jaw. Jaw wasn’t able to brace himself. His own teammate Scotty Pippen Jr. was right there. He he wasn’t a he he didn’t try to go catch him or anything because it happened so fast. the same thing in the Warriors Rockets game. Draymond pushed him. Draymond didn’t push him. Regardless of what happened, you are a damn fool and lunatic to think that I’m in Thompson. And with all of that going on, purposely did that for that result. These must be superheroes to y’all because there’s there’s just no way the brain can even process all of that to make all of this happen on purpose. We have to be better. We have to realize that there is a sport being played with top tier athletes with 40inch verticals, insane amount of speed, insane amount of strength, insane amount of height, and there’s a lot going on in a small amount of space. And we have to be able to accept that when our team loses, we have to be able to say that they got outplayed sometimes. We have to be able to accept the fact that we’re playing against teams that are just flatout better. I’m a Knicks fan. And I know if we win this series and we play against the Celtics, the Celtics are just a better team. I’m aware of that. I’m I’m totally aware of that. So I don’t have to go into the series talking about free throw disparity, talking about foul baiting. Anytime something go wrong, it got to be somebody fault. It can’t just be the fact that you got outplayed or you’re rooting for a team that’s not as good as a team that they’re playing against. That’s my two cents on that. is exhausting that we have to talk about like this with so much going on, so much good basketball, so many different things. And that’s what people want to talk about. But anyway, back to the Grizzly Thunder. Very unfortunate. Want to see John Mar get healthy. Want to see Jimmy Butler be healthy. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. But John Mar leaves. They have a 20ome plus lead, almost up 30 points. And the second half is really what I want to talk about and what I really what I want to focus on. The Memphis Grizzlies in these three games have been utterly disgusting besides that first half that they was hot and doing their This is unacceptable. And for a team that just fired their coach relatively soon before the playoffs started, fired his staff the summer before that, brought in all these new people, got rid of some of those people when they got rid of Taylor Jenkins, too. By the way, more changes need to happen. I I I I just don’t understand how franchises are ran and what ownership allows to happen. But like if a GM is making all of these decisions and in and firing a coach, to me, I took what the Grizzlies did as them saying that there is another level that they think they need to tap into. There’s a certain level of a team that they think they are and that they need they think they need to get to. And I’m with it. I I have no problem with that approach. and I love a lot of the things that the Grizz has done. But now when you get to this point where you lose by a record setting 51 points in game one, then you come back in game two, you play a little you play a lot better, but you still lose by 20ome points. And then in game three, you manage in the second half to blow a 25 plus point lead in a second half where I had to pull this up, y’all. They had nine made field goals. They scored 31 points in the in the second half on nine made field goals. 10 points from the free throw line. Right. They shot nine of 36 from the field. Three of 20 from three. Took more threes and twos. But here’s the thing for me. They had 13 turnovers. They had 13 turnovers. They had more turnovers than field goals made. Desmond Bane in the second half went two of 10 from the field. Two of eight from three. In the fourth quarter, he went all four. All for all four from three. Scotty Pipper Jr. who was on fire in that first half. He kind of settled out, sizzled out. One of six from the field, one of four from three. Again, three of 20 from three. Shot 15% from three as a team. This is a team that shot disgusting in that first game as well. I I had the the notes in front of me. Matter of fact, let me let me go in my note book. This is my little playoff notes because some of this stuff be so crazy and like wow to me when I’m watching these games that I I have to write certain things down. Yeah. So, the shooting splits for the Memphis Grizzlies in game one, the game that they lost by 51 points. The game that they were down 56 by one point. They shot 34% from the field, 18% from three, and 83% from the free throw line as a team in that entire game. Desmond Bane, who I love. Y’all know I love me some Desmond Bane. And I actually like the Grizzlies and a lot of things that they’ve done to get their team to this standpoint. Desmond Bane was a negative 51 in this game. And in this second half, they shot 25% from the field, 15% from three, and they shot 100% from the free throw line with 13 turnovers at a negative 32 as a team. Luke Canard played 17 minutes in the second half was a negative 28 0 of three 0 of two um from three and he only took one shot in the fourth quarter which wasn’t a three by the way. I was frustrated watching him and I know Luke Canard ain’t got big uh you know big shouldering in his team right this is J Bane Jackson and everybody else formulate around them and pitch in. But Luke Canard passed up certain shots that I was just like, “Yo, they’re paying you to do that.” There’s no other reason Lucard is on the floor other than three-point shooting. He’s not on the floor to defend. He’s not on the floor to make a play. He’s on the floor because of his shooting ability and how good he is at it. So, when you have guys like It’s the same thing with OK. I mean, with with Orlando and and KCP, whereas like we’re paying you 20 20 plus million dollars a year, obviously for your defense, but also for your three-point shooting. And you watch these games and these guys who are getting paid to shoot are not shooting. They’re passing up shots and they’re like they’re hesitating. No, we need you to shoot the ball. Zack Edy extremely disappointed. He had a jump ball where he had to do a offensive foul against Lou Dort. Lou Dort I think is listed as 6’4 and they may be generous. He may be like 6’3. They giving him 6’4. Zack Edy is listed as 7’4. You had you’re a whole foot taller than him and somehow during a jump ball you slapped him in the face for an offensive foul in which y’all lost a possession. That’s crazy to me. The hardest thing about the NBA in my opinion outside of some of the obvious things is a situation like the Grizzlies. So when you’re a GM, when you’re a coach, when you’re a player, it all applies to to them across the board. When you’re on a team that doesn’t have expectations and you’re rebuilding this team and you’re getting back into relevancy and and playoffs and whatever, it’s all fun in games because there is no expectation, right? There nothing nobody’s expecting anything. But the place that the Grizzlies are hitting is that that doesn’t surprise anybody anymore that they’re a playoff team. They’ve done that for the last few years now. the expectation is to do more. And they’re finding themselves in a position where they’re disappointing people like me. They’re disappointing their own fans because they’re they’re they’re staying in a place that they’ve been in and they’re not figuring out how to make these these leaps and these jumps up. And that’s where they’re going to have to really sit back this summer and and make a lot of decisions across the board. Again, I’m never in a business for calling for somebody to get fired to lose their job. I ain’t I ain’t a part I won’t get into all of that. But I think if you are ownership and you have seen some of this product through these first three games, again, you lost by 51 points in a game one. I cannot stress enough how disgusting that is. Game one is the one where again you are led so much just off the playoff adrenaline that you ain’t losing by 51. You you just gonna play hard because you just so excited to be in the playoffs. It’s playoff basketball. That alone is going to carry you to not lose by 51. It’s going to give you some sort of pride and some respect for yourself and who you’re representing that you ain’t going to lose by 51. to lose by 51 in game one and then also be down by as big as 56 points record-breaking game one loss all time. Embarrassing. And for your bounceback game to be a 20point loss in game two, embarrassing. And then to have almost a 30point lead at the half. So all you really have to do is just have and maintain a solid half of basketball and we’ll be okay. And then if John Moran is hurt, we run around with that narrative saying, “Hey man, who knows what would have happened if y’all didn’t get hurt.” But no, y’all couldn’t do that. So as ownership or whoever’s running this ship, you have to look across the board and say, “We need drastic changes. This roster needs changes. The the coaching staff, we already made changes. We got to really double down and make sure the ins and out of there is cool.” I like I like Iso for sure. But we got to be fully confident that this staff is what we need and what we want. And then up top climbing was it was easy to get rid of Taylor Jenkins. It’s easy to point out what somebody else is doing wrong or what somebody else could be doing better. But you might have to take a look at yourself. Is this enough for y’all to not be as aggressive as y’all should have maybe been at the last few deadlines? It may be time to put together a package where you where you throw out two picks here and you might have to make that move. They’ve done a really good job with drafting, finding gems. Desmond Bane was a 30th overall pick. Santio Damas of the world. The John Kharge. Jaylen Wales was a really good pickup. They made Taius Jones look like a starting caliber point guard in this league. They’ve done the same thing for Scottie Pippen Jr., GG Jackson, Vince Williams. They’ve done a really good job around the margins. But now it’s time to level up because the expectation has grew. The expense of this team has grown, right? Because they all year we was talking about Jiren Jackson do this and he make this, he’ll be eligible for this amount of money. We talked about the money that Desmond Payne got. Jiren Jar Santioama early in the season was basically like, “Man, I love Memphis, but I don’t know if I can come back. Might be too expensive. Might not be enough money. There is no way in hell that this team can come back next year looking similar. This is somebody who has appreciated what they’ve done, been a fan of what they done, and as much as I’ve liked it, much as I’ve seen it, much as I’ve celebrated it, big changes need to happen. And that could be across all boards. That could be a big signing, a big trade, uh a new GM. It don’t have to be one thing. But this team, this organization cannot come back looking similar to this. If there was any sign, this is it. And I like Jiren Jackson. I like Desmond Bane. But there is no way in hell you telling me that John leaves y’all with a 30-point lead and y’all can’t handle it. That ain’t enough for a half. A half. You know how many times I seen Alex Caruso strip the ball out of these people’s hands? Jiren Jackson couldn’t get his going against Alex Caruso down the stretch when a team really need a bucket here or there. The double big lineup allowing teams to score that many points in the paint. Desmond Bane, you couldn’t give us nothing in the fourth quarter. You went 04, brother. All of four. You would shot two of 10 in the second half. Eight of those 10 shots were threes. So all you only thing you can do is just shoot the three. highly cont. You taking them the logo threes with 14 seconds left on the shot clock as our lead is diminishing. You see that they’re starting to get their rhythm going. You see that the quarter chat is having. You see the run that they’re getting on and that’s the shot that you respond with. This team need to change, man. This this team need to change. Again, this is not a video I anticipated making, but that’s the beauty of basketball. It’s a gift that keeps giving. I’ve said that all season long. And it’s just a conversation that I think Memphis fans should be having. It’s what Memphis fans should be echoing on a subreddits, on Twitter, at the arena, did different things. This has been one of the most disappointing performances from a team that I’ve seen in a while. The Memphis Grizzlies were a team that was in contention of having homecourt advantage in the playoffs. Dropped down in a competitive West and should not be the typical eight seed, but they playing worse than the typical eighth seed. And after the 51 point loss, I asked myself, I said, and I didn’t publicly say this, I asked myself, I said, “Is the Thunder that good or is Memphis worse than I thought?” And I said, “You know what? Me, the Thunder is that good. They they that good, man. I Let me chill on the Grizzlies. After last night, two things can be right. The Thunder are that good, but Memphis Grizzlies are far worse than myself and a lot of other people thought. And I ain’t going to lie, I’ve seen a couple comments in my videos or on Twitter or what, there have been a few people that was like, “Somebody recently said that the Grizzlies are a fake playoff team.” And I hope that person watches this and knows that they are the one that I’m talking about because I can’t remember off the top of my brain. But damn, damn, damn. Damn. I don’t even know what to say after that. Appreciate y’all. Peewee the plug. Locked in all playoffs long. I’ll see y’all in the next video. I’m out. Peace. [Music]