Grande: Walking In Memphis, Where Grizzlies Are Proving The Power Of NBA Continuity
BOSTON (CBS) -- Someone once said to me that Memphis is like the town that time forgot. But walking around here today, I tend to think it's more like a town that forgot time ... and is totally fine with that.
The strangest thing about Memphis now? You walk along Main Street, you feel like you're in the '50s. You walk past the Civil Rights Museum and the Lorraine Hotel, you feel as if you're in 1968, at the crossroads of a moment that simply changed history. You walk down Beale Street, there is no feel for time, other than being frozen in a decade that lives in perpetuity, a simpler time, filled with joy and music. And ribs.
But go one more block, and you feel like Dr. Emmett Brown when Marty McFly shows up with the camcorder.
Just a block off Beale, drowning in Elvis and B.B. King nostalgia, sits the $400 million dollar FedEx Forum. It looks like a giant spaceship got dropped into a William Faulkner novel.
It's as out of place ...
... as the Memphis Grizzlies having the best record in the NBA.
We spent most of last November just baffled by the brutal schedule the Celtics had been assigned out of the gate -- 17 games before Thanksgiving. This year, with one extra day, the grand total was 12. But what they left out of the brochure, buried in the fine print, was the strength of that schedule.
The game in Philadelphia on Wednesday night against the 0-11 Sixers dropped Boston's strength of schedule to 15th in the 30 team league, middle of the pack. It won't be there long. The Celtics tonight embark on a four-game stretch to close Novemeber. Memphis, Portland, Chicago and that's right, the champion Spurs. Four teams with a combined record of 33-13 ... and a whole lot of rings.
And yeah, did I mention Memphis has the best record in basketball?
But there's no aberration here. It's not an early-season fluke due for a market correction. The Grizzlies don't just have the best record in the first three weeks of the season -- they own the NBA's best record in the calendar year 2014. Not the Spurs, not the Heat not the Bulls -- the Grizzlies, at 47-17.
It's not exactly the Celtics in 2008 (68-18), but yeah, the best in 2014.
How? It's not a complicated formula. Experience (they could start a lineup tonight that averages nearly 32 years old. The Celtics' starting five, by comparison, is about 25). They take fewer threes than anyone else in the league. They don't turn the ball over.
And what always has been, and continues to be, the most overlooked commodity in professional sport. In an unparalleled age of advanced metrics and statistical analysis, an increasing minority continues to shout out the word "intangibles," which is not a great word in an argument because they're, well, intangible. Here it is.
Continuity.
Mike Conley, Tony Allen, Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol have played a ton of minutes together over the last four years. Big minutes, crunch time minutes, playoff minutes. You name it. And for that, there is simply no substitute.
Those that haven't been here. Tayhsaun Prince, Vince Carter, Beno Udrih? They have 41 NBA seasons between them to figure out how to fit in where they get in.
It was the summer of Love in Celtics Nation, that search for the quick fix. But as you watch (and you know, listen) to the Grizzlies game tonight, it may be the perfect time to remember that continuity comes in time.
And as I remember every time I come to Memphis, sometimes forgetting about time is the best way to go.
MEMPHIS MEMORIES
There's been no shortage of exciting moments for the Celtics in Memphis over the last decade or so -- uncanny, actually. The Celtics went 3-0 at the Pyramid, the Grizz's temporary home across town (2001-2004), including Mike James (from Amityville, N.Y.) hitting a game-winner for Celtics on Halloween 2003. In 2010, Shaq played maybe his best game as a Celtic here in a Boston win. KG scored his 20,000th point here in a blowout win in the title year of 2008. The year before, the Celtics parlayed a 70-point second half into a 128-119 win here, with Wally Szczerbiak leading the C's with 26. Didn't seem like that big a deal, back on January 5, 2007. Little did we know as we flew to Orlando that night that it would be a biblical 40 days and 40 nights, 18 games, until the Celtics would win again.
THE PHOTOBOMB
So, yeah, that thing the other night kind of took off, huh?
So let me use this time and space to clear the air. And set the record straight.
I did not photobomb my longtime colleagues at CSN, and compromise the aesthetic integrity of Wednesday night's telecast.
I repeat: I absolutely did not.
My game folder got hacked.
Sean Grande has been calling Boston Celtics games since 2001. Hear his call of the games alongside Cedric Maxwell on 98.5 The Sports Hub starting 30 minutes prior to tipoff! Click here for a list of affiliates on the Celtics Radio Network.
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