Since tonight’s loss to the previously 1-16 Oklahoma City Thunder was far from a typical loss, I’m not going to follow it up with a typical three-pointer.

With the Grizzlies coming into tonight’s game having lost nine of their previous 10 games after a promising 3-3 start and hosting the league’s worst team, there was one clear subtext from the outset — coach Marc Iavaroni’s job security.

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Before the game, one team employee related a conversation he’d just had with a colleague. “We need to win this one tonight,” his co-worker said. No, he replied, nodding towards the Grizzlies bench: “He needs to win this one tonight.”

At halftime, on my way to the media room, a different team employee said of the then-11-point lead, “So, is this gonna be a job-saving win?”

After the game, there seemed to be a consensus — among people who have no role in the decision-making process, obviously — that this could be Marc Iavaroni’s last game as Grizzlies head coach. I’m not so sure about that, but for now (meaning the next several paragraphs) I’m going to stick to Iavaroni’s performance, not speculation about his status.

At this point, just shy of 100 regular-season games into his coaching tenure, I don’t know how anyone can have much confidence in Iavaroni’s fit as the head coach of this team. I come to this opinion late (compared to most fans, media members, and team-connected people I talk to) and reluctantly, for three reasons: 1)Iavaroni had as good a resume as you could have for someone without previous head-coaching experience and is as smart and decent as anyone you’d meet in sports; he seemed like a great hire at the time. 2) This team desperately needed — and needs — some stability on the sidelines. 3) It’s hard to publicly criticize someone you deal with regularly and like.

That said, I keep looking for signs that Iavaroni’s going to become the kind of head coach this team needs, and I’m not finding them. Let’s look at some of the problems from the perspective of tonight’s game.

1. In-Game Decisions: The Grizzlies carried an 11-point lead into the half despite being down considerably in turnover differential. The Grizzlies’ turnovers and the Thunder’s plus margin on the offensive boards was generating more scoring opportunities for OKC, which was the only thing keeping them in the game. They were overmatched otherwise.

In the second half, OKC coach Scott Brooks went small and Iavaroni followed suit, playing a lineup of Kyle Lowry-O.J. Mayo-Javaris Crittenton-Greg Buckner-Rudy Gay for most of the fourth quarter. You can argue the wisdom of this, though the results are persuasive, but the signal it sent was discouraging: The Grizzlies are adjusting their line-up at home to match-up with a 1-16 team?

This was one of the rare games where the Grizzlies were the more talented team, so you might think they would just put their best players on the floor — the ones largely responsible for building a double-digit lead in the first half and holding a lead through three quarters — and let them play. If you’re going to lose at home to the 1-16 Thunder, at least do so with your best players playing your preferred game, right?

Instead, Javaris Crittenton, a 6’5” combo guard who had played a total of 20 minutes all season, plays 11 minutes in the fourth quarter tonight, essentially at small forward. And a 6’4” Greg Buckner, who had averaged seven minutes per game in seven appearances before tonight, plays the entire fourth quarter, essentially at power forward. I felt like I was back at the Mid-South Coliseum in high-school, watching the Memphis Rockers of the 6’5” and under WBL.

In going small to match-up with the Thunder, Iavaroni put out a line-up so small that the Grizzlies were giving up inches at four of five positions — and it wasn’t like the Griz were loading up on three-point threats. They don’t have many.

After the game, asked about playing small, Iavaroni cited a match-up problem when he inserted Marc Gasol into the game for one minute late in the quarter. Iavaroni pointed out that that put Gasol into a match-up with a good three-point shooter (Jeff Green, hitting 47% on the season from three so far) and that while that was a mismatch for both teams, it was one that would net the Thunder threes to the Grizzlies twos. This makes sense, and sure enough, Gasol’s one fourth-quarter minutes coincided with a 5-0 Thunder run in which Green hit a three and got a steal on a forced Rudy Gay entry pass to a posted Gasol. So maybe Iavaroni was right.

But it still felt wrong to be searching for a non-traditional lineup against a bad team when your primary players have been having pretty good games. And not just in terms of the small-lineup: The decision-making at point guard was also curious.

Mike Conley had been having a good game — scoring 8 points on 3-3 shooting and dishing 6 assists to 3 turnovers — and had played the bulk of the minutes in the first half when the team built its double-digit lead. After a terrible start to the season, Conley has been quietly picking up his play of late — over his previous five games, Conley had hit 22 of 40 shots and had 17 assists to only four turnovers — while Lowry has been on the decline. Lowry played pretty well tonight, but he inherited a lead that slipped away while he played the final 15 minutes of the game.

If starters play well individually and the team plays well when they’re in the game and they still lose minutes to back-ups in crunch-time, then what does being a starter mean?

2. Style, or Lack Thereof: I’m meandering at this point, so I’ll try to be quick on these final three points. In the first point, I suggested that what people expect in a situation like tonight — when you’re playing at home against an inferior opponent — is to put your best players on the floor and play your game. But who knows what this team’s game is? Nearly a hundred games into Iavaroni’s tenure, this team still doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be.

There are a lot of factors at play here: Roster upheaval relative to the team Iavaroni inherited prior to last season; extreme youth this season; a severe paucity of the three-point shooters Iavaroni cherishes. But you still sense that this team should be showing more purpose and shape on the court. Instead, you see a team built to pressure and run that isn’t really doing it and a team that is slow getting into halfcourt sets that still elicit clear on-court confusion far too often. The result tends to be putting the ball into the hands of the team’s too very talented young scorers — Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo — often midway into the shot clock and letting them create difficult shots.

Hubie Brown and Mike Fratello both inherited messy situations in the course of the season when they became the Grizzlies coach, and Brown inherited a young team. But both coaches created recognizable, confidence-instilling on-court structure rather quickly — within weeks, really. Those were both veteran coaches and are probably unfair comparisons for Iavaroni, but we’re nearly 100 games into his tenure now, and we aren’t even seeing signs.

3. Player/Team Development: Honestly, 4-13 probably isn’t much worse than most realistic onlookers expected from this team at this point. It seems so bad in part because of a 3-3 start that now feels like an epoch ago.

But, if this season isn’t about winning as much as long-term development, there’s plenty to be worried about in that area as well. Outside of the preternaturally smooth O.J. Mayo, none of the team’s young guards seem to be progressing this season. Similarly, and even more troubling, Rudy Gay has also taken a step back after his breakout of a year ago.

This team has some talent — Mayo and Gay are probably the best foundation in franchise history, Gasol is a quality center, and Conley is finally coming around and is so much better than he showed early on — but the players don't seem to have much confidence in each other or in what’s happening on the sidelines.

In the locker room after the game, I asked two starters about the fourth-quarter lineups and gameplan. Both gave the rote, non-controversial, company-man answers you expect, but you could see in their eyes that they didn’t believe it.

4. So, What Happens Now?: I wish I knew. I do not believe Michael Heisley expects Marc Iavaroni to be his coach next season, but I also don’t think he wants to make yet another in-season coaching change or pay two coaches at once in the middle of a terrible economy with plunging ticket sales. Can this team — especially relative veteran Rudy Gay, already on coach number three in two-plus losing seasons — really stomach another long-term interim coach in another lost season? Is that worse than sticking with a coach that both ownership and the players may not have much faith in? Can you get the coach you really want to come in here in the middle of the season even if you are willing to pay? Do you even know whom you want?

Fans can speculate all they want about a coaching change, but I haven’t seen any sign that a move is imminent. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious or promising solution right now.

Submitted by Chris Herrington on Sun, 11/30/2008 - 12:16am.
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