The Grit n’ Grind era of Memphis basketball is over (although Jae Crowder seems like he would fit in that era), and you know what? I’m not even feeling that sad about its demise. As much as everyone likes to pretend that they like low-scoring defensive basketball games, the truth is that they don’t. The whole point of basketball, the whole fun-ness of it, is having the ball go through the net. It’s decidedly not fun to have the ball not go through the net. It’s a psychological thing, vaguely sexual. Balls in holes. I’m going to go a step further and just say that we’re evolutionarily hardwired to enjoy the scoring act of basketball. You disagree, talk to my buddy Charles Darwin.
I don’t know what we’re going to call this new era of Memphis basketball, or even if we’re in a new era at all and not just some random rebuilding period that doesn’t qualify as one. In any case, I’m having a lot more fun both last year’s tanking version of the Grizzlies and this year’s maybe-not-so-tanking version of the Grizzlies than I ever did watching those old teams get pummeled in the playoffs by the Clippers. Straight up.
If Ja Morant was on those old Grit n’ Grind teams, they’d probably bench him because of how exciting and dynamic he was in this game. There wasn’t room for this much fun on those teams. This vid is almost five minutes of pure fun. Normally I don’t really like replays, but there are tons of them in here, and you know why? Because Morant was making some seriously sick layups. I’m fond of calling such shots “LAME-ups”, because of how lame they usually are, but that wasn’t the case tonight. He went toe-to-toe with Kyrie Irving in that department, and came out on top thanks to a little help from his buddy Crowder.
Meanwhile, Mike Conley is really sucking for the Jazz. If I’m a Grizzlies fan, maybe I’m a little sad for what has passed and can never be again, but then I’d watch this vid (or just the whole game over again, screw these distilled highlight packages) and get happy again. And then get re-sad because Bruno Caboclo didn’t get to play. God damn it.