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- The Grizzlies and All-Star and the NBA Playoffs, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Geoff Calkins, Sportswriter, columnist for The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for being here again.

- Good to be back Eric.

Chris Herrington is columnist, writes about the Grizzlies, writes about food, writes about arts culture in the city for all kinds of things.

First, Chris, thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me.

- I did wanna do a show, we don't do a lot of shows on sports.

We've done a couple before and I think you guys have participated in them.

And we won't go into X's and O's and defensive plans and all that kinda stuff, but there is, it seems to me, and I hear it sort of, as I talk to people, a thing happening with the Grizzlies right now.

And as they are a very good team, they are kinda catching people's attention.

You know, it seems like the casual fan who maybe loves the Grizzlies but between COVID, between the end of Grit and Grind, the loss of the beloved players, those haven't tuned in are suddenly tuning in paying attention and so on.

Besides the fact, and we'll talk about they're winning, they're winning a lot, we're taping this on Wednesday and they may have lost a couple of games by the time this airs, but the gist is they're doing well.

Well, I'll start with you, Geoff.

Why do you think that, again, does it feel, am I right?

That it feels like the casual fan is tuning in and paying attention and sort of catching this now and why?

- Yeah, I think it's unquestionably true.

I think two things are happening.

One is, fans in Memphis are tuning back in, but then secondly, in a way that maybe has never happened before, really has not happened before, nationally folks are tuning in.

And largely it has to do with Ja Morant, one person Ja Morant who is the level of incandescent up and coming superstar that this franchise has never had.

And so really, he accounts for most of the local interests and most of the national interests, he's just an extraordinary, compelling player to watch who is a perfect fit for this town.

And it's wonderful when you can watch someone like that become a superstar before your very eyes.

- Your take.

- Yeah, I think this is not just a new thing for the Grizzlies, it's say unique thing for the whole city.

I mean, Memphis has never had a truly elite athlete, truly elite, entering their prime in the city plying their trade.

This would be like, you know, Penny Hardaway was maybe a similar kind of talent at the same stage.

He was playing in Orlando.

This is in Memphis.

And so Ja Morant is emerging as one of the very best players in the world in his sport.

And he plays 41 nights a year in Memphis.

And so, you know, when the Grizzlies were good before, it wasn't that level of stardom.

I mean, it was a good balanced team, but it wasn't a true star who's going to be one of the signature players in the entire league, which Ja has become and he's gonna be, you know, barring something unexpected.

- And I say, we're taping this on Wednesday again.

And you know, he's got, we know for near certain that he's gonna be picked for an All-Star spot.

When was it?

Who was the last All-Star player for Memphis?

- Marc Gasol, so Ja will be, he'll be the third or fourth, I think Pau made an All-Star team, did he put Memphis- - Pau did.

- Pau made All-Star.

- Yeah, he'll be the fourth Memphis Grizzlies player to be an All-Star.

Barring something unexpected, he will have become the second to be All-Star starter after Marc Gasol.

- Yeah, and it is funny when you think about, you know, the Grit and Grind era with, you mentioned Marc Gasol, you mentioned Zach Randolph.

It was sort of that they were the, always the underdogs.

I mean, Zach Randolph his jersey was recently retired.

One of the more beloved players of that area, if not the most and people can argue about that, but it was more that he was, he was not flashy.

It was hard work and then he kinda represented.

He just connected with people in town on his blue collar, his really troubled background, his sort of second chance in the NBA.

It was everything about that.

We just, Mike, you know, Mike Conley was really tremendously talented, but he wasn't flashy.

And he was a very kind of modest person.

Ja isn't something I think we've, I mean, I can't imagine anything close to that.

- No, Ja, we haven't anything, I honestly think, you could argue like in terms of famous Memphians.

You know, it's really Elvis.

I mean, I don't know if we went down that road, famous Memphians, Justin Timberlake is very famous, but he doesn't really ply his trade here.

Ja Morant plies his trade here.

It's very different than that Grizzlies team in that, that team was like, okay, we don't have a star, but we can beat you up anyway, like we can, we can, we collectively come together, Grit, Grind and all that.

The interesting thing is Ja still has a lot of this underdog stuff to him.

He was not highly recruited out of high school.

He went to Murray State.

He wasn't the first player drafted in the, when he came out, Zion Williamson was, he was the second player drafted.

So he has sort of a lot of that chip on the shoulder stuff and obviously plays it up maybe even too much like he, he really embraces that.

But then he has this incandescent level of stardom creativity.

You can't take your eyes off of him that no player with the Grizzlies has ever had.

- I mean all the best players in Grizzlies' history until now have been big men.

It was Pau Gasol, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol.

I love big men as a basketball fan, but big, the game, a big man's game is less prone to excitement, to flash, than a guard's game.

And Ja has this collection of attributes that is rare.

And it's where super stardom comes from.

It's when you're an elite athlete and you have an elite feel for the game and creativity to Geoff's point, and you have an elite mindset, elite mentality.

He, I mean, I don't wanna overstate the case, but you think about guys like Michael Jordan, like Kobe Bryant, when you have that combination of athleticism and sort of that killer mentality, mental toughness, that combination is pretty rare.

That's where superstars come from.

And Ja Morant does have that combination.

- And for people who haven't watched, I mean, if you just Google, you know, go to YouTube and do Ja Morant highlights or something like that, and watch three minutes of highlights, it is surreal.

I mean, it's truly surreal.

- Well, thing is it's not just the athleticism, it's not just running fast and jumping high.

It's that in combination with the creativity and the vision, but also there's this elasticity to his athleticism.

The sort of bendy quality, the sort of, the way he feels contact and his body can sort of shift in space.

That's really, that's, I think really captivating in particular.

- And the fact that honestly like Steph Curry is appealing because he's a little guy, it's part of it.

Like you can sort of relate.

Steph Curry's a little guy doing magical things.

Now Ja does them in a very different way.

He's not an elite shooter, like Steph Curry.

But really, if you think about one of the most entertaining things in basketball, the ability to throw passes that no one else could like how did he even see that?

Or, and then the ability to dunk, which is something else he does extraordinarily well.

So he has an explosiveness of creativity.

And then the other thing is is that, he's bringing the whole city along with him.

Like you can do this trip by yourself.

I'm becoming a star, that's great.

Or you can be a star who was of Memphis, and most critically when he did this commercial for Nike.

- Yeah.

- It's a commercial and Chris has said this perfectly, it's a Memphis commercial.

- It really is.

- And so the wonderful thing is as he is doing this, he is bringing us all along and not like saying, "Yeah, I'm the star and I happened to be playing here."

- Right.

- He is a Memphis star and they, the things are at this point almost inseparable.

- They also, I mean, it is the Ja show.

I mean, it's, there's reason to talk so much about Ja for obvious reasons, but they, he was out for what, ten games?

- Yeah.

- It hurt, and they won- - The team is also good.

- The team is also really good, I mean and they are kids.

[Chris and Geoff laughing] I mean, I say, I mean, Ja Morant, I mean, I think he's younger than my son, you know, I mean, they are kids.

And there are a lot of, the oldest person on the team is 28 or something- - The youngest person that matters is 20, the oldest person that matters is 29.

I think just the oldest guy he's 29- - Yeah.

- Steven Adams.

The starting center.

They are one of the youngest teams in the NBA.

And according to the record, one of the best teams in the NBA, the third best record in the NBA with one of the youngest rosters and those two things do not go together.

It is extremely rare.

When you look at the youngest teams in the NBA this season, you have like the five youngest teams, like three or four of them are the, are among the worst teams in the league.

And then you have the Grizzlies among the best.

It is wildly irregular for that combination of youth and success to come together in basketball.

And by some measures, the Grizzlies are the youngest sort of team to break through like this in about, in a decade in the NBA.

- It's fun to, I mean, to watch them, when you kinda, I mean, I'm a big sports fan.

I accidentally wore all my Grizzlies blue today, maybe subconscious, when they play against these teams that earlier in the season that should've been beating them and they just, and they go down 10 points or 15 points.

And one of the great things about it, and it does resonate in Memphis is, they kinda just don't give up.

Now, I'm not saying they haven't given up a game and gotten their, and gotten really destroyed.

But even without Ja, when Ja was out for 10 games, it was kinda fascinating to watch.

They kinda just know we're just gonna come back on them.

We're gonna come back on the- - It's one of the gifts of youth, honestly, is that in the, in the league, it's an 82-game season.

So, there are veteran teams that are playing for the playoffs that might decide in a second, we're not gonna get this one.

We're not gonna come back.

We're not gonna, [mumbles] whatever.

And the Grizzlies never seem to think that.

And it's partly 'cause they do have things to prove, individually, they each have things to prove, collectively, it feels like they think they have things to prove.

And so that's part of it too.

One of the interesting things has been though, is that even as nationally, it just feels like people are starting to catch onto this.

I think you put your finger to it, on it too.

It took a while for the city to catch up.

Like this rebuild was so fast and so well done that the Grizzlies almost got good before, Chris was noticing, and I was sorta noticing, but before Memphis noticed, and one of the things that's happening now, and maybe some of it that's resilience that you talk about, is that Memphis is noticing, and that took a little bit.

- Yeah.

- They're a real breakthrough 'cause they started 9-10 this season.

They had a losing record, you know, 19 games in the season.

And they really had a breakthrough around probably I guess, around, before Christmas leading up to there, they went on a road trip and they won four games on the road that were all sort of like surprising wins.

And that's when the nation noticed.

And because that breakthrough happened on the road, they came home to a different sense of the arena.

The crowds got bigger, the energy got bigger because people saw it happened on the road.

It was almost like a hell of a conquering hero, like, you know, return home.

And I felt like not only did the team shift into a higher gear, the city shifted into a higher gear in terms of its reception of the team, but this breakthrough and they did make the playoffs last season.

So it's not totally out of nowhere, but it also, this re-emergence happened amid COVID and amid not a lot of fans in the building last year.

And so I think that probably also has a factor in terms of, you know, the slight delay in terms of people coming around to it.

- Yeah, and last year was so weird, right?

And the year before it was the "Bubble", they finished, I mean it all blurs together 'cause it's COVID, but you know, they finished the what?

2020 season in the "Bubble".

And then, you know, last year, it's just all been so odd.

I went to the game, the last game of last season.

It was the first time I'd been in the arena, you know, and I don't know how long, a year or plus, and it was the totally meaningless game.

It doesn't matter because they had, they were already in playoffs.

They were stuck in their seats.

So they just played all the, and it was, there were like, I don't know, nineteen of us in the FedEx-, it felt like, in the FedExForum, all masked, I, drinking a beer.

You could pull your mask down to drink a beer.

And I remember I kinda forgot, and I am 1 of 19 people in this giant section.

And the attendant was like, you gotta put your mask on, which is right.

I'm not fighting that, but it was such a surreal experience to be in the arena and it wasn't a lot of fun, frankly, 'cause it's so quiet and all that.

I think that also threw people off.

- It's been bringing people back as is, it's no different than movie theaters- - Right.

- Or going back to church or going back, like whatever public thing you used to do, people were a little slow to come back.

They'd been a little bit, they felt it got out of the habit, whatever the reasons are.

And so there has to be a reason to come back and Ja has become the reason to come back.

It feels very much in the arena now, like a blast.

It's, you know, it's, they dropped their mask requirement for good or for ill, whatever you think, they dropped their vaccination requirement.

And so it feels like the old days in the arena.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Another comparison, well, let me go to the national attention.

I think both you guys, Drew Hill who also covers Grizzlies for us, was, I saw him at the office recently and he was talking about getting calls from other, you know, podcasts from other markets.

I think you just did, you mentioned an ESPN podcast.

What's that conversation like, you know, from the outside looking in?

- I think it depends on who the media is, right?

I mean, the podcast I did was a pretty like intense, like NBA nerd kinda podcast.

That's not someone who just like, oh, Ja's a star.

Like we spend half the time not talking about I'm talking about Ja Morant.

I think Ja has become, Ja in particular has made them a daily conversation topic.

I know in the mornings I get in the car with my daughter and take her to school.

And my radio is always on the station Geoff's show is on, but it's a national show in the morning before Geoff comes on.

And it feels like half the time lately when I turn on the car, they're talking about the Memphis Grizzlies and is a national ESPN radio show.

I think Ja's, the excitement around the way Ja plays and the way that he's pulled the Grizzlies up has become like a talking head thing on, you know, the TV and the radio shows that normally float along the surface and frankly, mostly would be talking about NFL or the Lakers, like, you know, don't go deep at the NBA, much less all the way down to Memphis.

- Yeah, no that's exactly right.

Is that, national shows talk about the NFL and for them to talk about the NBA, there's either some famous person connected with it, LeBron or like one of the topics the other day on the ESPN as Chris was driving into whatever it was.

Will Ja Morant win multiple NBA championships in Memphis?

Like that, they need talking points.

Well, that's a heck of a talking point, like start with one, you know, will he win any championship?

But they went right to will Memphis and Ja Morant win multiple championships and they spent time debating at the way that shout shows do.

But that's, because of Ja Morant, Memphis has crashed into that part.

Memphis is now a talking point.

Memphis is a debate point and it sort of made it in a way that the Grit and Grind Grizzlies never were.

- Never were, unless they were in the playoffs.

- Even when they were in the playoffs, they weren't- - It is also- - Well, you had to mention them 'cause they were in the playoffs.

I mean like they- - Although they were mentioned, they were mentioned.

- But it was not- - But they were never the focus.

- Yes, celebrated.

- Back to the point that you brought up earlier, it is because of Ja, but it's also because the team is good and the team is not good just because of Ja Morant, your point, they went 10-2 when he was sitting on the bench.

And he could be doing what he's doing.

If he were doing it on a team that was 12th in the West and not third in the West, it would not get that level of attention.

It is in the, it is doing this with a star of this emerging magnitude within the context of winning.

And that winning has to do with a lot more than Ja Morant.

- Right.

- You talked about rebuilding and, you know, teams when they rebuild and the way, and this happens to some degree in most, all sports, you know, they go through a period of time.

They maybe, either they, they really, the stars either move on 'cause they retire, 'cause they get a bigger contract.

Whatever reason the team has almost has to lose for a while to kind of let the young people play, build up some draft picks.

Sometimes that can go on for a decade.

I mean, there are teams that just- - We've been remarkably lucky.

- They don't come out.

- We've been incredibly lucky.

If you look at the fans in Minnesota or the fans in Orlando- - Sacramento.

- Or the fans in Sacramento, they've been just wandering in the desert for years.

I don't, I hope people appreciate it.

We reached the end of the "Core Four" era and then the same year where they finally decided to trade Marc Gasol, they finally gave up the ghost.

They decided to trade Marc Gasol, they decided to trade Mike Conley.

One in the middle of the season.

One at the end of the season, that was the season, when they look up and luck into Ja Morant with a number two pick of the draft.

Now they've done a lot of smart things, inquiring other players, even a couple before Ja, before that, but for them to immediately be able to reload in the course of one off season with this superstar is an incredible stroke of good fortune.

And then they've done a brilliant job.

And so Memphis really hasn't suffered.

We had one bad, like one.

- No, 'cause there were some bad years on the- - There were some bad years on the end of the, yeah.

- What you're talking about, really, you know, NBA franchise is like a roller coaster to your point.

There's generally an up and down.

Only if you're the Lakers, you assume you can never have a down, right?

So you had the down when they started and then the up of the Hubie Brown era, Pau Gasol era, and then you went down and then the up of the Grit and Grind, and then you went down and now you're back up again.

The two downs were both three or four years at most.

It was less than that this time around.

To Geoff's point, we have not had the long droughts of bad basketball that you see in a lot of cities around the NBA.

And with this one, you know, when they traded Marc Gasol, it was for sort of a hodgepodge of players.

One of whom was this backup point guard, not worth mentioning here, a guy people wouldn't know.

And I thought, well, he'd be a good bridge to whatever's next.

There was no bridge.

They went straight from Mike Conley to Ja Morant without anyone in between, and to go immediately from your leading score in franchise history to a player who's now on a rocket booster trajectory to be the best player in franchise history, with nothing in between, it is really quite fortunate that that happened for Memphis.

- The other thing about NBA, I mean, is that it is better than many, it is better than other leagues it seems to me, but you guys know better than me and you can correct me.

It, there, I mean, small market teams win.

I mean, you know, they can win.

It isn't just super teams.

- It's an interesting question though, is that the NBA used to have, there was this idea that the NBA liked being in single, single-franchise markets.

So they were- - They did.

There was a different commissioner.

- It was a different commissioner.

And so they were in Utah and they were in, you know, Sacramento and they were in Portland- - Milwaukee.

- And they were in Memphis and they were in places where there was not another team.

That really has shifted.

And the truth of matter is, it is, in the NFL no one cared that it was the Bills and the Chiefs, small market Buffalo, no one even talks about it.

In the NBA for a small market team to succeed like this, it is a bigger challenge because they don't divide the money up evenly.

And so the Bills get the same amount of national money that the Dallas Cowboys get.

- There's no local television- - Yeah, there's no local, so the Grizzlies don't get close to the money that the Lakers get or the Knicks get.

And so it is actually harder to win here.

And it's actually one of the reasons, a lot of times when the star emerges in a small market, people nationally are immediately like, okay, how long is he, when's he gonna leave?

And now for reasons that Chris can discuss, Ja's not leaving anytime soon, whatever, but if you can build a winning structure around that superstar, like they did in San Antonio around Tim Duncan, then the player can stay forever.

But it is harder to do it in a small market.

- Market size matters in the NBA, but there are two things that matter more.

The thing that matters most is good luck.

And they got good luck in getting the right pick and the right draft to get Ja Morant.

The second thing that matters more than your market size is smart ownership and management, and they have, they've had good luck and at the moment, they have really smart management and supportive ownership.

And if you can combine the good luck with the good management, you can get past the small market.

- The small market.

- Right.

- I mean, during Grit, I guess during the Hubie Brown era, when Michael Heisley, when he owned, he would be on sports radio.

He would be, you'd see him at the games.

He was kind, something, he was from Chicago, but he was something of a presence.

Robert Pera the current owner, owner for however many years now, is not much at all.

I mean, he's pretty under the radar.

- Heisley enjoyed the public back and forth.

Robert Pera wants no part of it.

- Yeah.

- And you can think about that, whatever you wish.

To me, what matters is, is hiring good people and giving them the financial support they need to succeed.

And after a rocky couple of years when he was first the owner, by all indications, that's what he's done likely.

- Right.

- Now Robert Pera has been great in terms of that.

He's been tremendous and who really, you can be an effective owner, be like Mark Cuban, who's out front all the time.

You can do it that way.

Or you can do it like, tell me who the owner of the San Antonio Spurs is?

You don't know.

- Right.

- And you can do it that way.

What really matters is, are you empowering the people?

Are you supportive?

Oftentimes, honestly, Mike Heisley was not a great owner.

He was a public owner, but he was not a great owner.

- He was fun.

- Oftentimes, he was fun, but he was also, yeah.

So yeah, it, I think most people would say the other nice thing about Robert Pera is he is one of the handful of richest owners in the NBA.

And in a market like Memphis, which is not making money hand over fist on the Grizzlies, really losing money on the Grizzlies.

I'm gonna presume, except for appreciation.

It's nice to have an owner who doesn't have to squeeze his living out of the Grizzlies.

He's making his money from Ubiquiti.

And so he can afford it.

- And Ubiquiti's his company?

- Yeah, Ubiquiti is his company.

- Is one of the richest owners in the- - One of the richest in NBA.

- Was not when he started, but he is now.

The, four or five minutes left, that always, you talked about the franchises, you talked about ownership.

There is always this fear that the team's gonna move.

There's just always this sort of, I mean, among the casual fan.

Well, but how long, not how long can they hang on to Ja but how long can they hang on to the team?

- This fear existed when they moved here.

[Chris laughs] And I will tell you this, the person who the Commercial Appeal recently hired to cover the Grizzlies was born after the Grizzlies got here.

[Chris laughs] He was born after, that's how long, they've been here 25 years.

Sure it's a small market you never know.

But the truth of the matter is, is that it's been an overblown fear for forever.

There are issues with the lease right now that I've written about.

And there's probably gonna be public money.

There is gonna be public money kicked in, and that might make people uncomfortable.

It's the way of the world in pro sports like it or not.

But I would say don't fret.

- Yeah, same take?

I mean, you can do sports radio as well.

Are you tired of the question or tired of the comment?

- Yeah, well, I mean, I think the question changes over time because the nature of the contractual relationship between a team and the city changes.

Geoff been the one reporting on the lease stuff.

So I've stayed out of it.

So I can't really add.

- Well, here's the truth.

It's actually, the lease goes through 2029.

And that was true when, like it's been that like for a long time.

So I said, there's actually more pressure points coming up now than for the last two decades when people have been saying they're gonna move when there was no chance they were gonna move.

Now, there are some things that are gonna be interesting that will happen and some things, and so, because we're 2022, which is close to 2029, closer to 2029.

- That's why I was reluctant to handle it because it's actually more of an issue now than it's ever been before.

- Right.

- I think, I suspect the team will, will use its leverage to get a better lease agreement relative to the Grizzlies than they had in the previous lease.

A lot of people thought the previous lease was a bad deal for Memphis.

It was, relative to pro sports arena deals, it was a good deal for the city.

- It's kinda crazy.

- And I think, I suspect the Grizzlies will use their leverage to negotiate a new lease that will be better relative to their interests than the one they had before.

- More in line with what is typical in the last- - And they already are.

They're already gonna get money because of, they're gonna start getting some public money kicked in very soon.

So yeah, it's not nothing, but, and it is oddly enough, more of an issue now than it was 15 years ago when people were first asking you about it.

- Right.

- But a little, maybe the next show.

- Okay.

[Geoff laughs] With just a minute left, we are not, you know, and ideally we'd be talking about basketball and we'd talking about the Tigers.

Also, we're not because the Tigers basketball which was, you know, looked to be this great recruiting class and a great team this year is not doing well.

I do wanna ask and I talked to you before this, you know, Penny Hardaway, coach of the Tigers got really mad at you or either at you or in your direction- - He was mad- He was triggered by my question.

There's no question.

It was my question.

I think he wasn't just mad at me.

He was mad at being questioned.

The question was actually, it was in the wake of another loss.

It was, "Have you ever lost faith in your ability to turn this around?"

It wasn't, you know, why do you think you should keep this job or anything?

It was just like, what's your degree of confidence you can still do it given the struggles?

I didn't think it was hard, people have said, "I'm glad you're asking the hardcore."

It was a softball question.

He just was mad.

And we've all snapped before, he snapped.

And that's it, the real struggle, that won't determine anything about what's gonna happen next.

The real problem is that they're not winning.

- Yeah, all right, thank you both, appreciate it.

Thank you and thank you for joining us.

Join us again next week.

If you missed any of the show today, you get it at wkno.org.

You can go to YouTube and search Behind The Headlines, or you can get the podcast of the show on The Daily Memphian site, iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks, we'll see you next week.

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