After finishing seventh with a 50-32 record in a ridiculously tough Western Conference, the Memphis Grizzlies took the Oklahoma City Thunder to seven games in the first round before falling in the decisive game by a score of 120-109.
Overall, with all circumstances taken into account — such as the 2013-14 campaign being coach Dave Joerger’s rookie year and Marc Gasol missing a quarter of the season due to injury — the season was a relatively successful one for Memphis, which was inconsistent at times but finished the year strong to make the playoffs and avoid the vaunted No. 1 seed Spurs, who rolled to the top seed in the conference.
However, with a pretty good debut campaign under his belt, Joerger ended up not being totally safe with his job. In the midst of Grizzlies owner Robert Pera firing CEO Jason Levien and the team’s assistant general manager, Memphis’ coach was reportedly not wanted back by the aformentioned Pera and interviewed with the Minnesota Timberwolves — nearly being hired by them — before returning to Memphis.
The situation was and still is a very confusing one as it involved a coach who, by most opinions, had a very successful rookie season before being allowed by his owner to interview with other teams, in a move that would seem as if said owner did not want said coach anymore. However, it appears as if Joerger — who apparently was open to leaving the Grizzlies — and Pera have both changed their minds in a very short period of time as the pair are reunited.
Clearly, after the departure of Levien and assistant GM Stu Lash, strange things are going on with the Grizzlies and their front office. On court, the team looks pretty good and still has a nice core of Mike Conley Jr., Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph to work with.
The team also has Joerger, one of the NBA’s top young head coaches, to work his magic with the roster, which hopefully will remain healthy for the entire 2014-15 season.
So it appears as if everything overall is fine with Memphis, even if the owner may be slightly losing it and there is no current CEO to speak of. Just about the only aspect of the organization that appears to be good to go is the actual group of players it has, which is a pretty good thing to have.
