The Grizzlies announced Tuesday that center Marc Gasol is out indefinitely with a broken foot. This is bad for Memphis. It's really bad.
Here are seven things to know about Gasol's injury and what it means for Memphis:
1. Gasol is their best player: Mike Conley is the team's most valuable player, Zach Randolph is their emotional core, but Gasol is the best player. A post-up scorer who can knock down the mid-range shot, rebound and, most importantly, defend at a very high level. He's the team's best passer, and has an absurdly high basketball IQ. Gasol is also the focal point of the offense with most possessions featuring a touch for him in the post, pinch post or elbow at some point. He's a consummate pro who hustles on both ends and can help change the game.
Over the past month, the Grizzlies have been 1.2 points per 100 possessions better with Gasol on the floor. That's not much but it's a lot for a team that doesn't have a wide spread to begin with. Gasol is vital to what Memphis does. Smallball, big ball, grit-grind, whatever -- the Grizzles need Gasol and they need him healthy.
2. They are pitifully thin at center: With Gasol out, Ryan Hollins is starting for the fifth-seed team in the Western Conference. Think about that for a second. Now, this is temporary as the Grizzlies hope to get Brandan Wright back after (or shortly after) the All-Star break, and he'll be a big boost. Yet he has to get back up to game speed after being out months, this is his first year in the system and he's an entirely different player than Gasol.
So that means more lineups with Zach Randolph at center, and that's problematic for its own reasons, particularly on the defensive end. Playing Jeff Green at center isn't an option either. The best play would be to go small with JaMyhal Green at center, but Dave Joerger has been slowly removing him from the rotation over the past two weeks.
3. Memphis has a brutal schedule to close the season: This cannot be stressed enough. The Grizzlies are in fifth place at 30-22. Over the last 36 days of the regular season they play the Cavaliers, Celtics, Hawks, Raptors, Bulls and Mavericks, and play the Clippers, Spurs and Warriors twice each. Their final three games are at home vs. the Warriors and then a back-to-back road trip at Los Angeles and at Golden State to finish the season.
That's not a murderer's row. That's something far, far worse.
So if Gasol is not back by then, they'll be without their best player trying to finish the roughest stretch of their schedule since November, when they were below .500 and casually getting blown out by 20-plus points every night by every good team in the league. If Gasol's back by then, he'll be coming back with them possibly fighting for their playoff lives.
SportsLine projects four fewer wins for the Grizzlies, but that their playoff chances will drop hardly at all.
| Effect of Marc Gasol's injury on Grizzlies' season | |||||
| SEASON | REST OF SEASON | ||||
|
Memphis |
Wins |
Playoffs |
Wins |
Loss |
Playoffs |
|
w/Gasol |
47.2 |
99.4% |
17.2 |
12.8 |
57.3% |
|
Gasol outl |
47.2 |
98.6% |
15.9 |
14.1 |
53.0% |
|
Impact |
-1.3 |
-0.8% |
-1.3 |
-4.3% |
|
However that projection is based on a weak lower half of the West. If the Blazers, Mavs, Rockets, and Jazz make strides in the second half relative to the first, this could get tight in a hurry.
This does not bode well for their chances of keeping a fifth seed, which is where they want to be in order to play the Clippers. Why is this so bad?
4. Falling to the 8th seed is the second-worst possible scenario: They would face the Warriors, who beat them by 50 in one of their matchups. There is a very real scenario where the Grizzlies play the Warriors six times out of seven games in under 10 days ... and that's if they get swept.
A humiliating loss to the Warriors in the first round would breed frustration with the team, fans and organization, and could spark major changes. It's one thing to challenge the Warriors in the second round as they did last year and finish respectably in a six-game defeat. Getting housed by Golden State six times over seven games would leave them feeling different.
So if that's the second-worst outcome, what's the worst?
5. If they fall between 6th and 14th, they lose their pick: The Grizzlies owe a first-round pick to Denver (originally traded to Cleveland) which is protected only 1-5 and 15-30. (They made this deal to clear cap space in 2013, sending Wayne Ellington, Josh Selby and Marreese Speights -- who you may recognize from the dominant Golden State Warriors -- along with the pick for Jon Leuer -- who now plays for the Suns.)
So if the Grizzlies fall within picks 6 and 14, it goes to Denver. If they fall into the lottery, and miraculously win it, they keep the pick. However, at this point, it's very likely that they miss the playoffs and convey a top-15 pick to Denver. The draft this year is weak, pitifully so, and not deep at all. However, Memphis badly needs young blood. Its entire backcourt is made of expiring free agents this summer, and Jeff Green is likely out the door as well. Jordan Adams has been hurt all year and Jarrell Martin has barely played due to his own fractured foot. The Grizzlies traded Jarnell Stokes to Miami for Mario Chalmers.
The Grizzlies need young blood, a pipeline for some younger contributors. They could lose their pick if this goes south. Oh, and if that happens, then their 2018 pick -- protected 1-8 -- conveys to Boston.
6. Gasol had foot soreness Monday and played anyways: This gets tricky. OK, so on Monday, Gasol was listed as questionable with foot soreness, but he participated in shootaround. The medical staff cleared him to play, and Gasol wanted to play. Resting players and improving health was a big push by the organization in the offseason. They invested in biometric devices and conditioning efforts to try and maximize player health. Around the league, star players are consistently resting (see Golden State and San Antonio, but also Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland).
So the questions now become:
a. Who is responsible for making the decision to rest Gasol, and should that decision have been pre-emptively made? Was that on the training staff? If the fracture did not exist prior to last night's game, how could they have known? If it did, it was small enough that an MRI was needed to spot it. Could they have known?
b. Is it on the training staff? Is it on Joerger? Is it on management? Is it on Gasol? In most organizations, the training staff advises the coaching staff and the head coach makes the call to rest or not.
c. Would resting him have even mattered? Maybe it would have fractured anyway.
javascript:mctmp(0);However, there is no getting around that it looks bad that Gasol complained of a sore foot (it may have been his left, even) and then that very night he plays, leaves the game, then gets diagnosed with a fractured foot. There may have been nothing the team could do to prevent the injury, but it cannot be argued the Grizzlies did everything they could to prevent it.
7. No, this does not mean the Grizzlies are blowing things up: Everyone is seemingly always looking to stomp the headstone into place on this era of Grizzlies basketball, but the front office is just simply not going to overreact to any specific move and get itself in bigger trouble.
The team will take calls about any player -- that's just standard for all franchises -- but that doesn't mean Conley is available or that they need to deal him because of his impending free agency. If Conley wants to stay in Memphis, it's about the next five years, with Gasol, not the next three months. It's not impossible to envision the Grizzlies trading Conley if a certain deal came up and/or Conley told them he was not going to re-sign, but that's a universe that looks very different from everything else we know about the franchise.
If anything, this makes a deal less likely because if you're not going to be able to make a run this year because Gasol won't be back, why do you make a short-term trade to try and make a run? Memphis will remain patient and considerate. There's no urgency for Memphis to make drastic changes. If an opportunity arises, any player could be moved, but there's no reason to think they're going to change the team just to change the team, which is what many fans, trying to play vulture over the Grit Grind era's scraps, seem to want.
Big changes are unlikely with the Grizzlies, even if the possibility exists.
