When the Memphis Grizzlies reconvened this fall after yet another busy offseason, the first order of business was voluntary team workouts. They were a chance for the guys to get together and just play. No coaching, no evaluating, no pressure. No one was even required to be there, certainly not every single day, but of course Mike Conley and Marc Gasol were. They always are.
A lot has changed over the years in Memphis. Rudy Gay and Zach Randolph are long gone, Tony Allen and O.J. Mayo are out of the league, though for different reasons, and even the new, more modern coach -- David Fizdale -- has been replaced. Conley and Gasol, though, have always been there, steadfast leaders carrying on the spirit of the Grit 'n' Grind era into a new, uncertain future.
"Over the years we built such a good relationship on and off the floor," Gasol told CBS Sports. "We grew up as basketball players together, so we view basketball the same way, we have the same principles. The style obviously evolved and changed offensively, but the principles defensively stayed the same. You gotta take pride, you gotta do multiple efforts, you gotta communicate. Those things don't go away. The Xs and Os might change, but the principles don't."
Those principles -- hard work, effort, intensity -- sound like clichés. They are cliches, but somehow they feel real and relevant in Memphis, perhaps because they describe the city as well. Few teams and cities have such an intertwined relationship, where they are, essentially, defined by each other. As much as Conley and Gasol have spent their entire careers with the Grizzlies, they've spent their careers in Memphis. Gasol joined the team in 2008, a year after Conley, but he lived in Memphis from 2001 to 2003, when his older brother, Pau, was a Grizzly.
"My relationship with Memphis will never change," Gasol said. "Because you spend over half of your life in a place and you invest so much time ... I love the city, I've been there for so many years. You can never be sure what your relationship with the team might be, but your relationship with the city will remain the same."
Conley and Gasol have spent the last decade side by side. As their kinship with the city and franchise has evolved, so too has their connection with each other -- both on and off the court.
"We're now both fathers so we view life and the world in a different way," Gasol said. "But we're both very laid back, family oriented guys. So if anything we're closer and closer every year because we understand that what we do is just a small piece -- important piece. We care so much about what we do, but it's a small part of life."
They even sound like each other: Conley offered a near-replica of Gasol's answer about the impact of fatherhood.
"It's definitely different for us," Conley told CBS Sports. "Because everything has changed in our lives. We're married, we have kids, so many responsibilities all of a sudden. When we were younger it was all basketball. That was all we knew. Now it's the whole plate."
Once the youngsters on teams making deep playoff runs, Conley and Gasol are now the veteran leaders hoping to set an example for others to follow. Along the way they've weathered adversity in the form of a seemingly constant stream of injuries, both to themselves and teammates, the sale of the team, multiple coaching changes -- their first coach was Marc Iavaroni, remember him? -- and, most recently, the team's worst season in nearly a decade. That they've endured all of it together, though, has made it easier on both of them.
"We've been through a lot in one organization and seen a lot," Conley said. "And to do it together with somebody who you can sit back and talk to, and kinda pull back from the memory book and say, 'Hey, this worked for us in 2010, let's try it here in 2018,' that really helps. Being that we're the longest tenured ones here in Memphis, they look to us for a lot of things, and we have to be leaders and we have to give advice in certain situations, and we have to be together in all of it."
That they are united as leaders has long been evident just by watching the team from afar. Ask any teammate about them, though, and you'll hear that they are respected and appreciated for who they are as people as much as how they play. Garrett Temple told CBS Sports that "Mike might be the nicest guy in the NBA."
A few hours before their win over the Bucks, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff delivered a nearly minute-long soliloquy on what Conley and Gasol mean to the team. Bickerstaff didn't say this was directed at those who have said Memphis should blow it up and rebuild, but it functioned as a strong rebuttal to that line of thinking.
"The only thing they care about is doing what's right," Bickerstaff said. "There's not a selfish bone in either one of their bodies. Whether you get 25 shots one night, five shots the next night, it doesn't matter to them. The only thing that matters is that as a whole we play the game the right way. They don't stand for selfish acts from other people, they don't stand for guys that won't commit to effort, that won't commit to the team. So it makes our job as coaches easy, that every single night you know those two guys are gonna go out there -- your two best players -- whether it's at 7 o'clock, or at 12 o'clock at practice, those guys are gonna show up, and they're gonna do things the right way. For them, it makes it easy to hold everybody else accountable. And the fun part about it is, this isn't something that somebody had to stress or push on them. This is who they are."
The 31-year-old Conley and 33-year-old Gasol are not just culture-setters, however. For all the praise of their personalities, they can still ball. Watching them run patient pick-and-rolls, confound opponents with their herky-jerky moves and connect on back-door passes, you almost get the feeling they could do this together for another decade.
Through the first 13 games this season, the Grizzlies have a plus-4.7 net rating in the 325 minutes the duo has played together. While Conley hasn't been quite as efficient as usual, they have the leadership and stability everyone has come to expect.
Conley and Gasol's continued success is a main reason why Memphis has gotten off to a solid 8-5 start despite another rash of injuries. They've beaten the Jazz on the road twice already, taken down the Nuggets and 76ers and became the first visiting team to ever win a game at Milwaukee's Fiserv Forum.
Are the Grizzlies title contenders? No, but as long as Conley and Gasol are healthy and leading the way, they'll be tough to beat. In this respect, the Grit 'n' Grind ethos lives on.
"We're gonna be a team that competes every night," Conley said. "We don't take plays off, we work through everything, we work for everything we get. Because that's who we are, that's what the identity of this team, this organization has been for so long. So we want to pass that on to these young guys, that things are not always gonna be easy, they never are. But at the end of the day it's definitely worth it when you work hard."