• Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE Getty Images

I expended most of my time and energy over the past day or so on The Griz Glossary, so this preview is going to be shorter than normal despite the momentous nature of the games in question. Oddly, that feels okay in a series where so much for the Grizzlies right now boils down simply to “play better” and where at least half of their problems come down to “defend the pick and roll better.”

Fave takes ahead of a big game Saturday night:

1. Promise or Mirage?: Here’s how the series has gone so far for the Grizzlies, quarter by quarter:

-17, +3, -2, -6, -2, -13, +3, +12, -4 (OT)

Was that 21-9 fourth quarter the Grizzlies played to force overtime in Game 2 a product of legitimate adjustments or an outlier, fool’s gold that masked ongoing problems?

There’s evidence for either argument but after re-watching it I feel a little bit less encouraged than I did watching it live.

The Grizzlies did plenty of good things.They put more effective lineups on the floor (Quincy Pondexter played the full quarter, Jerryd Bayless all but a couple of minutes), creating the space for Zach Randolph to get into a rhythm (3-5 with four rebounds in the quarter). The energy and, for lack of a better word, spirit was much stronger than it had been for most of the series at that point, with success allowing the team to play with rare confidence.

But even with a more conducive lineup on the floor, it’s easier to get your offense going when the other team’s best defender is on the bench, with Tim Duncan playing only 4.5 minutes of the quarter due to foul problems. On the other end, the Grizzlies' defense played hard, but that out-of-character nine-point quarter for the Spurs was partly the product of a lot of out-of-character missed shots. Matt Bonner missed a three with no-one within seven feet of him. Parker missed open threes. Duncan missed a tip-in. They were tired. Both teams were tired. The Grizzlies missed lots of open shots too, but that’s less unusual.

2. The Comforts of Home: If the fourth quarter of Game 2 presents false hope barring further improvements, so does a return home.

The Grizzlies are undefeated on the Grindhouse floor so far these playoffs and have run their home record up to 19-1 since Lionel Hollins’ post-trade/pre-game address back on February 8th. Hosting a West Finals game for the first time on a Saturday night, the arena will likely be bonkers. All of this should give the team a boost, but that alone isn’t enough. And Hollins knows this.

"We went on the road in every series and lost and have had to come back. We’re at home and we want to come out and play much more aggressive and confident, which teams normally do at home," Hollins said after practice on Thursday. “[But] as I’ve told our team, being at home isn’t going to win anything for us. We have to play much better.”

So far these playoffs, the Grizzlies have notched a -1 point differential on the road and a +9 at home. That 10-point swing is pretty strong, but in San Antonio the Grizzlies lost by 13 a game, so it won't be enough with some significant improvements.

On Saturday night, the Memphis Grizzlies will not only host a conference finals game for the first time in franchise history but will also host, arguably, the biggest sporting event in the city's history. At 5-0 on their home floor so far this post-season and after recovering from a rough first seven quarters to force overtime in a Game 2 loss in San Antonio, the Grizzlies and their fans have plenty of hope for extending the series. But, down 0-2, the prospect of the team's season ending in Memphis on Memorial Day is a real one. And with culture-changing folk hero Tony Allen entering free-agency this summer, there's at least a small chance that we could be witnessing more than just the waning days of a playoff run.

Under Allen's manic influence, the Grizzlies and their fans have developed one of the league's more colorful cultures. For the benefit of those around the broader NBA community turning their full attention to Memphis for perhaps the first time, here's one reporter's alphabetical guide to Griz Land:

"All heart. Grit. Grind." — The origin of contemporary Griz culture, from February 8, 2011, in Oklahoma City:

This now-legendary interview came after a 105-101 overtime road win in which the Grizzlies were playing without ostensible stars O.J. Mayo and Rudy Gay. Tony Allen, new to the team and barely in the rotation for most of the first two months of the season, scored 27 points, had 5 steals, and sent the game to overtime with a three-point play in the final minute of regulation.

At the time, it was as much about performance as phraseology, and the best, if largely forgotten, moment — Marc Gasol interrupting Allen's courtside soliloquy for a little head tap of deep gratitude — is unspoken. But this is what launched Allen into the cherished Memphis continuum of subcultural characters and rough-edged raconteurs, with the likes of Sputnik Monroe, Dewey Phillips, and Rufus Thomas.

This was a man who emerged as a transformative on-court force, beloved teammate, and fan fetish object after beating up a teammate in a minor gambling dispute; who turns playing basketball — and, more so, cheering from the bench — into a form of expressive, lunatic performance art; who, obviously, delivers ridiculous, inspirational post-game interviews that evolve into citywide rallying cries; and who generally approaches everything in life with a loopy joie de vivre that reminds us why we enjoy this stuff so much.

Maybe a few dozen fans exulted in the moment on Twitter as it happened, with local radio's Chris Vernon Show turning the audio into a recurring soundbite the next day. But this cult classic didn't become best-seller until later in the season. (See: "Tony Allen T-Shirt") These days, "grit, grind" always seems on the verge of ossifying into a used-up cliché, but the man they now call the Grindfather won’t let it.

Allen Iverson — The only player in franchise history — league history? — to never play a home game and still have his jersey pop up in the playoff crowd.

"Ante Up" — Tony Allen’s self-selected theme song is Future’s “Go Harder,” which now emerges from FedExForum speakers at appropriate moments. But this 2000 ode to desperation and thievery from Brooklyn rap duo M.O.P. is the people’s anthem. On the court, Allen is known to kidnap fools.

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The Grizzlies saved Saturday.

Wait, I’ve used that lead before? Through two games, this series feels an awful lot like the first-round series against the Clippers: A discouraging 20-plus-point loss in Game 1 followed by a disappointing but ultimately encouraging close loss in Game 2. In that series, the Grizzlies then won four straight. That’s very unlikely here, but the Grizzlies seem to have regained some confidence and made some adjustments and certainly can return home with more hope than seemed possible at halftime of this one.

The Grizzlies were down three with 5:18 to play in the first half when Mike Conley was called for a phantom third foul and went to the bench. A combination of Conley’s absence, growing frustration, and some searching lineups — abetted by the Spurs’ continuing fine play — sent the Grizzlies into a 15-3 tailspin to finish the half, including one scrum-as-metaphor in which the Grizzlies’ missed six layups in nine seconds.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
• Will Zach Randolph have a bounce-back game agaisnt the Spurs tonight?

When problems are this vast, so are potential answers. Here are a few quick thoughts on some of the many issues the team has to try to sort out before tonight’s tip.

Scheme: We knew going in both of these teams were going to have to make big strategic and stylistic adjustments from the way they’d played the previous series, and the Spurs were miles ahead of the Grizzlies in terms of preparation and execution in Game 1.

I’m no coach, but clearly the Grizzlies’ pick-and-roll defense was a disaster, from the initial defense to the chain reactions that routinely left deadly Spurs three-point shooters open. This problem wasn’t just about the new buzzword “overhelping,” though I do think that applies in some instances.

Simply — and I know it’s not simple — the Grizzlies need to clean up how they’re defending the basic pick-and-roll plays, which will be especially tough when Tony Parker has the ball and Zach Randolph is the big being picked on. After that, the team needs to make decisions about what it’s willing to give up: A contested Manu Ginobili shot in the lane or a wide open Matt Bonner three? A contested Parker runner or Kawhi Leonard open in the corner? A tough pass for Tiago Splitter to a cutting Parker or an easier pass to an open Danny Green on the opposite wing? Against this Spurs team, I’d be willing to give up anything short of an uncontested lay-up before an open three from one of their good shooters.

Cleaning up pick-and-roll defense and staying home more on shooters is easier written than done, but one problem from Game 1 seems a little bit more correctable. The Grizzlies simply can’t let Bonner have another game like the one he had Sunday, when he was 4-6 from three-point range. Ed Davis lost track of Bonner on one play by helping deep in the paint, but most of Bonner’s damage was done with Darrell Arthur as his primary defender.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
• Quincy Pondexter was one of the few brights spots for the Grizzlies, as they dropped Game 1 in San Antonio.

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In a dreadful start to the series for the Grizzlies, let me start by underscoring four points that I made in my series preview:

1. The key to defending the Spurs has less to do with containing stars than containing team three-point shooting, especially from role players. Tony Parker was splendid on Sunday afternoon, scoring 20 points on 9-14 shooting, with 9 assists. But Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili combined for only 14 points on 5-15 shooting. Instead, the Spurs killed the Grizzlies from outside, hitting a franchise playoff record 14 three-pointers on 29 attempts, the most made threes the Grizzlies have yielded all season. And the bulk of the damage came from secondary scorers Danny Green, Kawhi Leonard, and Matt Bonner, who combined to shoot 11-17 from three.

2. The Grizzlies low turnovers and high rate of free-throw attempts in rounds one and two were not going to be sustainable in this series. The Grizzlies did a good job of taking care of the ball after a rough start, their 12 turnovers only slightly more than the 10.4 average in the first two rounds, but the team’s inflated 31.6 free-throw attempts came down to a more reasonable 20.

3. The Grizzlies’ propensity for funky lineups in Game 1 repeated itself. The Grizzlies were still theoretically in the hunt when the team put out a small-ball lineup of Jerryd Bayless-Tony Wroten-Quincy Pondexter-Tony Allen-Zach Randolphto start the fourth and brought in Austin Daye for Wroten soon after.

4. The biggest key of all for this game was going to be which team could better adjust to the stylistic whiplash from their previous series, and clearly that was the Spurs, in a big, big way. After chasing three-point shooters all over the floor against the Golden State Warriors, the Spurs seemed almost relieved to be in a halfcourt defense against the Grizzlies, crowding the paint and routinely ignoring Grizzlies’ wing players. The Grizzlies, on the other end, couldn’t adjust as quickly to the Spurs’ spread offense and quick, deft ball movement, which provides an extreme contrast to the over-reliance on stars Chris Paul and Kevin Durant that the Grizzlies were able to snuff out in the first and second rounds. As it turned out, playing against Vinny Del Negro and Scott Brooks was poor preparation for playing against Gregg Popovich.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

It started a few weeks ago as a revenge tour, with a first-round knockout of a Clippers team that had eliminated the Grizzlies in the first round a year prior. Next, the Grizzlies put down a Thunder team in the second round that had ended their own playoff dreams in the second round two years back.

Now, it comes back to where it started: On a weekend afternoon in San Antonio, where, two springs ago, Shane Battier hit a go-ahead three to kick off the Grizzlies' first ever true playoff run.

Ten riffs in rarefied air:

1. Past as Prelude: As with the Thunder series, this one pits two teams that have played a lot of games over the past three years with the same coaches and roughly the same cores and much of the same supporting casts. Over 18 games in this stretch, the Spurs own a 10-8 edge.

The Spurs team the Grizzlies beat in six games two springs ago was, contrary to caricature, an offensive juggernaut (2nd in offensive efficiency and first in three-point percentage), while merely good defensively (11th), with particular trouble defending the paint.

This season, the Spurs style has swung back to the defensive side a little, where they're up to third, while the offense has slipped slightly, to seventh.

It's not hard to see how this shift in performance has followed a shift in personnel. While Tony Parker and Tim Duncan are as good or (in Duncan's surprising case, especially) better than two years ago, sixth-man Manu Ginobili is in a decline phase. That and the loss of guard George Hill has made the Spurs less dynamic with the ball. But replacing Richard Jefferson at small forward with emerging star Kawhi Leonard (acquired for Hill) has given the Spurs a physical stopper on the wings again, while replacing Antonio McDyess, whom Zach Randolph escorted to retirement in 2011, with an evolved Tiago Splitter has made the Spurs bigger and stronger up front.

The Grizzlies have changed a little less than the Spurs. Mike Conley, Tony Allen, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, and Darrell Arthur return from the rotation of 2011, and most other changes have roughly duplicated the quality and style of what existed then:

Tayshaun Prince for Shane Battier
Jerryd Bayless for O.J. Mayo
Quincy Pondexter for Sam Young
Keyon Dooling/Tony Wroten for Greivis Vasquez/Ish Smith

The one area where the Grizzlies have probably upgraded most is somewhere it's unlikely to matter, with now-little-used fourth big Ed Davis a significant upgrade over then-little-used Hamed Haddadi.

Overall, the Grizzlies entered this postseason with a similarly middle-of-the-pack offense and a defense that's morphed from good (8th in 2011) to great (2nd this year).

As for the season series, it went 2-2, with home teams prevailing in all. Two went to overtime and another ended with a Mike Conley game-winner. The Spurs blew out the Griz in the third game this season, but that was during a stretch of particular turmoil and poor play. All but the Conley game came before the Rudy Gay trade and even that one was played without Manu Ginobili or Tim Duncan. So, beyond asserting that these teams are fairly evenly matched, I wouldn't put too much stock in the details of the season series.

With last night's Game 6 road win by the San Antonio Spurs over the Golden State Warriors, the Western Conference Finals are now set, with the Grizzlies traveling to San Antonio for Game 1 on Sunday. The schedule for the first four games:

Game 1 — Sunday, May 19th, 2:30 p.m. — San Antonio
Game 2 — Tuesday, May, 21st 8 p.m. — San Antonio
Game 3 — Saturday, May 25th 8 p.m. — Memphis
Game 4 — Monday, May 27th 8 p.m. — Memphis

If needed:

Game 5 — Wednesday, May 29th — San Antonio
Game 6 — Friday, May 31st — Memphis
Game 7 — Sunday, June 2nd — San Antonio

Single-game tickets for Games 3 and 4 go on sale at noon tomorrow.

I've got a series preview in the works. I'm hopeful I can get it posted later this afternoon, but it will be up Saturday morning at the latest.

Even without their all-NBA point guard and with star Kevin Durant smothered to the tune of 5-21 shooting and seven turnovers, it took three daggers to finally eliminate the Oklahoma City Thunder on their home floor.

When the Thunder had whittled a double-digit deficit down to five points with a minute-and-a-half to play, Tony Allen got behind the defense in transition, finished with contact and again from the line to give the Grizzlies a seemingly solid 8-point lead with 1:26 to play.

But the Thunder kept coming and the Grizzlies defense suffered some unusual breakdowns and the lead was cut in half before a high-arcing 19-footer from Marc Gasol gave the Grizzlies a six-point lead with only 27 seconds to play.

But still the Thunder kept coming. Abetted by three missed free throws from Zach Randolph, the Thunder managed to get back to within two points with the ball and 10 seconds to play.

That's when Tony Allen finally ended it, recovering to harass Durant's jumper from behind then somehow darting ahead of him and over everyone else for a defensive rebound, followed by two made free throws and a win secured.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
• It's been a Mike Conley and Marc Gasol series so far.

Can they do it tonight? Ten takes ahead of the game:

1. Uncharted Territory: The Grizzlies have already matched the franchise record for playoff wins with 7. One more would break new ground for the franchise. Over the past 10 seasons, only 16 of the NBA's 30 teams have reached a conference finals, so it would not be an achievement to take for granted.

Out of curiosity, I jotted down how many conference finals each team has made since 1980. Here's how it breaks down:

Lakers: 18
Celtics: 12
Pistons: 11
Spurs: 10
Bulls: 9
Suns, Jazz: 7
Pacers, Sixers, Thunder/Sonics: 6
Heat, Rockets: 5
Knicks, Bucks, Magic, Mavs, Blazers: 4
Cavs: 3
Kings, Nets, Nuggets: 2
Timberwolves: 1

Two teams haven't been there since the 1970s: Wizards/Bullets and Warriors

That leaves six teams that have never made the conference finals: Grizzlies, Raptors, Bobcats, Pelicans/Hornets, Clippers, Hawks (who appeared in some "divisional finals" in the pre-conference era).

A Grizzlies-Warriors West finals would be pretty sweet.

2. Are the Thunder Ready to Break? I can only answer this crucial question with the existential response my three-year-old son now gives to every question we ask: "I can't know."

A 3-1 series lead seems pretty commanding, but every one of these games has been up for grabs in the final minutes. It won't take much for the Thunder to rally on their home floor and force the series back to Memphis, where the pressure would even out with the Grizzlies trying to avoid a road Game 7.

Do the Thunder have it in them or is the trifecta of a 3-1 deficit, no Russell Westbrook, and squandering a big lead in Game 4 all just a bridge to far for this near-broken team?

3. "Clutch Defense:" The Grizzlies' 3-1 lead can be largely attributed to late-game execution. Overall in these three wins, the Grizzlies have scored at a rate of 101.7 points per 100 possessions while yielding 94.5 points per 100 possessions. That's good. But in "clutch" situations — defined as in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime, when the scoring margin is within five points, and 19 of a possible 20 minutes in these three games fit that description — the Grizzlies offense has ticked up slightly (106.7) while the defense (64.2!) has been dominant.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

On a day in which the Grizzlies put three players on the NBA's All-Defensive Team, each of those players demonstrated their worthiness in a wild final 29 minutes that turned FedExForum back into "the Grindhouse."

The Grizzlies held the Thunder to 33% shooting after halftime and erased a 17-point second-quarter deficit to first force overtime and then take a 3-1 series lead that leaves the team one win away from the franchise's first conference finals.

There was Mike Conley, who made his first All-Defensive team, running down Kevin Durant in transition for a steal that prevented the Thunder from building a multi-possession lead midway through the fourth quarter.

There was Tony Allen, who tied Lebron James with the most first-place votes on the All-Defensive Team, fiercely denying Durant the ball a couple of minutes later and forcing the Thunder into a hurried Serge Ibaka jumper that Marc Gasol blocked.

There was Gasol, who became the second consecutive Defensive Player of the Year to fall to the All-Defensive Second Team, stepping up with 81 seconds left in overtime to take a charge against Thunder guard Reggie Jackson and preserve a precarious one-point lead.

And there was Allen, finally, recovering from what he admitted was a blown assignment to make an instinctual game-sealing steal of a Derek Fisher in-bounds pass with the shot clock off in overtime and the Grizzlies up three.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Will the Griz Regret Game 1?: Before this series started, I picked the Grizzlies to win in 6, and that's still where I'm at. But I'm actually slightly less optimistic about their prospects than I was before Game 3 despite the team pulling that one out. The Thunder finally made the adjustments they needed in Game 3 and it almost got them a victory. If series trends have reversed with those adjustments, then dropping Game 1 will be tough to stomach. The Grizzlies squandered 38 minutes of Kendrick Perkins and Hasheem Thabeet (the duo was a combined -14), a gift unlikely to be repeated in the series, via missed free throws and having Tony Allen on the bench while Kevin Durant led a fourth-quarter comeback. In retrospect — if even that — the Grizzlies spotted the Thunder a game, and with OKC seeming to have figured things out a little, that's dangerous.

Will OKC Go Small Ball or Bust?: The Thunder have outscored the Grizzlies in the series with lineups featuring only one "big" (which almost always includes Kevin Durant at power forward) and Game 3 was the first time their lineup distribution tipped in that direction, playing 27 minutes small (+2) to 21 minutes big (-8). Given the results, does Brooks push most of his chips in on small ball tonight? If so, the Grizzlies can't let themselves be out-rebounded again, and need to make their big lineups work to resist the temptation of keeping one of their three best players on the bench in order to match up with the Thunder. This all makes Zach Randolph a key player tonight. It was Randolph's inability to control offensive rebounds in his grasp that stood out most amid the Game 3 rebounding problems. And it's Randolph that will likely be "hiding" on a Thunder perimeter player defensively.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
• Marc Gasol drew a crowd but still lead the Grizzlies to an 87-81 win and a 2-1 series lead over the Thunder Saturday night.

The Grizzlies won this tight game for much the same reason they had lost Game 1 in Oklahoma City; free throws. The Grizzlies converted 23 of 28 attempts at the line (82%), including a perfect 6-6 from Marc Gasol and Mike Conley in the game's final two minutes, while Thunder star Kevin Durant — a career 88% foul shooter — suffered a devastating empty trip with under a minute to play. Those Grizzlies free throws were the only points scored in the game's final two minutes, which began with the teams tied 81-81.

In addition to Durant's missed free throws, the Thunder also watched Derek Fisher, so strong in Oklahoma City, miss an open three off a turnover on the subsequent possession.

With Lionel Hollins astutely managing offense/defense substitutions down the stretch to mitigate potential mismatches against the Thunder's small-ball lineup and with Conley and Gasol coming up clutch from the charity stripe, the Grizzlies' late game execution pulled them through what had been a shaky performance for much of the game.

"I feel like every game we have gotten better and today we were not better than the last game," Gasol said afterward.

• LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

The news peg for the latest flare-up is that the Nets have been reported as a team with interest in Hollins. This kind of story was inevitable. I know of one other franchise that has at least discussed Hollins and have had a third suggested to me by someone with connections to that organization. There's nothing surprising in any of this. Hollins will be a coaching free agent of sorts with lots of jobs out there to be filled and would make a pretty splashy hire for a lot of teams. I would imagine that any team with an opening would be having internal discussions about him as a potential candidate.

Locally, Hollins' future with the Grizzlies has tended to be written about and discussed in simple terms: He's done a great job and he deserves to be back next year. But while I ultimately believe both of those assertions to be true, it's a lot more complicated than that. I wrote about the coaching question at considerable length about a month ago, but now seems like, if not a "good" then perhaps an inevitable time to dig a little deeper into some of the points I made then.

As promised, part two of a preview for tomorrow's Game 3:

7. Potential Thunder Adjustments: Coming back to Memphis 1-1, the Thunder seem to have more adjustments to make. But how willing head coach Scott Brooks will be to alter the team's gameplan is now, perhaps, the central question of the series.

Coming out of Games 1 and 2, the Thunder have three rotation players who not only didn't give them much, but also don't promise to give them much going forward.

This problem starts up front, where each of the Thunder's centers — Kendrick Perkins and Hasheem Thabeet — have been huge negatives. Across two games, Perkins has played 58 miinutes and given the Thunder 2-10 shooting and has generally crippled their offense. Thabeet has been a disaster on both ends. He doesn't need to play unless someone fouls out, but hopefully that Thunder won't make that adjustment for Game 3 because Grizzlies fans deserve to see Thabeet on the floor in a playoff game.

Playing this dreadful center combo for 37 minutes a game was obviously a response to Marc Gasol and the well-founded belief that forwards Serge Ibaka and Nick Collison can't handle him. The problem for the Thunder is that Perkins and Thabeet can't guard Gasol either and having them on the floor kills their offense.

While Collison fouling out in Game 2 was obviously a problem, it's still odd that Ibaka and Collison — by far the Thunder's two best bigs — were only on the floor together for nine minutes in Games 1 and 2. Those happened to be very positive minutes for the Thunder.

On the wing, the odd man out looks to be Thabo Sefolosha — a defensive specialist at the two/three facing team without scorers at those positions that warrant the attention. Already, Sefolosha is playing fewer minutes in this series as a starter (20.5) than reserves Kevin Martin (30.5) and Derek Fisher (24.5).

And while the team's performance while Sefolosha has been on the floor has probably been heavily impacted by coinciding so much with Grizzlies' starters, there's a case to be made that these minutes should be tilted even more in favor of Martin and Fisher. In Games 1 and 2, Martin only averaged about three more minutes a game than he did in a regular season in which Russell Westbrook played a full 82 games. With Westbrook out and Durant needing more help carrying the offensive load, the team's second-best scorer probably needs more minutes, especially since the Grizzlies lack the wing scorers to fully exploit Martin's defensive vulnerability.

• Ronald Martinez, Getty Images

The problem did heighten an issue I grapple with quite a bit: How much should I "show my work," in math-class terms. I've always consulted statistics as a necessary companion to personal observation and other forms of information. Concepts such as pace, usage, efficiency, and other building blocks of "advanced" statistics are not new trends in this space. Often I cite specific numbers to support claims. But sometimes the math is left in the background, an unstated element that helped form an opinion or hone an observation.

I'm not sure which is preferable — some readers like to follow the data; others, I'm sure, grow weary of too much statistical recitation. So I try to find a balance. And this time, with research lost and limits of time and technology weighing against a recreation, I may not show much work. Just know that when I say that Kendrick Perkins is killing the Thunder or that Scott Brooks should really consider using more small-ball or that Jerryd Bayless may be hurting the Griz defense more than helping the offense that there's something backing all of that up.

So, here's a somewhat truncated and considerably less precise first installment of my planned twelve takes. Part two will post later in the day Friday if things go well or Saturday morning if they don't.

1. New Nickname Alert: This has no bearing on the outcome of the series, obviously, but I took great pleasure in the TNT postgame show after Game 2, when Charles Barkley christened Zach Randolph with a new nickname, "Ol' Man River," in reference to Randolph's "old-man game" and the way he keeps rolling along against younger, more athletic competitors. (They get weary, and sick of trying.) This is even more perfect than Barkley knows, given Memphis' perch on the river the song refers to as well as the song's own treasured history in Memphis. It's too bad we can't have James Hyter bless this with a FedExForum performance.

This isn't the first time, incidentally, that a national broadcast has made a brilliant musical reference with regard to the Grizzlies — or to Randolph, to be specific. In the 2011 playoff run, there was a package on the Randolph and Gasol combo — before first-round, Game 2, I think; I can't remember the network — to the tune of John Fogerty's "Big Train (From Memphis)." This was also perfect. The rumbling, locomotive imagery and insistent, old-fashioned rhythm matching Gasol and Randolph's rumbling, old-fashioned style.

It occurred to me, thinking of the late Hyter, that perhaps if the Grizzlies advance we could get Fogerty in town for a Griz-specific update of his song: "Big Spain (From Memphis)," anyone?