Five Starting Fives: Who should be starting for the Grizzlies?

Larry Kuzniewski

Courtney Lee kept the starting spot he earned last season… for now.

As soon as the season ended last year (and really earlier than that) the most popular topic of conversation among writers who cover the Grizzlies, message boards and Twitter, and even random Griz fans talking to each other standing in line at the grocery store was “Who’s Joerger going to start next year?”.

Most people seemed content to say “anybody but Tayshaun Prince,” but since everything we’ve seen so far would seem to suggest that Dave Joerger is a fairly traditional head coach who believes that being “A Starter” carries a great deal of weight (and a great deal of the minutes workload) it’s not just something inconsequential.

So who’s starting? We may know the answer to that question—at least for now—but that doesn’t mean the debate should be closed. I’ve put together a list of five potential Grizzlies starting units that are worth talking about, and that we may see as the season rolls on:

1. Mike Conley, Courtney Lee, Tony Allen, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol

As announced by Dave Joerger last week, this is the actual Grizzlies starting lineup headed into the 2014–15 season. And, well, it could be worse.

Having Courtney Lee resume the starting spot he jumped into last year while Tony Allen was injured is only right; Lee played very well in the regular season, hitting big shots on offense and making plays on defense, and even making some people say crazy things like “Do they even need Allen to come back?” before disappearing like D.B. Cooper in the playoffs.

Allen, for his part, did an incredible job as the first Grizzly off the bench after returning from a lengthy (and ill-defined) hand/wrist injury (an injury that saw him parked on the bench much longer than anyone, including the Grizzlies, expected) and played a major part in the Grizzlies’ success in the stretch run towards that fateful first-round showdown with the Thunder. And Allen’s offense, while mostly still a garbage fire, is still better than what Tayshaun Prince was able to contribute in the starting 3 spot. Allen’s cuts to the basket are his saving grace on that end of the court, where he’s able to use his athleticism and smart timing to get baskets that no one—including the 18,000 folks in FedExForum—expects him to get.

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All in all, this is probably the lineup that had to happen to make everyone happy. Allen was very vocal about his displeasure at coming off the bench, and it was almost definitely going to be a problem if he had to do it again to start this season. Keeping Allen on his side is probably in Joerger’s best interests, especially since the Grizzlies need to get off to a good start to the season, and a big part of that is chemistry and attitude.

That’s not to say the lineup decision was made for anything but basketball reasons, though: Allen’s athleticism makes up for his size disadvantage against most small forwards, although I still think the Griz are better off using him to defend the ballhandler instead of spot-up guys (or really anybody with a low usage rate). Lee’s shooting—assuming it’s going to be where it was during the season and not the playoffs—means the Griz have more space to operate in on offense, and his defense is solid enough that Allen and Conley won’t have to cover for him, especially if he can switch off to cover whoever Conley and Allen aren’t.

Overall, it’s a better lineup than last year’s, and it makes everybody (with the probably exception of Tayshaun Prince) happy. I’m fine with it. It will probably work out for the best, assuming Allen’s offense isn’t too much of a liability. Given the team’s successes in the past four seasons, it probably (hopefully?) won’t be.

2. Conley, Allen, Quincy Pondexter, Randolph, Gasol

Moving Tony Allen back to shooting guard and starting Pondexter at small forward is an intriguing option, especially if Pondexter turns out to be what people want him to be. Pondexter has shown flashes of being dangerous from long range, especially in the corners, and his preseason play was pretty encouraging from an “eye test” perspective. His defense is okay, but it’s really the floor spacing that the Grizzlies would need from him as a starter. Like Lee, he could simply be tasked to guard whoever Allen and Conley aren’t covering.

There’s one off-the-court reason for moving Pondexter to the starting 3 spot: it would also be the logical outcome of a trade involving Courtney Lee. I don’t know that the Grizzlies are interested in such a deal, but if they’re going to trade a wing, he’s the one making the most money (who isn’t Tayshaun Prince’s Expiring Contract) and he was very much a Jason Levien guy (Levien and former Director of Player Personnel Stu Lash both served as Lee’s agent at one point or another), so he’d probably be the odd man out if Pondexter is playing at anything close to the same level.^[1]

There’s been talk of starting Pondexter since the 2013 playoff run, especially after Prince was injured in the OKC series, but it hasn’t happened yet. My sense is that we may see it at some point this season if Pondexter plays well in November. He may get his shot, and Courtney Lee may be relegated to a bench role or traded somewhere else (and no doubt there are plenty of teams interested in having a player of his caliber, especially given that the salary cap is about to go up). If this starting lineup is going to happen, don’t expect it to happen until December, maybe even mid-December.

3. Conley, Jordan Adams, Pondexter, Randolph, Gasol

Assuming Pondexter can work his way into the starting 3 spot, this could be the starting lineup by the end of the season, with Tony Allen back in his Super Sixth Man capacity (and presumably not too thrilled about it).

It’s a bit much to suggest that the Grizzlies start a rookie, when their track record with first round picks over the last five or so years has been worse than Homer Simpson’s safety record at the nuclear power plant. But Adams is a player with real potential—potential he’s already shown flashes of in Summer League and preseason, even though those are mostly meaningless—and assuming he’s not shuttling back and forth to Iowa all year and/or riding the pine while Tayshaun Prince chucks from 18 feet out, he can grow into the kind of scoring guard the Grizzlies haven’t had in a long time.

Hopes and expectations are high within the Grizzlies organization for Adams, but no one seems to expect him to see much floor time this season. I think that’s a mistake—another mishandling of a player who needs minutes to develop in a long, distinguished Grizzly tradition. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that if Adams can establish himself in the wing rotation (which is a big “if”, especially given Joerger’s apparent preference for veterans because Veteran Leadership), Adams can be starting by the end of the year. I really think he can be that good. Or maybe I just want him to be that good because of what that would mean for the Grizzlies’ offense, and I’m burned out from watching five years of grind-it-out vomit isolation basketball. Either way, I’m sticking to my guns on this one.

4. Conley, NIck Calathes, Tayshaun Prince, Gasol, Kosta Koufos

This lineup played for a while in the second quarter of the Griz/Cavs game last week. As a starting lineup, this grouping will be useful if:

• Global warming is about to make the earth uninhabitable
• Amelia Earhart’s plane has been found
• Dave Joerger has a psychotic break and wants to inflict his madness on the rest of the NBA, like Louis Wain painting increasingly surreal cats and kittens.
• something involving Gog and Magog

…in all other circumstances, this lineup is an abomination, and should never be deployed.

5. Conley, Allen, Bo Outlaw, Randolph, Gasol

Earlier today, the Sixers traded some stuff to the Knicks and got Travis Outlaw in return, but accidentally posted Bo Outlaw’s picture on their website instead. Bo Outlaw is 43, and hasn’t played a game since 2008, but Griz fans would welcome him back with open arms, right? It worked for Battier and Miller—it could work for Bo Outlaw, too. He had a thoroughly okay 2003–04 season in Memphis, if playing 18 minutes without scoring a point is your thing. He did start one game that year.

Until the Sixers posted that today, I had forgotten that Bo Outlaw even existed. How quickly the first-ever playoff Grizzlies have slipped into the past.