What's next for Conley, Gasol and Memphis after Fizdale's firing?
— -- A day after leaving star center Marc Gasol on the bench down the stretch as the Memphis Grizzlies suffered their eighth consecutive loss, David Fizdale was fired as the Grizzlies' head coach.
Whether Fizdale's relationship with Gasol cost him his job or this was a more conventional coaching change to shake up a struggling team, the takeaway is the same: Memphis is continuing to try to wring every possible win out of the Grit 'n' Grind core of Gasol and injured point guard Mike Conley.
With those stars aging and little young talent on the roster, the Grizzlies are probably just delaying an inevitable rebuild.
Memphis' aging core
Weighted for minutes played this season, the Grizzlies' roster scores as the league's eighth-oldest, with an average age of 28.2 (at season's end). Even that, however, understates the magnitude of the issue for Memphis because young players have sopped up minutes without really contributing much to winning.
If we weight by wins above replacement player (WARP) -- using my metric -- zeroing out players who have rated worse than replacement level, the Grizzlies jump to the league's fourth-oldest roster.
None of the team's five top players by WARP -- Tyreke Evans, Gasol, Chandler Parsons, Brandan Wright and Conley -- is younger than 28, and three of the five are in their 30s. To the extent that Memphis had success early in the season, it was largely a product of unexpected bouncebacks by injury-plagued Evans (who's on a one-year contract) and Parsons.
That list is an indictment of the Grizzlies' ability to add young talent to the roster. Just one Memphis first-round pick since Conley remains on the roster, and that player, 2015 pick Jarell Martin, was on the verge of being waived during training camp. The Grizzlies have done a better job mining the second round for talent, with second-year center Deyonta Davis playing solid minutes during Wright's absence and rookie wing Dillon Brooks averaging 29.5 minutes per game and rating well defensively by ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM).
Still, there's no young talent on the roster capable of complementing Conley and Gasol as building blocks, let alone supplanting them in their 30s. Odds are that by the time any player Memphis selects in this year's draft gets to that point, it will be too late. If the Grizzlies somehow manage to stay competitive, the draft might not be much help thereafter because Memphis owes a first-round pick to the Boston Celtics that is top-eight protected in 2019, top-six protected in 2020 and unprotected in 2021 if not already conveyed.
Free agency offers little more hope. With Conley, Gasol and Parsons on the books for nearly $80 million combined in 2018-19 and 2019-20, the Grizzlies don't project to have appreciable cap space until Gasol and Parsons become free agents in the summer of 2020. (Even waiving Parsons and stretching his salary wouldn't make Memphis a player in free agency before then.)
Grizzlies resisting rebuild over market concerns?
The logical reaction to where Memphis is as a franchise would be to trade Conley and Gasol for value before their contracts make getting multiple picks and young prospects in return impossible. Firing Fizdale is the latest indication that the Grizzlies are resisting such bold moves, which is understandable in the context of their financial concerns.
ESPN's Zach Lowe and Brian Windhorst reported before the season about Memphis' revenue problems, noting that the Grizzlies lost $40 million in terms of operations during 2016-17. Even after receiving the most revenue sharing of any NBA team, Memphis still lost $8 million -- with a team that reached the playoffs.
Although the Grizzlies' payroll would be lower in a rebuilding scenario, the NBA's salary floor limits how much they could save in terms of costs, and the organization understandably fears revenue declining precipitously without a competitive team or the signature stars who led the most successful run in franchise history.
At the same time, Memphis might learn this season the lesson many NBA teams have learned before: Simply wanting to make the playoffs isn't sufficient to do so.
Fading playoff hopes
Through the first two weeks of the season, the Grizzlies looked like they might surpass pessimistic projections for their 2017-18 record. RPM simulations had Memphis finishing with an average of 34.5 wins, and the Grizzlies' over/under at the Westgate SuperBook Las Vegas was only slightly better, at 37.5 wins.
Spurred by solid play from Evans and Parsons, Memphis started the year 5-1 with a pair of wins against the Houston Rockets -- half of the losses Houston has suffered to date -- and one over the Golden State Warriors. Yet the Grizzlies dropped to 7-6 by the time Conley was sidelined by Achilles soreness, and they have lost all six games they've played without him.
Memphis is due to bounce back to some extent. Half of the losses during the team's current losing streak have come by eight points or fewer, reversing a trend in which the Grizzlies tended to fare better than expected in close games in recent seasons. Conley will return at some point, though Fizdale told reporters before Sunday's game that he wasn't expected back in the next few games.
When fully healthy, Memphis could be a .500 team or better. However, the Grizzlies can't count on continuing to avoid injury -- one side effect of an older core -- and playing .500 ball probably won't be enough to crawl out of the deficit in the standings created by the losing streak. Just to get back to .500 for the season, Memphis will have to play at better than a 44-win pace the rest of the way.
As a result, simulations using FiveThirtyEight's CARM-Elo projections have the Grizzlies reaching the playoffs just 14 percent of the time. ESPN's Basketball Power Index gives Memphis more hope but still has the Grizzlies making the playoffs 20 percent of the time. Odds are Memphis' coaching change won't do much to change that fate.
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