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The NBA regular season awards continue to trickle out. The latest award, Defensive Player of the Year, was handed out Wednesday.
[Marc Gasol wins Defensive Player of the Year]
Los Angeles Lakers forward Pau Gasol sent his younger brother, Memphis Grizzlies center Marc Gasol, a congratulatory tweet after the news broke.
Over the All-Star break, news broke that longtime Los Angeles Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss had been hospitalized and was battling cancer.
Monday, Dr. Buss passed away.
[Heisler on Buss: As owners go, he stands alone]
Many NBA players (former and current), owners and personnel sent their regards via Twitter.
(This is another in a series of 30 guest columns that will run in October, when optimism reigns supreme across the NBA. The theme will be “Five Reasons to Feel Positive About … ” We encourage you to follow the authors on Twitter and visit their sites. – CS)
Two seasons back, the Grizzlies were a Game 7 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder away from making it to the Western Conference finals. To that, they entered the 2011-12 season with greater expectations and visions of finally – for the first time in franchise history – making it past the second round of the playoffs.
Unfortunately, they ran into a Los Angeles Clippers team that actually posed to be a tougher matchup for the Grizzlies than the top-seeded Spurs they ousted in the 2011 playoffs.
As the Grizzlies tried to rebound from an epic Game 1 collapse at the hand of the Clippers, they eventually fell in seven games and suddenly caused many to wonder whether the team as constructed was good enough to make the jump to the next level.
Gone is O.J. Mayo, who signed with Dallas in the offseason. Back in the mix is, well, essentially the same team that lost in the first round to the Clippers. So the question remains: Is this core good enough to get the Grizzlies past the second round of the playoffs? Or are they nothing more than a regular season threat?
Sure, the core is essentially the same, but here are five reasons to feel positive about this Grizzlies team.
Tweet of the Night went to Tony Wroten, who expressed displeasure at the people that question how LeBron James made his infamous “decision”.
Wroten, the 25th overall pick of the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2012 draft, is likely not wrong in his observation. No matter how James decided to leave, people would have found his departure upsetting – especially the fans of Cleveland. However, it is also true that he acted rather childish through much of the process, from having teams visit him one by one to provide presentations as if he actually were “a king”, while leaving the Cavaliers organization completely in the dark before publicly humiliating all things Ohio with “The Decision”. There is no denying that James acted the part of a diva at times and his actions certainly rubbed fans the wrong way – something even he probably recognizes at this point.
The fact that Wroten brought up such an old topic, despite James winning his first championship, despite the fact that he is in London right now to represent our country proves that some people will never get over what he did. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but it appears to be a mistake that some simply won’t let go.
