All right, let's talk about the Memphis Grizzlies.

The 6-0 Memphis Grizzlies, one of the great stories to start the season.

Maybe the best story to start the season.

Now, I'm gonna start a little bit with the negative here because that's just who I am.

Um, it's, you gotta point to the schedule a little bit.

Like they've, they've feasted on some of the, uh, lesser teams in the NBA.

Four of their 6 wins have come against Sacramento, which doesn't have a win.

And Utah, which is 15.

Uh, they beat Golden State, they beat Portland.

That's pretty good, but they've yet to face a top-tier team in the Western Conference.

That's coming and we'll see what happens.

But I tell you, I love.

Everything about what the Grizzlies are doing right now.

I don't think much of it's sustainable, but I love everything that they're doing right now.

Cameron Boozer, he was my pick to be, uh, Rookie of the Year.

Uh, didn't feel like a difficult one to make because he seemed like the most NBA ready guy.

He's averaging 17.5 points.

10.5 rebounds, almost 6 assists.

He had a triple-double against Portland.

He's been great to start the season.

Second youngest in NBA history to have a triple-double, by the way.

Um, Ty Jerome, ridiculous start to the season, ridiculous.

45 points, 28 points, 31 points.

I don't know.

Um , Western Conference Player of the Week, he's been tremendous for them.

The three-point shooting from Memphis has been the big number that you circle over and over again because they're shooting 41.6% from three.

That's a league best.

They're making 16 threes per game .

Last season, they shot around 35% from three.

So they've got guys that are spacing the floor .

And if you're winning the three-point battle every single night and you're putting up gaudy three-point numbers, um, you're gonna win a lot of games, even if you're flawed in other areas .

Zach Eadie has been excellent.

Um, they, they're, they're playing.

Like 12 guys.

Like they're playing a deep rotation.

Like I think outside of Cameron Boozer, nobody's averaging more than 30 minutes per game.

So they're playing, like, I don't know if you can do this over the course of a season.

I don't know if you, you need to shrink the rotation or if like their bigger lineup is going to get exposed at some point.

But right now, the Memphis Grizzlies are the best story in the NBA full stop.

Um, and it's, it's really fun to watch.

Super fun.

And, and just the joy that those players feel like they're playing with each other is something that may be a little bit new to Memphis, um, after the last few years where there was just so much drama.

So I love seeing that too.

Cameron Boozer, man, I, I just, I felt like in the run up to the draft, he was so unfairly tagged with, well, he can't jump, he can't jump over a stapler, like that kind of thing.

Obviously, he was.

So successful in college because he can do other things and we're seeing all of those other things right now and I, I just, I love to see someone succeed like that.

I covered Carlos, you covered Carlos, like seeing, seeing sort of the fatherly pride there has been really fun and just, I don't know, it just feels like they kind of had this fresh start and I just want to remind people, not all rebuilds in.

bottoming out there is when a team is just terrible and needs to get, you know, doesn't have picks or it doesn't have these kinds of things, they need to bottom out.

But some rebuilds are just, hey, we traded away the sun of which all the planets rotated around, and now we have a chance to rebuild how our team is, how we play, all of those things.

And in a rebuild, I don't expect them to be contenders.

For the title, I don't expect them to necessarily hold up against the tougher competition that is coming, but they are clearly ahead of schedule.

I think Boozer is obviously a huge part of that, and I think no matter what happens as the next month or two unfolds, they can feel internally and fans can feel externally, hey man, this is ahead of schedule.

Like this is pretty good, and this is a stepping stone to maybe next year being even better.

Yeah, um, they're not the grit and grind Memphis Grizzlies.

Um, they're not even the, I've been that for a while, frankly.

Well, no, but they are a physical team now again, like Zach Eadie only played 11 games with them last year.

Zach Eadie is kind of a transformational guy when he's out there on the floor.

Like they are 3rd in defensive efficiency and they're 1st in rebounds per game.

A lot of that has to do with Zach Eadie's presence.

Um, he's a rim protector for them.

You've also got Boozer, who's good, Isaiah Stewart, who's good.

Like that's given them kind of the physical identity that I think they've been lacking over the last couple of years.

And again, it's not the grit and grind Memphis Grizzlies of Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol and, and Tony Allen and all those types, but they're playing with a physicality that they haven't played in the past.

And when you're combining that physicality with Um, that kind of three-point shooting, then you're gonna win a lot of games.

Now, again, the sustainability of it is the question.

Like, we haven't seen them play against the top team.

Like when you look at some of these, whether it's the numbers or the way guys are playing, like what is the least sustainable aspect of the Memphis Grizzlies?

Yeah, I mean, I think obviously once you get in front of a tougher defense, like not only do you score less, but it breaks down a lot of your systems that you have guys who are excellent perimeter defenders, excellent meeting you at the rim, and they haven't played one of those teams yet.

It not only means, oh, we don't score enough points to win the game, it also means that a lot of the things we are doing suddenly don't work.

And so they have to experience that.

See how it doesn't work and then rebuild around that and sort of figure out as a coaching staff, OK, when that happens this is what we do and sort of make that reflexive memory for their players, but this is a coaching staff that can do that and this is a team that clearly wants to learn how to do the best that they can do because if you go into training camp and every guy is out for himself, you don't have this result even against the people that they've played.

What you have, what we can see on the court is a bunch of guys who wanted to have this work, who wanted to absorb what the coaching staff was telling them preseason, and I think that that will help them down the road when they do face challenges because I think those types of attitudes is what makes people sort of step back, reassess, and then attack again and we don't always see that we sometimes see teams being challenged and the team falls apart.

This does not feel to me like one of those teams.

This feels to me like a team that when they are challenged more and they will be challenged more, they're going to start to figure out how to come back from that and how to game plan around and away from that.

So that's super encouraging to me as well.

Yeah, I'm, I'm looking at some of their stats.

Um, 121 points per game, first in the NBA, that's not sustainable.

Uh, 41.6% shooting, uh, 3-point shooting first in the NBA, that's not sustainable.

Net rating plus 15.

1%, 1st in the NBA, that's not sustainable.

Uh, opponent points per game, third, probably not sustainable though if they can stay healthy, they'll be pretty good defensively, um.

You know, look, if they can, if this team can compete for a play spot, that would be a remarkable accomplishment given the expectations coming into this year.

This is one of those teams that I thought would be in the Sacramento, um, Brooklyn, Chicago mix, um, trying to stave off, trying to stay out of that relegation zone.

Like it would almost been, I would have thought it would have been a win to start the season if they stay out of that and we were able to get one of the, the high picks, but the way they're playing right now, if Zach Eadie can stay healthy, if Boozer can fend off fatigue, that's the other part of like playing guys like 20 some odd minutes per game.

Like you're, you're gonna be able to keep these guys fresh as the season goes on.

Like this is, this is the team.

Um, That the coaching staff wanted to coach like they bring in, uh, they bring in their coach, uh, I forgot how to say his last name Iliso Iloso Ilio Solo Iliolo, like I said I'm getting these names wrong, right anyway, um, they bring him in and I always get that name Tuolas I can get, but, um , yes, I was gonna say just call him by his first name.

Yeah, I've been trying to do that, um, they, they, they bring him in and he comes from a, a different school of coaching.

Where it is more about the collective than it's about the individual and you do play kind of a free-flowing type of system and you're not worried about minutes, you're not worried about number of shots, you're not worried about points per game.

They're, they seem to be the embodiment of how he wants to coach and if they can continue down this path and, um, I, I see no reason to believe why they can't be in that play mix at the end of the season.

Oh absolutely.

I mean, again, it's, it's as I said, they seem like they want to play as a team and we see on teams that doesn't happen all the time.

You have a star who wants what he wants in his game.

You have different people who when they're faced with challenges, arguments start happening in the locker room.

It doesn't feel like that with this team, so yes.

They're going to be challenged.

They're going to be challenged at the rim.

They're going to be challenged at the perimeter.

They're going to be challenged all over the court, and all those numbers will come down that you were just citing, but it feels like they are a team that can collectively figure out how to adjust, and it's not going to devolve into the team sort of breaking up internally.

And I think that is a tremendous credit to every player on the floor.

It's a tremendous credit to the coaching staff.

And it's going to be fun to see what they do.

I definitely don't expect them to be in the bottom three, the relegation group, as we call them now.

Um, and maybe they're making a play spot.

I can't believe you put them on par with Chicago and Brooklyn, dude.

Well, I mean, look, Brooklyn, I thought would be better than the way they've started the season.

I mean, how many years in a row can they be just God awful.

Um, I like that Nets backcourt.

I said that to start the season.

Chicago, I thought Chicago would be a little bit better too.

Like, I didn't think these teams would be so bad.

Like I expected Sacramento to be bad.

Like if Sacramento, I saw some report, not to make this about the Kings, I saw some report that like Demontas Sabonis wants out.

No kidding.

No kidding.

I'm shocked by that.

I'm shocked by that.

Who at this point wants to be in Sacramento?

Like, seriously, like 5th most shots on the team.

Like, maybe, maybe a cuff, like maybe some of these rookies or 2nd or 3rd year guys are OK with this because they're in the fledgling stage of your career.

But if you're a Sabonis and you are in your prime, hell no.

Hell no, you're not wanna be.

So I expect them to be bad, I guess I just kind of thought like the way.

You know, again, Memphis had a lot of injuries last year.

Ty Jerome, like Ty Jerome, speaking of sustainability with Memphis, I'll touch on this.

Um, Ty, this is sustainable for Ty Jerome.

Like Ty Jerome, you go back to that last year in Cleveland where he played 70 games.

He averaged 12.5 points per game.

He was 3rd in 6th Man of the Year voting .

So he gets a bigger role.

Well, last year even in Memphis, only played 15 games, but averaged almost 20 points per game in those 15 games in 22 minutes per game.

So there are some flashing signs that hey, Ty Jerome might be ready to bust out in a bigger role.

Now, 5 games in, he's averaging 26 points.

He's shooting 47% from the floor, 34% from 3.

Like, to me, this is sustainable though.

Like maybe it's not 26, maybe it's close to 20%, but I think Ty Jerome is a 20 point per game guy in this league.

I do.

I do believe that.

OK, so you're talking about sustainability, and you mentioned a couple times health.

If they stay healthy, if they stay healthy, and I know we're going to talk about this in a minute, but I do think that injuries have become such an issue that more than anything else that is going to determine which teams do well during the regular season and which teams do well during the playoffs.

I think it's sort of the most important thing at this point, and that is unpredictable.

unfortunately, and I think it makes predicting or you know, this team's going to do this or this team's sustainable, this is not sustainable.

I think it's hard to do that in a league where we are seeing injuries like this that do, do change the trajectory.

Look at Oklahoma City.

They've lost a couple of games now in a way that you wouldn't expect them to if they were whole and healthy, and you just, you just don't know what's going to happen to a lot of these players and teams.