The Tradeoffs of the Grit and Grind for Small Market Teams

The Small-Market Memphis Grizzlies could, conceivably, be the best team in the West next season. I think most people will be shocked if the Big-Market Lakers make the playoffs. Gothic Ginboli’s Aaron McGuire had a pretty cool/accurate next season Win/Loss breakdown that more or less addresses that (obviously, it’s not perfect at all, and who knows how accurate it’ll be come play time, but every team is within 5 wins of where I’d put them):

Yet, despite this, somehow, the Lakers have 25 nationally televised games next season, not counting NBATV. 25. Games.

The Grizzlies? 6.

Why this huge disparity in national interest?

For one, the Lakers — whether we want to admit it or not — are really America’s NBA team. No other team has nearly as large a national following of people who will watch Lakers games no matter how bad they are. Statistically, there are just more fans who will always watch Lakers games, period, end of story. So, to that extent, the TV stations will always play a lot of Lakers games, because more of the nation is guaranteed to watch those games, no matter how bad the Lakers are.

That’s what comes with being in the Biggest Television Market in the US.

The Grizzlies are automatically at a discount by just being a Small Market team. It has been, and will continue to be, a limitation in their widespread appeal.

On the other hand, a whole lot more of the nation are not Lakers fans, and for them, they want to watch two things:

1) Their team (whoever it may be).

2) Good basketball.

By playing a lot of Lakers games, the TV network is alienating the majority of the nation that, rather than LAL games, wants to watch good basketball (because those things will definitely be mutually exclusive next season). So, what the networks are really trying to do is to balance the guaranteed viewership of Lakers fans with the likely-to-tune-in group of people who only want to see good basketball.

Jan. 28, 2012; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Memphis Grizzlies guard Tony Allen against the Phoenix Suns at the US Airways Center. The Suns defeated the Grizzlies 86-84. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

However, despite trying to strike this balance, the national networks are still showing the “Definitely a top-five team, possible Western Conference Champs” Grizzlies only 6 times, which still seems remarkably low. At this point, it just comes down to the fact that fans don’t tend to think of Grizzlies basketball as “good basketball” to watch.

Why do people not want to watch the Grizzlies?

The answer is an integral part of Memphis culture: the Grit and Grind. It’s what makes the Grizzlies good, but it costs them a lot. It costs them an offense, it costs them a national viewership, and as a result, it ultimately costs them money that could be used to spend on building the team over the tax.

The Grind implies working hard to earn your success. It implies slowly outworking other teams, possessions by possession by grueling possession. To do that, it implies an airtight defense, and a slow, plodding offense.

To viewers, that means a defense that looks like this:

But an offense that looks almost hilariously bad and is painful to watch, like this:

(Video courtesy of the NBA and Hardwood Paroxysm)

That’s the kind of tradeoff that costs viewers. It’s just really hard to watch. Period. If you enjoyed that offense clip for any reason that to laugh at it…then I dunno, we’re pretty different people.

The thing is, NBA defense and offense are both assets, and assets take resources to build. Unless you’re a team like the Nets, who have basically infinite money and so infinite resources, or the Spurs, who have hyper-efficient use of their resources, then typically, offense comes at the expense of defense and vice versa.

Interestingly, however, defense has consistently proven itself to be more valuable to a contender than offense. In the last 15 years, only three teams have scored at a rate higher than 110 points per 100 possessions and still won the championship: Last year’s Heat, the 2011 Mavericks and 2001 Lakers. This is despite the fact that there are typically several teams every season who score at a rate above that.

There has only been one single team in the last 15 years who has won a championship who was not in the top ten defensively: the 2001 Lakers.

So, by dedicating resources to defense first, the Grizzlies are committing themselves to a better chance at the ultimate success. They’re also, however, committing themselves to un-watchability.

If there’s a cost to the Grint and Grind mentality of the Grizzlies, that’s it: the totally unappealing nature of watching Grizz games. That has a real cost too, because for every nationally televised Grizzlies game, that’s more tickets sold for Grizzlies games, more ad money flowing into owner Robert Pera’s pockets, and that’s ultimately more flexibility to do things like spend over the tax for a player; and for every game not shown nationally, that’s an opportunity lost.

In some ways, this is a vicious circle. LA is already a huge city, and thus huge market, and thus they get more games, and thus they get more fans, and thus they get more money, and so the market gets bigger, and they get even more games, and on and on and on. And then, the bigger that LA, NY, CHI, and BOS get, the smaller that MEM, SA, OKC, DEN get. To an extent, it’s just hard to beat the cycle, and Small Market teams — like Memphis — continue to hurt.

One way to beat it, the Grizzlies have decided, is to build a team around defense, so that they can use fewer resources to get a better result. As they’re discovering, however, this path has it’s own perils when it comes to trying to carve a way into a bigger market share: they may win more, now, but there’s no way to ensure that they’ll still have the resources to win more, later.

With the schedule release, the Grizzlies are discovering the business cost of the Grit and Grind. At least it doesn’t have a cost on the court.