The latest news in a dramatic season for the Memphis Grizzlies brought a private meeting initiated by Marc Gasol and Mike Conley with the team’s majority owner. What could it mean?
Losing is not pleasant, so it is easy to determine how members of the Memphis Grizzlies — especially Marc Gasol and Mike Conley — are feeling right now as they have only won one game in 2019 through nine tries.
The team is between a rock and a hard place right now. Following Friday’s road loss to the Boston Celtics, the 19-26 Grizzlies stand in next-to-last place in the Western Conference, but remain just 5.5 games out of the seventh/eighth/ninth spots (three-way tie) in the West playoff race.
Is this team truly in tank-mode? Honestly, if Memphis strings together a few wins this month, they could certainly rejoin the postseason conversation. There is plenty of basketball to be played through the remaining 37 regular season contests.
Being stuck in a rut with an unsure direction, it is understandable to see Gasol and Conley wanting some answers. They are at the end of their prime years and they both came into the season wanting to have one last hard push into the NBA Playoffs, and perhaps beyond. Those plans quickly soured as December arrived and this Grizzly ship has only spiraled out of control since.
On Friday afternoon, The Athletic‘s Shams Charania broke news that both Marc Gasol and Mike Conley, as the leaders of their squad, requested a private meeting with the Memphis Grizzlies’ majority owner, Robert Pera. No specific details of the meeting have been leaked as of Friday evening.
Story on @TheAthleticNBA: As Memphis approaches a crossroads, franchise stars, owner Robert Pera meet over state of franchise. https://t.co/oc2SqwL45C
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 18, 2019
For Grizz Nation, this may signal that the team is officially panicking. Or maybe it does not. With the NBA Trade Deadline quickly approaching, this is very intriguing timing for NBA fans around the league. This Grizz-related news arrives at a time within the NBA schedule that player movement becomes abundant.
What could all of this mean? Well, a lot, actually. There are many theories that could derive from this big news story and Beale Street Bears is here to break it all down and analyze the possibilities.