2014 Training Camp

Pete Pranica

While  the Memphis Grizzlies pushed through their only practice on Day 3 of their  training camp, six gleaming F-18 jets painted in the distinctive livery of the  U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels carved up the cloudless San Diego sky.

The  precision flight team was practicing for their headliner performance in the  Miramar Air Show this weekend. As anyone who’s seen the Blues perform will tell  you, their precision is the product of discipline and leadership.

Without  leadership and a strong guiding force, a basketball team can become a  disjointed mess littered with isolation and “me-first” one-on-one play. Coaches  can only do so much as leaders. They can game-plan and yell and cajole and  motivate, but the on-court leadership within a team is every bit as important,  if not more so.

For  many teams, there is one unquestioned leader. Anyone want to dispute that Chris  Paul runs the Clippers or that Kobe Bryant is the Lakers’ alpha male? But what  of the Grizzlies?

Coach  Dave Joerger told a small gathering of reporters today that the leadership  comes from Mike Conley, Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph – three widely disparate  personalities that will somehow have to ensure that the Grizzlies locker room  remains fixed on the ultimate prize.

Conley  is soft-spoken and the least likely to kick over a garbage can in a locker room  tirade. He is, however, gracious and clear-headed and able to bridge gaps and  mend fences as needed. Gasol is the most outwardly passionate of the three, for  whom losing a pickup game requires punting the ball into the far reaches of the  court. His emotions run hot and he demands perfection of himself and his  teammates, a quality that is at once endearing and maddening, especially when he  is critical after a win. Randolph somehow vacillates between the Conley-Gasol  poles. He’s soft spoken and prefers to lead by example until he’s pushed and  then can erupt with Gasol-like intensity.

This  leadership triumvirate is unique, but according to Joerger, effective. “Because  it’s not just one guy saying something,” he said, “it’s all three of them.” The  implication is that when you have three leaders of varying styles and stripes,  their concurrence on important issues will carry the day as effectively as a  single Kobe Bryant.

That  style of leadership sounds fine in principle so long as all three remain on the  same page, which isn’t always easy. There’s the juggling of the perpetually  shifting emotions that accompany hot streaks and slumps during the marathon  season along with the unseen peripheral issues – family, friends, contract  status and the like. It doesn’t figure to be a turbulence-free journey, but the  continuity of the Mike-Marc-Zach trio is one reason for optimism in Memphis  this season.

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Pete's Perspective: Training Camp - Day 3

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Perhaps it’s because the Grizzlies are training in sunny Southern California where the hillsides are burnt brown from a lack of rain and the promise of more Santa Ana winds, but no matter the reason, there’s no mud to be found around the Memphis Grizzlies in this training camp.

Training camps fall into two categories – ones in which the two-hour sessions drag on interminably and ones in which there’s a straightforward, business-like approach that allows a full day’s work in less than two hours.

The Grizzlies are putting on an efficient and workmanlike camp inside RIMAC Arena at UCSD. Every drill has been timed out and carefully choreographed to get the most out of every minute. Every coach and player development staffer is fully participating instead of standing on the sidelines with a towel over folded arms.

This isn’t a camp for lollygaggers. The coaching staff has been preparing for this week since early September. Their task has been made easier with the high number of holdover players from last season, but still there is the matter of getting Vince Carter and draft picks Jordan Adams and Jarnell Stokes up to snuff on the Grizzlies’ system.

The quick pace is forcing everyone to focus on details. If you blink, you will almost certainly miss something. Yesterday, it was defense; today, it was offense. As a player, you’ve got to get your mind around what’s being taught because there just aren’t a whole lot of roster spots available and the competition for minutes on the wings figures to be pretty keen.

And you’d better have arrived at camp in shape, or you’re going to be literally left behind. Thankfully for the Grizzlies, their fitness level across the board is high, a validation of the additional training and strength-and-conditioning staff approved by Robert Pera. For years, the Grizzlies made do with a smaller-than-average cadre of staff to handle the many physical needs of their players. Those days are over, and perhaps also over are days spent spinning wheels while stuck in the mud.

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Pete’s Perspective: Training Camp, Day 2

Our own Pete Pranica checks in with highlights from the first session of Grizzlies Training Camp in San Diego.

As Mike Conley walked to the waiting team bus outside RIMAC Arena on the campus of UCSD, I stopped him and asked him what the theme of the Grizzlies’ training camp was.

“Urgency,” he answered without hesitation.

It’s not much of a marketing tag line, but it is the whole and unvarnished truth for this Grizzlies team. A year ago in Nashville, the Grizzlies were coming off a Western Conference Finals appearance and entered camp on the Vanderbilt campus with touch of swagger and a comfort level.

Too much of a comfort level, it turned out. The Grizzlies had fits and starts out of the gate, and when they lost Marc Gasol for 23 games, they found themselves having to play for a standings deficit for much of the season. Memphis had to win a game on the road against the surprisingly tough Phoenix Suns to earn a playoff berth and then take out Dallas to escape a first-round match with the Spurs.

One of the toughest things to learn in sports is that last year’s accomplishments are exactly that – last year’s. The 2013-14 Grizzlies learned that almost too late in the game. The 2014-15 Grizzlies aren’t going to make the same mistake twice.

There was no easing into the first session at RIMAC Arena. There was a lot of running, competing and even a drill for taking charges. The cavernous RIMAC Arena allowed four sets of drills to be done concurrently, so there was very little standing around by anyone, especially the assistant coaches who kept the pace of the practice humming along.

There’s very little to conclude or to judge after one session, but the effort and attention to detail were in evidence – and that’s all you can ask as training camp starts.

One question that’s been asked is, “why San Diego?” The quick and easy answer is that Grizzlies controlling owner Robert Pera went to UCSD. In talking with Pera after the morning camp session, he shrugged off that association, preferring that people remember that the1992 Olympic Dream Team held practice sessions at RIMAC Arena. His largely unspoken hope was that some of the magic of Magic, Michael, Larry and company would infuse the Grizzlies’ training camp efforts 22 years later.

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Pete's Perspective: 2014 Training Camp Day 1

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