Kobe and the Lakers' breakup drama had turned into a soap opera. In the short term it looked like nothing would come of it; in the long term, both sides had drained each other dry, and the longer it dragged on, the greater the chance that No. 24 would leave Los Angeles.
But while the two kept tugging at each other, another sports drama—one that had been running for years and only blew up this summer—finally reached its conclusion.
With Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Rajon Rondo all retained, Danny Ainge sent an entire roster to the Timberwolves and brought back superstar Kevin Garnett. That drawn-out divorce was finally over.
Now it was everyone else's turn to curse.
The weak teams were fine—they weren't chasing a title anyway, and the Celtics' Big Three had nothing to do with them. The strong teams were the ones wailing, especially in the East. Since Michael Jordan retired back in the last century, the Eastern Conference had basically been a fish pond, saved face only by the Pistons. But however much the Pistons propped things up, they couldn't withstand the West's wealth of talent; as their lineup aged and broke apart, LeBron James tore through them single-handedly last year. It was a feat unheard of in the ages, yet it also indirectly proved how pitiful the East's competitiveness really was.
Now things were better, but the East was still weak overall—and in an era where talent was spread evenly across teams and no one was stacking All-Stars, a super team with one superstar and two All-Stars suddenly emerged, and the balance of power tipped at once.
So what did any of this have to do with the Memphis Grizzlies?
No one thought they had a chance to be contenders this season, next season, or even the season after that.
Since signing Darko Miličić, the Grizzlies had made no further moves. With the owner demanding a policy of financial contraction, the front office could not possibly pursue anything aggressive.
Training camp was about to open, and Jerry West had come back to Memphis again.
Four years earlier, when rumors first linked this nearly seventy-year-old legend to the Grizzlies' president job, the entire basketball world had been stunned. On the surface, it made no sense at all. Compared with taking over this team, that legendary half-court buzzer shot of his in the 1970 NBA Finals—the one that forced overtime—looked like an easy wide-open jumper.
Back then the Grizzlies were a complete league laughingstock. Seven seasons since the franchise began, they had never won more than 23 games in a single season. Their management was notorious for a series of jaw-dropping blunders: in 1997, to acquire the fading veteran Otis Thorpe, they squandered the 2003 No. 2 pick; that same year they used the No. 4 pick on Antonio Daniels—a point guard so thoroughly a bust that it's hard to find his equal anywhere in NBA history. Did anyone remember Steve Francis? When the Grizzlies took him with the No. 2 pick in 1999, this future All-Star wept on the spot and publicly refused to report. Memphis then was the "basketball hell" everyone avoided like the plague. Unlike the Toronto Raptors, who could draft Vince Carter while teetering on the brink and revive their market, they had no choice but to trade Francis away, utterly humiliated.
The Los Angeles Times commented: "Jerry West has retired. He will enjoy a happy old age, and every rumor about him coming back in Memphis is a wishful joke. I mean it—compared with that, Memphis would be better off praying for Elvis Presley to rise from the dead."
A week later West took the job. He officially became that resurrected Elvis.
And since he was the King, he had to bear the King's expectations. The fans wanted him to turn the Grizzlies into a great franchise like the Lakers. West tried: he brought Hubie Brown out of retirement to set a defensive tone for the team and pinned his hopes on Pau Gasol bringing the kind of dominance he'd shown over Europe to Memphis. But none of it ever moved past the ideal. The team piled up 48 wins three seasons running, yet never managed a single playoff victory. A dead market meant year after year of losses, and owner Michael Heisley kept demanding cuts. After Hubie Brown had his fill of coaching, he strolled back to the broadcast booth, and his successor, Mike Fratello, botched everything completely. With Gasol suffering a fracture at the 2006 EuroBasket, that Grizzlies team of fifty-win seasons finally collapsed in 2006-07.
From then on West wanted to resign. He could see no hope at all. Had this been his Lakers years, such a hopeless situation would have been enough to drive him to poison.
Then he went to watch a Texas Tech game in person, and he found that Chinese kid. There was no doubt about it—he saw the spark in him. The collapsing Grizzlies dropped into the lottery and drew the No. 3 pick, and that gave West hope. Everything after that followed naturally: Xu Ling's workout in Memphis was near perfect, and West locked this Eastern rising star firmly into the blueprint of Memphis's future.
Whether that decision was right remained to be proven by time, but the draft did keep West in Memphis.
He didn't hand in his resignation. He was still the team's president.
Unfortunately, only West could see that thread of light in the darkness.
The Grizzlies were still one of the NBA's worst teams. Their attendance ranked second-to-last in the league, jersey and merchandise sales were dismal, and their losses ranked sixth in the league—and that with a total payroll kept below the salary cap year after year. As Memphis's only major league team, they drew far less local love than the Memphis Tigers, and there was no sign of that changing anytime soon.
As he neared his destination, West slowed the car. Ahead, the outline of a huge gray building gradually emerged—FedExForum. It was not only the Grizzlies' home court but also their training facility; the training center was an annex gym of the arena itself.
West drove into the dedicated lane, skirting the glass curtain wall at the main entrance with the team's blue-and-gold logo set into it, and headed straight for the training facility entrance on the side of the building.
West had just sat down in his office when Vice President Dick Versace came to knock.
"Come in."
West didn't look up, answering only in a flat tone.
Versace stepped in, laid several documents on the desk, and began reporting in a formulaic voice. "Jerry, there are a few things you need to know. The league office's preliminary plan for next season's revenue sharing has come down, and it's worse than we expected. Also, the Memphis City Council hearing on arena subsidies has been pushed to next month."
West skimmed the documents quickly, gave only an "mm," and signaled him to go on.
"Sponsor negotiations are deadlocked too. The other side says our media exposure doesn't meet their minimum requirements." Versace paused, watching West's reaction, but there wasn't a ripple on his face.
"Anything else?" West's tone didn't rise or fall.
"Arn Tellem wants to know whether Rudy Gay's role will change with Eli's arrival."
West finally looked up. "How did you answer?"
"We hope Eli and Rudy can become Memphis's Jordan and Pippen," Versace said, every word airtight, "but exactly who plays Jordan and who becomes Pippen depends on themselves."
"Mm. You handled that well," West said flatly.
Versace nodded slightly, said no more, and turned to leave the office.
The door closed softly. West's gaze moved from the documents to the doorway, as if he could see straight through the panel to the departing vice president's back. His face showed nothing. Years of working together, and his relationship with Versace was shallow—at most an ordinary colleague. And did this so-called "ordinary" include ordinary competition, ordinary disagreements, ordinary mutual dislike? Honestly, how many people can truly like every one of their colleagues?
Versace's dislike of West, though, had a clear reason. When West's predecessor had been pushed out, Versace believed he should become the team's president, but the owner brought West in from outside.
So. Mm.
West's thoughts hadn't yet pulled free of what Versace had reported when his assistant, the beautiful Laura Glankler, walked straight in without knocking.
"Mr. West, you have to do something about your players!" Glankler launched into complaints the moment she came in. "They flatly refuse the team obligations!"
The so-called team obligations meant players were required to arrive in the team's city a few days before camp officially opened, to take part in community outreach and interact with local fans.
When Shane Battier was still on the team, the Grizzlies' ties to the community had been close. But when West traded Battier for Rudy Gay, that spirit of serving others vanished from the team.
"Who is it this time?"
"Eli!" Glankler said. "His agent refused to let Eli take part in the preseason community events. They say Memphis has few Asian residents, and East Asians especially are rare, so they think Eli showing up at these events 'won't produce any effect.' And they want us to handle one more thing."
"What is it?"
"Eli wore No. 1 in college. He wants to keep wearing No. 1 here."
"If I remember correctly," West said after a brief pause, "the current No. 1 is Kyle Lowry?"
"Yes." Glankler nodded.
"He's a sensible young man. Give him a call and work something out with him." A hard-to-read smile flickered across West's face. "We should count ourselves lucky he didn't ask for No. 22."
"Then this year's representative for the community events... who should we send?"
"Who was it last year?"
"Mike Miller."
"And the year before?"
"Also Mike Miller."
"Then why can't it be Mike Miller again this year?" West said, as if it were self-evident. "He's a good man, and good men ought to be put to use on good things like this."
Glankler sighed, which counted as accepting West's arrangement, but the gloom on her face didn't lift. "But Eli... Mr. West, I truly can't set my mind at ease. Look at Rudy—how humble he was when he first arrived, and now? The whole locker room can hardly hold him. I'm afraid this Chinese kid will be the same: the moment he steps through the NBA door, he'll turn into just another selfish bastard."
"Maybe. Maybe bringing in Rudy was a mistake," West said. "Maybe bringing in Eli is another one. But maybe years from now, when everyone is talking about how Eli changed Memphis basketball, you'll suddenly think back to today—and remember that you once misjudged a person completely."
That was the last day before the 2007-08 season's training camp opened. The Grizzlies were still one of the NBA's most notoriously bad teams, and the front office was discouraged and despairing; apart from West, no one believed a turnaround could come within a few years. But so what? Even in basketball hell, life goes on.
The next day
Camp opening day
Xu Ling had a small backpack on his shoulders, with Rodrick Craig following behind him. Because of Xu Ling, Craig had a job of his own with the Grizzlies, officially titled "team liaison."
When Xu Ling reached the training center, the first teammate he met was Mike Miller.
He wore his brown, medium-length hair combed back, and greeted Xu Ling with enormous friendliness. "Eli, good to meet you. You know, for a while I was watching that shot of yours against Florida on YouTube every single day. That really was the greatest basket I've ever seen!"
Xu Ling would have liked to flatter Miller in the same way, but in his memory Miller's greatest shot was that catch-and-shoot three after his shoe came off in the 2013 Finals. How was he supposed to say that?
"You're too kind. I've seen you hit the same shot on TV."
At that, Miller's eyes lit up. "Really? You watched my game against the Warriors early this year?"
"Mm." Xu Ling steadied his tone.
"I knocked down nine threes that night!" Miller gestured excitedly. "Two of them from way out—not as ridiculous as that half-court one of yours, of course, but far enough!"
"Of course I remember. I watched the live broadcast at school," Xu Ling said without changing expression, his tone certain. "The rim looked like an ocean to you that night."
Miller burst out laughing and slapped Xu Ling hard on the back. "Rookie, I think we're going to get along just fine!"
"I feel the same way. Though I've still got a lot to learn from you."
Xu Ling laughed too. Miller had left him with a very good impression; it seemed this team wasn't nearly as bad as the legends claimed.
Basketball hell?
All name, no substance.
Chapter 57