Cracks and Vows

If Greg Oden hadn't been injured, the Grizzlies–Trail Blazers game would have been a marquee matchup. But with Oden out for the season, Portland seemed to have slipped back into being that fringe team hovering outside the national spotlight. Before the game, the entire Grizzlies roster assumed this would be an easy fight—after all, Portland's record last season had been dismal, and the No. 1 pick they had tanked for still couldn't take the court. How much could the team really be different from last year's? Instead, Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge both erupted, combining for 64 points and dragging the Grizzlies into a grinding battle. In the first half, Roy, a highly skilled combo guard, truly gave Xu Ling a lesson. Roy played at a rhythm unlike anyone else's. Whether shooting off the dribble or deciding to drive and dish, he was unhurried, repeatedly hitting difficult shots against Xu Ling's defense. As the second half began, Xu Ling gradually picked up on flaws in Roy's defensive habits—his lateral movement lacked urgency, his focus wandered, and he often went loose. Seeing his opening, Xu Ling began using screens to cut more and more often, or simply picking up his pace and driving past, scoring again and again right in front of Roy. Facing this rookie's sudden counterpunch, Roy seemed caught unprepared, and his temper grew short. A few forced attempts missed, which only fed the Grizzlies' momentum. Aldridge was still battling away in the paint, one precise mid-range jumper after another as he tried to salvage the situation, but Portland's offensive rhythm had already fallen apart. In the end, with Roy off balance and the whole team out of order on both ends, Portland collapsed in the fourth quarter and had no choice but to swallow the loss. Xu Ling finished with 24 points and 8 rebounds. Though he had been overshadowed by Roy's brilliance in the first half, he adjusted quickly in the second and turned the game completely around. Afterward, Roy admitted ruefully, "Greg (Oden) warned me long ago that I had to watch out for Eli. But as you saw, all it takes is the slightest opening, and he'll pounce without hesitation and keep landing heavy punches. Memphis really has found itself a jewel." The Grizzlies then rode the momentum of their opener and swept to a three-game winning streak to start the new season. But it didn't last. As the sample of games grew, coaching staffs around the league began studying the Grizzlies' system in depth, and they quickly found a fatal weakness: the Grizzlies' point guard simply couldn't run the Seven Seconds or Less system. Xu Ling could fill in at point guard, but the SSOL offense he ran was just as stiff. Once the fast break stopped working, he would quickly slide back into his most familiar mode: calling for pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll, using his individual ability to create mismatches, and hunting his man in isolation. At first, when he kept scoring out of those mismatches, opponents would send the double-team, and Xu Ling would move the ball to the teammate left open. But the next few opponents—the Sacramento Kings, LA Clippers, and Detroit Pistons especially—all used essentially the same approach: refuse to double-team at all. No matter how ferocious Xu Ling was one-on-one, they would rather leave him to his isolation and clamp down hard on everyone else's passing lanes. With no firepower coming from his teammates, Xu Ling's individual offense could still score, but it couldn't lift the whole team or produce enough marginal value. To make matters worse, Xu Ling couldn't find his shooting touch every night. In the game against the Kings after two straight losses, he faced Ron Artest for the first time in his career and was held down all night by his physical defense, shooting just 8-of-21. Worse still, Rudy Gay, the heavily hyped secondary scorer, was completely lost as well. With Xu Ling shackled by Artest and the team most in need of someone to share the scoring load, Gay turned in a 6-of-20 line for just 15 points. His touch was stone cold on offense, and his black-hole defensive instincts made the Grizzlies' small forward spot an obvious hole on that end. Gay repeatedly got lost on off-ball screens and lost track of his man; he hesitated over when to come over and help, neither scoring effectively in isolation to ease the defensive pressure on Xu Ling nor rotating over in time, which left the Kings' shooters with a wealth of open looks from outside. Gay's plus-minus cratered at a game-low minus-23, a plain measure of the trouble the team faced on both ends while he was on the floor. With Xu Ling, the team's only real strength, neutralized, Gay did nothing as a wing scorer, and Pau Gasol struggled ever more in the run-and-gun system. He couldn't adapt to a pace with far more possessions than any other team ran, and he loathed the constant, mechanical pick-and-roll sets. He wanted the ball in the low post, to finish possessions the way he did best, but the ball stayed in the hands of the perimeter players. And so this All-Star frontcourt player seemed sidelined by the system, left to "wither" silently through games. Xu Ling was growing tired of a system that seemingly didn't suit the team. SSOL wasn't going to work on a team with no real point guard; the way they played had to change. Xu Ling came back to the locker room with a belly full of anger, planning to tell Marc Iavaroni exactly what he thought. He never expected that before he even reached the door, he'd hear Gasol inside shouting at Iavaroni: "Marc, how much longer are we going to waste time in a system that doesn't fit us at all?" Iavaroni was taken aback and tried to calm the Spaniard down: "Pau, we're building a modern style of basketball—" "Modern basketball? Or is it just your old dream playing out here again?" Gasol cut him off without a shred of politeness, growing more worked up by the second. "I don't deny SSOL worked in Phoenix, but that was built on Steve Nash and a specific group of players! Look at us! Look at me! I'm a big man who needs to catch the ball in the low post, not a post setting pointless screens out beyond the three-point line! Apart from Eli, not one of us can catch and shoot off a pick-and-roll—no one, not a single goddamn one of us!" "We need to stay with the system, we need time to gel!" Iavaroni raised his voice too. "Time? What we're missing isn't time, it's a style that actually fits us!" Gasol swept a hand toward nearly all his frontcourt teammates. "I'm sick of sprinting like a guard from the baseline out to the three-point line every possession just to set a screen nobody ever capitalizes on! We spend the whole game running up and down the floor, sacrificing every bit of tactical substance for speed. This isn't basketball, it's a waste of talent!" The two went back and forth, and the argument escalated fast. Iavaroni accused Gasol of "resisting change" and being "unwilling to sacrifice for the team." Gasol shot back with something close to a roar that Iavaroni was "forcing a system on us wholesale" and "detached from reality." Every man who makes a career in professional sports has a streak of ego in his bones; each is convinced he's the best, and short of ironclad proof, none will concede easily. And for Marc Iavaroni, the SSOL system was the core of his coaching philosophy—even the meaning of his presence in Memphis. He didn't know what would be left of him there without it. Just then the memory of that depressing conversation with general manager Jerry West flashed through his mind. West had done nothing but repeat "maximize the roster you have" and "that's your problem to solve," and never brought him a point guard who could run his system. A deep helplessness closed around him, but pride kept him from admitting any of it in front of a player. So when Gasol insisted on tearing all of it down, he was undoubtedly striking a raw nerve. "I've had enough! I've had enough of your endless complaining!" Iavaroni lost control, his voice trembling with anger. "You keep saying it's for the team—then why don't you do everyone a favor and call Jerry right now? Haven't you been dying to be traded all along? Admit it—you never really wanted to play for Memphis! That's why the fans never actually liked you!" The words landed like a knife, straight into Gasol's softest spot. The Spaniard's face went white in an instant. His lips parted, but no sound came out; every grievance and every bit of anger he had swallowed over the years went off at once. And just as the Spaniard was about to break completely and maybe do something far more drastic— "Enough!" Xu Ling's voice came from the locker room doorway. Then he shoved the door open and slammed it shut behind him, and the bang made everyone's chest tighten. "I've heard enough of your crap!" Xu Ling strode between the two of them. He looked at Gasol first, his tone severe but still leaving room: "Pau, if this system makes you that uncomfortable, you should have said so after the first loss, not waited until three straight losses to blow up in here!" Before Gasol could answer, Xu Ling wheeled on Iavaroni, his voice jumping sharply, even going a little hoarse: "And you, Coach! You're the one who should be calling Jerry West! He's the one who brought you here, he knew what you wanted to build, and he still didn't give you a point guard who could run your system! That's a failure on the front office's part, but it's your predicament more than anything—and every one of us knows it!" "And either way, none of that gives you the right to insult Pau! Without him, this team would still be the laughingstock of professional sports—a disgrace! Steve Francis wouldn't even put on this team's jersey! Pau changed all of that. Even if it was only a few years, he really did change this team!" Xu Ling's eyes burned as he fixed Iavaroni with a look that left no room for argument: "You need to apologize to him for what you just said." Something lurched inside Iavaroni. Every word Xu Ling spoke hit a sore spot—he had raised this problem with West long ago and gotten only "now isn't the time," and had even been asked to use it to develop Xu Ling's combo guard potential. It wasn't that he couldn't see the problem. He was simply powerless. Xu Ling's stare and Gasol's ashen face crossed in front of him, and he realized that his loss of control had probably been the worst possible outburst a coach could make. He had hurt one of the team's cornerstones and exposed the coaching staff's helplessness at the same time. Now, pressed by Xu Ling, Iavaroni opened his mouth, and every justification and every grievance caught in his throat. Sticking with the system was right, but denying a player's pain might have been wrong. To steady the locker room, Iavaroni had to take a step back. He drew a deep breath and turned his eyes to Gasol with difficulty, his voice carrying a heavy, almost weary honesty: "Pau. I'm sorry for what I said. That was my fault. I'm sorry." Gasol pressed his lips together. His feelings hadn't fully settled, but in the end he gave a small nod. The locker room sank into an exhausted silence, as if the fierce confrontation had drained all the oxygen out of the room. Xu Ling's gaze swept over his silent teammates and finally came to rest on Iavaroni and Gasol. "As for tonight's loss, that's on me. I couldn't break down Ron Artest's defense. My offense was a failure." Xu Ling took the blame for the loss without hesitation, which eased the suffocating weight in the room a bit. "But!" His voice rose abruptly. "The losing streak ends here." "I guarantee you—there won't be a fourth straight loss." With that, Xu Ling didn't say another word. He just picked up a towel and turned toward the showers. Assistant coach Dave Joerger hurried to check who they played next—it turned out to be another struggling team, the New Jersey Nets.