FanHouse MarcGasol

FanHouse previews a player to watch from each NBA team in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Marc Gasol is svelt. No lie. Gasol spent the summer running up mountains in Spain. I've never run up a mountain anywhere, much less mountains in Spain. You always hear stories about players losing weight coming into camp, but Gasol's slimming is evident. He doesn't look like the same player. The big knock on him last season was that he lacked explosiveness. So Gasol shed 25-30 pounds to improve his speed and agility. It was a wise move by Gasol, who will fight for playing time with Zach Randolph and Hasheem Thabeet. But when you get down to it, if the Grizzlies are going to make significant progress this season, Gasol will have to be a large part of that journey.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Grizzlies are not a joke. They are the punchline. That's where they've fallen to. They aren't even the setup for the joke. They're just mentioned as the end point.

A little under two years ago, Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace (and by that, we mean owner Michael Heisley) traded Pau Gasol for cap room and some loose junk. The only valuable component they got out of the deal was Marc Gasol. The move elicited everything from mockery to outrage from pundits and even league personnel. Things have not improved considerably since.

A potential trade sending Darko Milicic to New York in exchange for Quentin Richardson has been rumored for a couple days now. Adam Silver announced it has been consummated. The Darko Knicks jersey immediately becomes the greatest shirt in the history of synthetic garmentry.

One big takeaway from this deal is that Memphis will apparently take back $2 million in extra salary, unless New York is forking over some dough not yet reported. Darko's flight opens up the frontcourt for Hasheem Thabeet, who (I assume) will turn Marc Gasol into a power forward. We'll see how that works out -- Gasol isn't exactly fleet, and 7-foot-3 centers typically lack lane agility. Luckily, Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo are fantastic defenders on the perimeter. Oh, wait ...

Blake Griffin went first, of course. There was no drama about that -- Clippers VP Andy Roeser essentially let the cat out of the bag with his unbridled praise for Griffin minutes after winning the NBA lottery. The real question mystery started at No. 2, and the Grizzlies answered that question by going with Hasheem Thabeet from Connecticut.

Thabeet is a bit of a project offensively, but that's to be expected -- unlikely most prospects who practically grow up in a gym, Thabeet has only been playing the sport for seven years. Will he pan out? Or will he follow the path of another failed No. 2 pick who happens to be Thabeet's new teammate, Darko Milicic, who never found stardom before settling into the life of a role player?

Time will tell, just like time will tell if Thabeet and Darko will ever share a locker room -- with Marc Gasol already anchoring Memphis' frontcourt, Milicic is rumored to be on the block. Stay tuned. (Update: That didn't take long -- Darko was traded to the Knicks for Quentin Richardson and cash.)

On Tuesday night, fortune finally smiled on the Memphis Grizzlies. After constantly finding themselves on the wrong end of an errant heel from Lady Luck's rumba, they got their turned to dance with her and ended up with the No. 2 overall pick. Finally fortune smiles on the downtrodden. Or did it?

Mike Dunleavy doesn't appear to be bluffing regarding the Clippers "obviously" drafting Blake Griffin. Which means highly touted Spanish point guard Ricky Rubio would fall to Memphis. Their other option is UConn big man Hasheem Thabeet. On the surface, this looks like a win-win situation for the Grizzlies. But if we dig deeper, it may turn out to not be so great after all. Par for the course for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.

Marc and Pau Gasol didn't play in the same time zone Friday night -- in fact, Pau's night of work ended before Marc's even began. The suspicious might wonder, then, if the brothers pulled some trickery to get Pau to Sacramento in a fat suit. While Pau slayed the Nets with an incredible 36/11/7/2/2 line, Marc was the real shocker.

Marc raked the Kings for 27 points and five rebounds. Neither Spencer Hawes nor Jason Thompson could handle Marc's girth in the paint -- the younger Gasol even shook the Immortal Calvin Booth a few times! Ugly work, but beautiful work from Marc.

As teams get eliminated from the 2009 NBA playoff picture, Fork 'Em figures out what went wrong.

"The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress." -Philippe de Comines

It's also paved with the 2008-2009 Memphis Grizzlies and their fans.

The Grizzlies entered the season with a bizarre self-awareness. They were a young team with a coach that preached speed and aggression, but who had been told by his boss to instill defense, or else. They had lost their longtime franchise player in a rebuilding trade that resulted in much of the league mocking them, then pulled off a brilliant draft day trade to acquire O.J. Mayo. They had a deep set of guards, a great combination of young frontcourt players, returning superstar Rudy Gay, and a possible superstar in O.J. Mayo. And they were still expected to only win only 20-25 games.

Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.

The Grizzlies lost to the 76ers, and that's to be expected. Memphis falls to 16-45, a welcome visitor in the Dungeon of Doom populated by your Kings and Thunder and Clippers. But things got a little weird Saturday night in Memphis.

Two Grizz scored at least 30 points. O.J. Mayo? No, he had only 11. Rudy Gay? Nope, just eight. How about ... Marc Gasol and Mike Conley? Baby Gasol finished with 30 points (and 13 boards and three blocks) and Conley racked up 31 points and nine assists. WHAT.

We're not even at the NBA's All-Star break yet, but Bulls' head coach Vinnie Del Negro is already trying to say that the race for the Rookie of the Year is over. In Tuesday's Chicago Sun Times, Del Negro pretended to be an election night pundit, calling the race in favor of his own rookie point guard Derrick Rose, while making it seem like we shouldn't even bother discussing the other contenders.

Forgive us coach, if we take your recommendation with a larger than average grain of salt. Especially when there's a rookie named O.J. Mayo who's currently playing for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Every time I sit down to watch a Grizzlies game, I know I'll be getting one of two teams.

The Good Grizzlies are young, athletic, and hungry. They play defense with focus and intensity, they rebound, they rely on terrific plays from Rudy Gay slashing and OJ Mayo nailing jumpers, and Marc Gasol beasting around the interior. Their role players don't turn the ball over, and Hakim Warrick provides the spark off the bench while Marc Iavaroni manages good rotations and timely, effective timeouts.

The Bad Grizzlies make immature decisions, foolish passes, execute poorly, get freaked out on defense when a team comes right at them, fail to crash the boards and let Kyle Lowry shoot a lot.

Today was a Good Grizzlies day.

There's a lot to be said about the Grizzlies' 102-82 win over the Mavericks, which snapped a 13 game losing streak to the division "rivals." And a lot of it has to do with things like Jason Kidd, Erick Dampier, and Devean George, three of the starting five, combining for a whopping five points and six assists. There's surely a lot of negativity on the Mavs' plane tonight, but they should save some respect for the Grizzlies, who put out their most complete performance in several weeks.

And as has become the norm, O.J. Mayo was at the front of the charge.