Stability key to ending Grizzlies' perpetual rebuilding

If the 30 franchises of the NBA were all working out in the same health club, some would constantly be looking in the mirror and flexing their championship muscles and others would be huffing and puffing just to do a simple sit-up.

Then there are the Memphis Grizzlies, who seem to spend a lot of time and effort running on a treadmill and going nowhere.

So Memphis is plunging head-first into another new plan, which is different from the new plan of last year and the year before that and the year before that simply because there are more talented players on hand along with a coach who has given them a sense of purpose and direction.

There are teams that don't change socks as often as the Grizzlies change their plans. This is a franchise that in 13 previous seasons in Vancouver and Memphis has managed to win more than 28 games only three times, never won a single playoff game and usually can be counted on to send in an early RSVP for a seat at the Draft Lottery.

Now, one season after they were supposedly building a new young team around Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo, they have brought in an old problem child in Zach Randolph who could potentially eat away at the foundation.

"We didn't have enough scorers in our offense last season," general manager Chris Wallace told NBA.com. "Zach is a guy who shoots a high percentage and on any given night can get us 20 or more a game and be our leading scorer."

Randolph can score points, plenty of them. But he also has bounced around from city to city, team to team and always made everyone feel best when he's gone. That's due to an NBA career that has included two fights -- one with a teammate -- and a booking jacket full of arrests. This is Randolph's fourth team in four seasons.

The problem is that even if he's not a problem in the locker room or off the court, Randolph also has a well-deserved reputation of being a black hole on offense -- when the ball goes into him, it never comes out. So the biggest challenge will be getting his considerable offensive skills to somehow mesh with those of Gay and Mayo, not to mention second-year center Marc Gasol.

If that's not enough of a balancing act, the Grizzlies have now turned their attention to veteran guard Allen Iverson, reportedly offering a one-year, $3.5 million contract. Iverson has spent the summer as a free agent in exile because no other teams were convinced that he'd be willing to accept a lesser role than "lead dog" after his season of discontent a year ago in Detroit. With Iverson on a roster that already includes the "me-first" Randolph, where would the shots come from for Gay and Mayo, the future stars?

Sorting it all out is a task that falls to the fifth different Grizzlies coach since the start of the 2004-05 season. Just two seasons after rookie coach Marc Iavaroni was the flavor of the month in Memphis, he was out the door and in comes Lionel Hollins, who had held the interim-head coach title three times previously.

Hollins did a fine job of picking up the pieces and had the Grizzlies playing with more enthusiasm and cohesiveness in a 13-26 finish to the shank of last season.

"Coming into the middle of last season, what I tried to do right away was convince these guys that it was about their future," Hollins said. "The players bought into it. A lot of them were tired of losing and wanted some direction. I made practices harder and longer and emphasized a work ethic.

"We kept a mantra that wins and losses didn't matter. We just wanted to keep getting better. By the end of last season, that started to happen. Now we've got to do it consistently."

In brief, the Grizzlies feel like they've got some confidence, some swagger.

The roster is filled with plenty of young talent that could develop into something down the line if given a year or two of stability under Hollins. Gay has been growing steadily into a near All-Star performer on the frontline and last year's draft night deal that reeled in Mayo gave Memphis a matching star for the backcourt. They've got Mike Conley to handle the reins of the offense and brought in Marcus Williams as a solid backup at the point. The rugged Gasol can bump and grind inside while top draft pick Hasheem Thabeet tries to block everything in sight.

DeMarre Carroll and Sam Young could prove to be welcome infusions of talent on the Grizzlies' frontline. But along with Thabeet, it will be difficult to assimilate three rookies at once into the rotation and not have rough spots after letting free agent forward Hakim Warrick walk.

"I don't like the word rebuilding, because unless you've won a championship you're always changing and trying to get better," Wallace said. "But after making the trade of Pau Gasol two years ago and putting all of this in motion, I'd like to think the heaviest lifting is behind us."

Now it's time to get off that treadmill.

Memphis Grizzlies