Vancouver Grizzlies '97-98

The Vancouver defense was second from last in the league last year, allowing 109.9 points per 100 possessions. If you account for the fact that opposing teams put their scrubs in at the end of blowouts, then Vancouver's defense was actually worst in the league.

And it's not Lynch's fault. He was the only player on the team who really did anything defensively even though they have two supposedly good big men in Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Bryant Reeves. Those are the guys who should have been clogging the middle and getting defensive boards, but didn't. Those are the guys to blame for the poor defense. Them, or the coach.

With new coach Brian Hill in Vancouver, there is a chance that Vancouver's defense will improve. Hill never put together great defenses in Orlando even though he had good defensive talent in Shaq, Penny, Horace Grant, and Nick Anderson. But sometimes it takes a few years and a few teams for a coach to figure out how to make a defense work. It took two teams and about five years before Chuck Daly (the strangely revered Chuck Daly) figured out how to produce a quality NBA defense. But once he did it in Detroit, he did well in bringing it to New Jersey. I don't think the odds are great that Hill will figure out defense in Vancouver, but the chances are greater than one would think.

If the defense doesn't come around, maybe the offense will. It will have to because it legitimately was the worst in the NBA, no tweaking of numbers necessary. The offense was run mostly for Abdur-Rahim and Reeves with guards Anthony Peeler, Lee Mayberry, and the now departed Greg Anthony shooting from the outside. All of the guards are rejects from other teams and the two big men are still so young that they are ineffective.

Though Abdur-Rahim won much praise as a rookie and was the only unanimous All-Rookie Team selection, he didn't make substantial improvement through the season. He made improvement in two areas. First, he was able to take more shots and become more active without declining in efficiency. That is a weird way to say that he improved, but it may not mean much since the Grizzlies were blown out so much (41 times). Second, Abdur-Rahim did raise his field goal percentage substantially in the second half of the season from a bleak 43% to 47%. He offset this by turning the ball over, but a coach is always more happy to see a rookie making turnovers he can learn from than missing wide open shots that ruin confidence. Again, however, since the Grizzlies were beaten so much and so badly, it is hard to say how much Abdur-Rahim's minor improvement really meant.

Reeves, unlike Abdur-Rahim, did improve over the course of his rookie year. He continued to improve last year, though not exactly at a great rate. Reeves started figuring out the touch he needed to make shots against the bodies he finds on him in the NBA. He is still a little soft in his approach to the basket, which is why he doesn't get to the line much (and why his defense is weak, but we already covered that). Has anyone else noticed that the previous generation of good centers, including players like Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, and Dan Issel, could lay the ball up without being called a whimp? But the current generation of centers is split by those who dunk and those who don't. Shaq and Mourning dunk emphatically from anywhere within five feet of the hoop. Ewing, Olajuwon, Robinson, and Mutombo dunk when they're within a couple feet of the hoop. The guys who don't dunk even when they're within a couple feet of the basket, including Reeves here, just aren't very good. As Reeves dunks more, his game will improve.

Overall, the Grizzlies should improve this year. They have better talent than the Mavericks and possibly Denver. Their best players are young and aggressive. Their defense, though it was awful in '97, wasn't as bad in '96 and should return to that level. For a bad team -- a really bad team -- like Vancouver was, there are a lot of potential good things. Given that, I will go with what the power of parity says happens to a team that wins 17% of their games: they will improve about 11% and win about 23 games. I'm tempted to go higher, but San Antonio is back to beat up on them.