From time to time the guys at 3 Shades of Blue have been allowed to interview leading figures with the Memphis Grizzlies. On Thurday, Jan. 29th we were fortunate enough to sit down again with Chris Wallace.

Alot has been going on with the Memphis Grizzlies lately. From firing their Head Coach, hiring a new Head Coach, dealing with injuries, attitudes and growing pains on a very young squad suffering through a particularly difficult part of their development, these have been very interesting times for Chris Wallace and the Grizzlies. Throw on top of these issues the anniversary of the Pau Gasol trade which initiated the youth movement and some particularly critical comments on national TV from Jeff Van Gundy and you have the makings of a very interesting discussion.  Chris answered all of our questions as openly as possible. Here is the full conversation. 

3SOB: Thanks for sitting down with us today Mr. Wallace. We just had a few questions...
CW: Oh by the way, we're resigning Darius.

3SOB: For the season? That's great news. Has he agreed to this?
CW: Yes.

3SOB: Fantastic. Well let me jump to the question I had on Darius then. Where does Darius fit with Darko returning?
CW:Well that's a good question.  Darius' role is undefined when Darko comes back, but we have to have somebody because you must carry 13 players. You can go two weeks gaps before you have to fill that spot. Darius has performed pretty well. He's done everything we asked. He's been productive on both ends of the court and rebounded the ball extremely well.

So why not? And if we did have an injury at either power forward or center we wouldn't be able to find a better replacement than Darius. So it really isn't that big of a deal in terms of flexibility. I know people get tired of hearing that and what it takes from our cap. It takes a small amount for the trade deadline and I figure we're going to need someone. That's our thinking. 

3SOB: Can Darius play the 3 (small forward) any more? 
CW:  Well Darius, I think, before he plays the 3 needs to get down to the 220's (pounds). He's about 240 now and he's coming off the knee injury. I don't think he has the lateral movement he had before the injury when he was playing in the 220s. I think for him to get back into shape to play the 3 that this will take a strong off-season for him. If he continues to work and gets that old explosiveness back then maybe. When we signed him we thought he might be able to play behind Rudy too but as it evolved with him its been power forward and center. 

He's in good enough shape now but for him to play twenty plus minutes a night at the 3 and chase people around the perimeter and do the things he needs to do he probably needs to lose a little more weight. 

3SOB: You've made a coaching change. It's interesting to say the least with the team's performance so far. What happened in the front office from early December when Michael Heisley said he has 100% confidence in Iavaroni and mid-January when he was let go?
CW:  Well there was a slippage in team play. We had our defense deteriorate. It wasn't the same as earlier in the year. The offense...We had a hard time getting easy baskets. We weren't getting out in transition a great deal. Some of the guys we needed to develop were roughing down a bit. So we just felt that a change was needed. 

Now you can go two ways at that time. You can go with an interim guy for the rest of the year which becomes an NBA version of a substitute teacher. Now sometimes that works out. It has worked well for Kevin McHale in Minnesota. Tony DeLeo has slowly turned things around in Philadelphia. The same with Scott Brooks in Oklahoma City. We don't have as much time as those other coaches though. Ours is the latest of the, what is it 6th no 7th, of the new coaches coming in our situation. So Mr. Heisley and I agreed to get an outside voice of change, an instrument of change, that the players would know is a permanent replacement and not a member of the staff that they knew was nothing more than a substitute teacher. 

3SOB: Lionel Hollins was here previously with Heisley but not since you were hired. How much influence did you have in hiring Lionel?
CW:Well Mr. Heisley knows him obviously to a greater extent than I do. I mean all of us in basketball brush up against each other, but I'd never worked together with Lionel on a team. So this is our first time together. Mike's the guy obviously who made the suggestion because he knows Lionel and has the relationship with him. But as we researched all of the possibilities out there we kept coming back to him. We felt this was a sound move bringing him in. 

Again you've got a group of guys that are sitting around not working in former head coaches. You've got assistants out there but it's rare when you bring in assistants from another team. It's happened occasionally but not often. Then you've got college. So we could have gotten an interim, well first of all we could have gotten one of the guys sitting around right now to join us mid-stream. That's a little tough to do and I don't think every candidate is a great fit for this job because it's a unique job in that we're developing young talent. We're not a team that is finished so you can say go in and now win rounds in the playoffs. Now most of the guys who are available now as head coaches haven't gone through that. 

Then you have assistants. With those you usually wait until the end of the season to come in. Anytime you hire an assistant it's a bit of a crap shoot in that they've never been a head coach before. You talk to people and interview them and get their ideas. You meet the guy and he's charming and gets up on the board and does all sorts of great things with Xs and Os but you don't know who they are until they get in that seat. So that's a bit of a crap shoot. We went over every roster of every team. We thought about these guys and had discussions.

We also talked about the college situation. I've been in a situation where we brought in a college coach in Rick Pitino. I went through all of the pros and cons of that route as well. It kept coming back to Lionel. We wanted to get it done right now. We wanted to have a positive close to this season. We think it's important to do whatever we can to turn this team around in the amount of time we have left this season. Bringing Lionel in was the best way to get that done. 

We also feel that not only because was available but he has to work with this team. We're going to be young this season and probably for the next season as well if not longer. He's a guy that can deal with all that comes with that job assignment. It's teaching. It's patience. It's sometimes banging heads in practice to get their attention. There's a variety of attributes that you need in that type of a job.

3SOB: Well I think most fans would say he's had a great start in spite of the team not getting a win...
CW: No we haven't gotten a win yet but I like what I see. I like what I see in the practices. I like what I see on the floor. They're a more aggressive, harder playing team. Getting more done in transition. Mike Conley had a pretty good game last night. I like... I think the body language is better as a team. They're more on their toes and attentive right now. I thought Rudy was utilized very well last night on the offensive end of the court.  That's the way Rudy's got to play. He's got to shoot some 3's. He's got to get out on the fast break. Get him to drive to the basket. You post him up. He got 8 boards. My vision has always been for Rudy to be more of an all-around player that Uses his athleticism and length not just scoring the basketball but getting to the line - he didn't do that last night. That's another thing to come but rebounding, creating some havoc defensively using his anticipation to get into the lanes. That sort of thing.

3SOB:  Well along those lines Rudy didn't get to the line and only had 1 assist last night. How important is going to be to get Rudy to become a guy...
CW: Well I don't think Rudy's ever going to be the type of guy to lead the league in assists. Last night he made a pass to O.J., now O.J. didn't complete the shot late in the game from the right wing, but that is important. He has to be able to make the extra pass when it is necessary and be the guy when needed who can facilitate for others. Obviously his best games have come from being a scorer not a facilitator but you have to facilitate somewhere along the way to keep defenses honest and keep your teammates happy so that was a good play by him and we hope to see more like that in the future.

3SOB: Well Rudy made that pass to Marc at the end of the game that allowed us to be in position to tie the game but I have always felt that to be an elite player you have to be the type of person that gets his teammates involved.  
CW: You do to a certain extent. Some elite players are more scorers than facilitators but you have to have some degree of that. 

3SOB:You mentioned how closely you and Mr. Heisley have worked together with the coaching situation. How much has the relationship between GM's and owners changed since you entered the league with Portland, then in Boston to now?
CW:  Well I think it is much more of a hands-on, constant interaction that it used to be for many reasons. First of all the profile of owners has changed since I entered the league. They are much more visible than they used to be. Take George Steinbrenner for instance. He's pretty much a household name. So is Mark Cuban. The price to enter professional sports has risen astronomically from what it used to be years ago. Remember that Art Rooney bought the Steelers with winnings from a big spree at the racetrack, Those days are gone. 

Let me give you an example. Art Rooney and his family - and all sports have them - They've had Super Bowl teams. They've been leaders in the sport. They've been beacons in the community but these guys weren't billionaires. The were successful businessmen in their own town but Rooney lived in the same house he grew up in. He walked to work on the north side of Pittsburgh every day. For a long time the owners let the coach and the front office people run the team and they didn't really tread on that turf very much. You got your season tickets and cheered from the fans, probably had a few dinners with the team. Then when things got really bad you removed the coach and the front office. 

Today there is going to be involvement. I guarantee you in the NBA there's not a significant transaction be it a draft choice, trade or free agent signing that the owner has not been on top of that and comprised throughout the course of that transaction. It just doesn't work that way anymore. The stakes are too high. There is so much money involved not just owning the team - what you have to pay to get in - but all these transactions add up. Plus it's basketball, football, baseball, whatever. It's not like running a factory somewhere. Everybody thinks they know something about sports particularly if they've gone to the point of owing it. That's part of the fun of being involved so in this new age the owners going to be there with you and involved with the team. If you can't deal with that then you aren't going to succeed in sports. I mean there are some old timers - and I am only 50 years old so I'm not totally a young timer - that chafe at having so-called non-basketball people involved in the process but that's just the facts of life. That's the way it is and you have to accept that and more than just accept it but deal positively with that. 

The only difference here is that Mike has been more open about it. He's been more of a Harry S. Truman with the buck stops here. In other places you just haven't seen inside like you have here in the last 8 months. Mike has been very candid about our decision making process. 

3SOB: And taken the hits for it.
CW: Yes. 

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