A perennial threat in the West, is the window closing on the Grizzlies?
Welcome to theScore's preview of the 2015-16 NBA season. Visit our season preview hub for comprehensive coverage of all 30 teams.
The Memphis Grizzlies are the gold standard for an NBA franchise. The team has averaged just under 50 wins per season this decade, offers the third-cheapest average ticket in the league, and regularly sits near the top of lists like ESPN's franchise rankings.
The "Grindhouse," as the FedEx Forum has become known, is steps from one of America's great party spots in Beale Street, and has provided a raucous home-court advantage for a gritty, defense-oriented squad.
For all their success over the past five years, however, the Grizzlies have come up short of the ultimate goal. A Western Conference Finals appearance in 2013 is as far as the team has gone, and any glimpse of a championship window with this core is closing rather quickly.
Related: 2015-16 NBA Season Preview: Memphis Grizzlies
Playing in the loaded West will do that, but there are other factors at play. Team engine Mike Conley is an unrestricted free agent next summer; defensive specialist Tony Allen, the Grindfather of the Grindhouse, turns 34 in January; power forward Zach Randolph is 34 now.
When Memphis took a 2-1 lead over the eventual NBA champion Golden State Warriors in the second round of last spring's playoffs, there was still a palpable sense that the Warriors were an adjustment away from turning the series in their favor.
That happened when Allen suffered a hamstring injury. The lockdown perimeter defender, who had done an admirable job shutting down Klay Thompson through Game 3, was suddenly a non-factor, and salt was rubbed in the wound when seven-foot Andrew Bogut was assigned to guard him - or not guard him. Add the subpar play of Conley due to a brutal facial injury, and the Grizzlies had their second conference semifinal exit in the past five seasons.
Re-signing Marc Gasol this summer was an expected move to tether the All-Star center to the only professional team he's ever known. While there's little to suggest Conley is eyeing greener pastures, the fact of unrestricted free agency is that it's unrestricted; there are no guarantees.
Going into his 15th NBA season, Randolph is still a double-double machine. He's averaged 16.3 points and 10.6 rebounds in 33.7 minutes per game the last three years, missing more than six contests only once - last season, when a swollen knee sidelined him for 11. During that three-year period he has been one of the most leaned-on Grizzlies, with a usage percentage of 24.6.
While he and Gasol remain a formidable inside presence for any competition, there are also natural questions about the Grizzlies' makeup in a league trending smaller, where spacing is at a premium. The team addressed that somewhat economically with the additions of Matt Barnes and, to a lesser extent, Brandan Wright.
Barnes' agitator game is a good fit in Memphis, and he could see minutes at the four - along with Jeff Green - when Dave Joerger opts to go small. In Wright, the Grizzlies get a different type of big than they're used to, a very athletic finisher who can fill in if and when Joerger has to reduce Randolph's minutes.
Yet that's easier said than done, as the coach pointed out to the Associated Press.
''He's difficult to take out,'' Joerger said of Randolph. ''Once he gets fully lathered, he's like 'What? No! Not now' especially once he gets cooking down there on the right block. He's such a go-to guy for us. We need a bucket, he can go get you a bucket.''
That more or less summarizes the Grizzlies as a team: Tough, stubborn, and old. With these questions of age and uncertainty around them, the fact also remains that nobody really wants to play them, especially not in the playoffs. Although five years older, this is essentially the same core that upset the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs in the first round in 2011 - one of only four times in NBA history a No. 8 seed took out a No. 1.
That's still the kind of team the Grizzlies are. It's just that the clock on those opportunities is ticking a little louder.