Why the Grizzlies are the NBA's most exciting team right now

There's dozens of different types of fun teams in the NBA, but only two that are truly exciting. One is the more familiar, predictable model: The team full of young talent that breaks through after years of losing and rebuilding to finally play winning (or at least, highly competitive) basketball - for instance, this year's much-acclaimed Lakers squad. But the other is more difficult to predict, and thus perhaps even more thrilling: The team written off for dead who, against all odds, retains relevance and thrives through adversity, perplexing and delighting us in the process. And this year, that squad is the Memphis Grizzlies.

Many analysts were bearish on the Grizzlies going into the season, even after making one of free agency's bigger splashes by signing versatile wing Chandler Parsons to a four-year, $94-million contract. The team was aging, experts theorized, as was their grit-and-grind style of play, and attrition would undoubtedly catch up to them over the course of the season. These prognostications were seemingly validated when the active roster started thinning: The oft-ailing Parsons missed the early season with knee woes and was sidelined indefinitely with a bone bruise, 39-year-old super-sub Vince Carter went down with a hip flexor, even franchise fixture Zach Randolph missed two weeks for personal reasons. Most devastatingly, point guard Mike Conley - having signed a $153-million contract in the offseason, and in the midst of the best hooping of his career - was ruled out for the rest of 2016 with a back injury.

That should've been it for the Grizzlies: An above .500 team playing above their scoring differential, bound to plummet back to earth. But a very strange thing happened: The Grizzlies kept winning. After losing at home against Charlotte (where Conley went down mid-game) and getting torched on the road in Toronto, the Grizzlies packed together an incredible five wins in a row. It came against unexceptional teams like the Pelicans, Magic, and Sixers, four out of the five games were at home, and all of the games went down to the final minute of regulation, but Memphis always emerged victorious. And then, just when the Warriors arrived in town to put an end to Memphis' unlikely win streak, a veritable miracle happened: Memphis trounced the best in the West by 21, in a game that was never close, leaving them the NBA's most improbable 17-8 team in recent memory. How is this happening?

Of course, this series of twists is practically an old script for Memphis at this point. Last year, their midseason roster went through a similarly Agatha Christie-like narrowing of its numbers, with the remaining survivors banding together for another stretch of unlikely winning basketball - even branded by Mike Conley as the "Goon Squad" for their stubborn toughness - before the injury toll ultimately became insurmountable and the team faded by the playoffs. And of course, the entire grit-and-grind era started out of near necessity when presumptive lead anchor Rudy Gay lost his season to a shoulder injury in '10-'11, forcing Tony Allen into the starting lineup and giving the team its ultimate identity, in time for a playoff upset of the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs. The Grizzlies have become NBA cult heroes by pulling off this parlor trick time and time again, and yet we still never seem to see it coming the next time.

What's so remarkable about this particular Memphis resurgence is that it's not totally clear how they're doing it. A scan of the Grizzlies' Basketball-Reference page doesn't reveal anyone to be having a secretly brilliant season outside of the usual suspects: Conley, Randolph, and star center Marc Gasol. But Conley's been out, Randolph's missed time and only plays about 20 minutes a night now, and Gasol ... well, he's playing on a new level, too, but he can't be doing it all himself, can he? The team's healthy point guards, Aaron Harrison and Wade Baldwin, are shooting 29 percent and 31 percent, respectively. The team's starting wings, Tony Allen and Troy Williams, have hit 11 threes this season, combined. I mean, this team had to sign Toney friggin' Douglas, whose presence on a 2016 basketball team is like Rita Ora performing at a 2016 awards show - it means they should've been able to do a lot better, but couldn't.

And yet, they get it done. They fly up and down the floor - outside of Gasol and Randolph, the athleticism on this team is now miles ahead of what it was - they crash the offensive boards and pounce on loose balls, they drain the shot clock at both ends, they smother the perimeter, they find cutters, they get to the free-throw line, and they hit exactly as many jumpers as they need to. The percentages won't be pretty, but they'll be even uglier on the other side, and all they need is to get a couple of big plays over the course of the game from the likes of Troy Daniels, Jarell Martin, and Deyonta Davis to have a chance to win it at the end. And when they get there, it seems like gravity is on their side, because the other team is so frustrated that they haven't already reached escape velocity quarters earlier.

It seems unsustainable, because it probably is. Take away the Warriors' win - maybe just one of those even-a-stopped-clock games that seems to happen for every NBA team a couple games a season - and the Grizzlies' winning streak has come by an average of 2.6 points a game, barely a possession, while the team still has a negative point differential overall. But that's what makes the experience of following a team like the Grizzlies so thrilling: Because every game, it seems like it could (and should) slip away in an instant and never return, making it that much more magical when the inevitable is delayed by one more night. In a season whose ultimate result sometimes feels predetermined, it's a blessing to have a story that continues to defy expectation, narrative, and logic as much as this one. How are the Grizzlies doing this? We don't really want to know, we just want it to continue to confound us as long as possible.