No Regard Previews: NBA Forever

One Game We Will Watch Tonight: Miami Heat vs. Memphis Grizzles

How could we not suggest that this is the game you watch tonight?

The Audacity of Z-Bo

The 2006-2007 Golden State Warriors were what I assume LSD is like. The experience of watching Don Nelson, Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson hijack the league for 12 days was mind-expanding in a way you normally only read about in Jack Kerouac books. And their "We Believe" mantra was fitting for a team trying to change the world during Obama's campaign. Nelson's lineup choices were as strong as Obama's email list, and Boom Dizzle's refusal to be anything less than great was downright presidential. Plus, there's a connection to be made somewhere between the flag lapel pin and the bullet fedora.

As much as that team stood for hope and change in a dedicated sports city that needed it, during an era that was starved for it, their breakup and subsequent waning also paralleled Barack's own struggle to unite and lead during his first term. Both promised a few too many revolutions to be able to follow through. Warriors fans must have felt like the ostracized LGBT community as they watched broken promises turn into missed playoffs.

But as Obama begins his second campaign, NBA fans have been gifted another team in which to place our optimism for a better world: The Memphis Grizzlies.

Team Dreamin' 2011: Memphis Grizzlies

At No Regard, we love basketball. We love the spectacle and strategy of the game, but sometimes the league's lack of imagination confounds and disappoints us. Call us optimists, visionaries, or kids who watched too much Space Jam, but we have ideas. Damn are we gonna share 'em.

Which one is it???

If you offered me $1000, I still wouldn't have a prayer at being able to name the head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies. That's saying a lot coming from a guy who likes this league so much that the Celtics-76ers preseason game held my imagination for a good 20 minutes the other night.

And no, I'm not going to "look it up," because that would lessen the impact of my already paper-thin argument. But also because it doesn't really matter, does it? If I don't know him, then chances are he lacks the gravitas to lead this charmingly athletic group of pranksters to anything grander then a first-round playoff exit. That's the ceiling of this team, while the basement really isn't that much lower (maybe 10 games below .500?) owing to the pseudo-glut of young guns.

Hence, a jump-start is in order. Let's fire up the defibrillators, Grizzlies, and...