Are NBA darlings Memphis Grizzlies eyeing the panic button

DENVER — J.B. Bickerstaff stood in a hallway at the AT&T Center in San Antonio and declared the Grizzlies’ locker room “a fun (freaking) place to be right now” on Nov. 21 after his team’s 104-103 win against the Spurs.

Less than three weeks later, he stood outside his team’s locker room in Denver and was presented with a chance to press the panic button.

Where would the Grizzlies go from here — after shooting 50 percent against the Nuggets on Monday night but losing 105-99 for their sixth loss in nine games since that delightful evening in San Antonio?

Bickerstaff calmly elbowed the panic button out of the way.

“We’re nowhere near panic mode,” he said. “We’re a good basketball team. There’s no doubt about that. We just have to make the plays when the plays are there to be made.”

The Grizzlies have dropped from first place in a jam-packed Western Conference to one game out of ninth place over the last three weeks.

See how the Grizz stack up: NBA Western Conference standings

While the panic button remains tucked away — reserved, perhaps, for a serious injury to Mike Conley or Marc Gasol — the next two weeks figure to ultimately define whether this Grizzlies’ start retains its status as a good one.

The Grizzlies (15-11) host Portland on Wednesday (7 p.m. Fox Sports Southeast) in the first of a three-game home stand over the course of four days that precedes a daunting road trip.

Next week, Memphis embarks on a four-game, eight-day West Coast road swing against four teams above .500.

“I think we all know what’s coming and the amount of games we have and who we’re playing,” Conley said. “Once we know that, we dial it back and put them in to smaller groups, keeping it two days at a time. Because if you try to group them all together, you’ll have headaches thinking, ‘oh we’ve got to play them and them and them.’ So we try to keep it day-to-day.

“By Christmas, we’ll know who we are, and how we do out of this stretch will be vital.”

Gasol offered a reminder Monday of “continuing to build what we’re trying to do.”

While the defense-first, grit-and-grind style led by Conley and Gasol is familiar to Grizzlies fans, it’s less familiar to many of the actual Grizzlies.

Players in their first season with the franchise accounted for roughly 60 percent of the minutes played against Denver, a reality that is magnified during game-heavy stretches like this one.

“You don’t get as much time to practice,” Gasol said so with such a new team…it’s hard to build. The games are also a lot of learning for us as a team.”

So what has changed since the momentous win in San Antonio?

In Bickerstaff’s view, not all that much.

Yes, the Grizzlies are banged up, with Dillon Brooks and Chandler Parsons still working back from injuries and Conley and Gasol managing aches and pains.

But that reality carried little weight against the injury-depleted Nuggets.

With the exception of a 111-88 drubbing from the Lakers, the Grizzlies’ last five losses have come by an average of 6.4 points.

That’s why Bickerstaff brushed the panic button aside — even if things aren’t as fun now as they were in San Antonio last month.

“With the exception of maybe a couple of games this year, we’ve been in the games in the fourth quarter and had opportunities to win them,” Bickerstaff said. “If we weren’t there, it’d be cause for concern.

“But we’ve been there with opportunities to win, and we’ve won our fair share.”

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Reach Grizzlies beat writer David Cobb at [email protected] or on Twitter @DavidWCobb.

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