How the Grizzlies Compare to the Last 10 NBA Champions

It’s why teams get out of bed in the morning. It’s why they put every ounce of themselves into the game. To win a championship.

And when that’s done? It’s a parade inside my city… Yeah?

Sorry, I had to.

It’s not as if winning a title is an easy task by any means—no, quite the contrary. Think about it. If it was easy, wouldn’t every squad in the league have a title at this point?

When, in fact, only six different squads have won the Larry O’Brien Trophy in the past decade. Six. Six teams in ten years.

But let’s go even farther back…

In the 45 years since 1977, when the aforementioned trophy was renamed… There have been 17 different championship teams.

So—like I said—it is not what I would consider ‘easy’.

Now, the purpose of this exercise is simple. I’ll look at five key statistical areas—offensive rating, defensive rating, net rating, TS%, and PIE—comparing each. Each of these five stats to the last ten NBA title winners. It helps serve as a solid baseline for determining what Memphis needs to do to win a title.

Hell… If it takes a decade’s worth of winners to get you to realize I’m not a complete idiot every time I say… “This team is close—my name is Luke—blah blah red hair—insert self-referential joke here—blah blah”… So be it, I reckon.

Now, on to the Grizzlies’ bread and butter. An area where there’s not much room left to improve on—the defensive end of the court.

This has been an area that Memphis has excelled in recent years. In fact, they’ve improved their defensive rating ranking in each of the past three seasons, from 110.5 in ’20-’21 (7th in the league) to 108.9 in ’21-’22 (6th), and 110.7 last year (3rd).

Last season, on the defensive end, this team truly became a dominant force, though. Even more so than the two years prior. And their defensive rating wasn’t the only top-five ranking this unit boasted across the league—not by a long shot.

The Grizzlies also ranked fourth in the league in defensive rebounds per game with 34.6. While their steals (8.3/game) and blocks were both good enough for third (5.8). They also allowed the fifth-fewest points in the paint from opposing teams at 47.5 per game.

That’s an elite overall level of defensive play. Throw in the fact that Memphis added another former DPOY, Marcus Smart, to the unit… To a unit that already has Jaren Jackson Jr… There’s a chance this team somehow can still improve.

History shows us that a top-ten defense seems to help with a team’s title shot. I don’t expect this to be much of a problem this season—quite the contrary. We may be in store for the deadliest we’ve seen them in a long while. Maybe ever.

I won’t dwell super long here, as it goes hand in hand with the two pervious stats. Net rating, of course, is the difference between a team’s offensive rating and their defensive rating. It’s used to measure a team’s point differential per 100 possessions.

Whereas on offense or defense, sitting outside the top ten could work… An elite net rating seems imperative to win the title. The thing is, if the Grizzlies can improve their shooting, they’ll be there. After ranking fourth before, is it insane to think a top-three net rating is attainable? If they can get better on both the offensive and defensive ends, then this looks more like an inevitability than a possibility.

Before I jump into it—with a show of hands—how many of you prefer pie to cake? I’m talking fruit pies. Not whatever they were eating in “Sweeney Todd.”

I love pies and find them far superior to the dry sponge that is cake. To all my cake eaters, I don’t know how you do it. Don’t you know Marie Antoinette’s love for cake is what got her executed? Or something similar, I’m pretty sure.

Not that it would change my mind. Give me pie any day of the week. Peach. Cherry. Apple. Blackberry. Insert fruit here. Pie is excellent, so it should come as no surprise that NBA Pie is also excellent.

It’s more than that, though—PIE is an exceptional gauge of a team’s execution during a game. It’s calculated using what I would call a rather complicated formula… But it does seem to work.

PIE stands for Player Impact Estimate. You determine an entire team’s by using the individual player’s PIE. A player’s PIE is a blanket measurement, taking into account their entire input into winning. You’ll use almost every part of the box score to calculate the metric.

What it boils down to is teams with a PIE of 50% or higher tend to be winning teams. While players whose PIE is 10% will have a greater impact in achieving victory. If you’re higher than those figures, you’re going to be an above-average player/team.

So, if the last ten champs tell us anything, it’s that you’re going to need to have a higher PIE—like a top-five ranking—to win a championship. So, how does Memphis get better here?

Well, the fact that they’re right outside the top five bodes well for them. It means they most likely won’t need to do much. Plus, the team has already done one thing to make this goal a bit easier to meet. Traded Dillon Brooks.

Is it unfair to put as much of the blame on DB as I’m about to? There’s a good chance. But fair does not have anything to do with it. Of all the Grizzlies with at least 1,000 possessions last season, his PIE (6.0%) ranked in the bottom 3. Then there’s this… In the playoffs last year, 12 guys saw minutes.

Dillon’s PIE was dead last at 1.5%.

So, yeah. They may not need to do much at all to see their rank go up in the grand scheme of things.