Ok, let's talk about team photos

By now, you have undoubtedly seen the picture and heard the outrage and indignation caused when the Spanish men's national basketball team took a picture for an advertisement in the Spanish newspaper La Marca. Because Marc Gasol is a member of the Memphis Grizzlies (and Pau Gasol and Juan Carlos Navarro are former Grizzlies), I feel compelled to mention it, but at this point, I'm not sure what else there is to say. No matter what the intent was at the time, I think that we can all agree that it was a dumb, ill-conceived idea that should have been stopped by any number of people along the way. The team and the courier company for whom the ad was created should apologize, rather than offering a feeble defense about their true intention of it being a friendly wink to their Asian counterparts -- whether or not they truly believe an apology is in order. That way we can all move on from it and the P.C. Police can go find something else to set their sights on. I think most of my own thoughts are echoed in Henry Abbott's take on the matter, so be sure to check that piece out.

Grizzlies Coverage In Spain

The Grizzlies are in Spain. No surprise to anyone reading this site.

What some fans might be surprised at is the level of coverage we have to devour.

First, I'd like to praise the blogging Ron Tillery is doing (did I just say that?) over at the Memphis Edge, the blog ran by the Commercial Appeal (go check it out, you'll also find some great posts from Chip there, like this one). I'm happy to see the CA sending Tillery over to Spain. He has photos and even some videos. Here are some highlights from his first few posts from Spain:

--The Grizzlies flew in style.
--Lots of media there to greet the Grizzlies. Ok, ok. Lots of media there to greet Pau and Navarro.
--Mike Conley likes McDonalds.
--Lowry returned to practice and looked 100%.
--Stromile has a sore knee (don't act so surprised).
--A number of Grizzlies along with Kenny Smith met with children at a local hospital.

But that is not all we have from Spain. Grizzlies.com is posting a ton of photos from each day. They have photos getting off the plane and of the first two practices. I especially like the photos from the 2nd practice. It seems the photos posted on the Grizzlies webpage are taken by Joe Murphy for Getty images. Even more of his photos of the Grizzlies are found at Yahoo. There are some cool pics of Mike and Pau at a EA Sports NBA Europe Live Tour event.

(off topic...while I'm writing this post, I just got captivated by one of those new black/white Grizzlies commercials...nicely done, IMO...there are a number of commercials using the phrase "New Game" and all of them are quite good...I have seen a couple of different ones tonight, three I think, and my favorite is of Hakim and Rudy playing one-on-one in an empty gym.)

TrueHoop has a post talking about how Blog Crazy the Warriors are. That got me thinking about how the Grizzlies now having 3 players blogging. Casey Jacobsen is starting up a blog on grizzlies.com. Here is the link to his first post. He thinks the Grizzlies will win a lot of games this year. Hak and Conley both have updated their yardbarker blogs. Does anyone know what team has the most players contributing to some sort of blog on the internet? 3 has to be close to the most I would guess.

Going back Tillery's coverage of the Spanish training camp trip, I got to thinking. Why isn't there this much coverage while the Grizzlies are in Memphis? Why couldn't have Tillery posted blog posts on the Memphis Edge about the training camp practices here in Memphis? The media saw a good amount of the practices here. Chris Herrington wrote a great post about what he saw. I see no reason why Tillery can't provide more Grizzlies coverage by utilizing the blog format on the Memphis Edge like he has for this Spanish trip. I hope he does during this season.