Memphis Grizzlies Playoff Preview: Grit and Grind is over. Grit and Grind begins anew.

It’s been seven years since this happened.

Seven years doesn’t sound like a long time, but it’s an eternity in the NBA. When the Memphis Grizzlies upset the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the 2011 NBA playoffs, they were a young upstart team, a concoction of interesting young pieces mixed with a few veteran cast-offs, who played with an energy and tenacity the pre-Kawhi-era Spurs couldn’t handle. They were new, invigorating, and the league’s premier chaos team, only the fourth team ever to beat a No. 1 seed as an No. 8 seed in the playoffs.

Now, in 2017, the Grizzlies are facing the Spurs again in the first round, and the narrative has completely flipped. The Grizzlies are the old guard, the team that’s been “figured out” by the rest of the league. Their stars are old. Their offense is predictable. There is question about whether their run of playoff appearances, seven years strong including a Western Conference Finals run in 2013, will last beyond this season. The four players who remain on the roster from the 2011 squad — Marc Gasol, Mike Conley, Zach Randolph and Tony Allen — represent the heart and soul of the team, but only Conley is under 30. And they have a long history of continued struggle against the Spurs since that 2011 series. The smart money would lie with betting on the Spurs to walk through them in the first round and then we can spend more time figuring out if this is “The Death of Grit-N-Grind.”

That would be foolish, because that goes against the ethos of Grit-N-Grind. Sure, the Grizzlies haven’t had as much success over their sustained run as you’d expect, with just one conference finals run and two other second round appearances. But Memphis has never been a team you can count out. They played two of the most hot-blooded series of this decade against the Los Angeles Clippers in 2012 and 2013. In 2014 we saw them take the Thunder to seven games as a No. 7 seed. They gave the Warriors a fight in the 2015 Western Conference Semis, and last year even made the Spurs sweat in a Game 3 despite basically having a bench full of D-League players due to injuries. This team won’t always win in the playoffs, but they’re more a high-floor team than high-ceiling. They’re designed to get to the playoffs, and make you fight and bleed if you’re going to beat them.

This isn’t to say the Grizzlies don’t have issues. Some of those hot-takey platitudes have some truth to them. Their offense has historically been easy to solve in the playoffs, as a post-oriented attack without sustainable shooting works a lot less today than it did in 1997. There are a lot of miles on the core of Conley, Gasol, Allen and Randolph, and at least one always seems to be dealing with injury (currently, that’s an eye injury Conley suffered last week). Their bench depth has been historically suspect, and since Rudy Gay was traded in 2013, small forward has been a revolving door of Tayshaun Prince, Matt Barnes, Chandler Parsons and now James Ennis, thanks to Parsons’ season-ending meniscus injury.

This year’s squad features new problems, as well. The Grizzlies give up a ton of 3s — about 28 attempts per game, 23rd in the league — and they also foul a good amount at the rim, allowing a free throw rate of 34 percent, dead last in the league. Having trouble preventing the most efficient shots in basketball seems bad when you have to face the Spurs.

But while the defense may have issues, it’s still very good (6th in defensive efficiency) and the offense has improved this year. The Grizzlies are scoring 107.6 points per 100 possessions this year, and while that’s still below league average at 18th, new head coach David Fizdale has brought a lot of the concepts that made the LeBron-era Miami Heat offenses click to Memphis. He’s pushed Marc Gasol further as a 3-point shooter, creating five-out looks that have been deadly with the right personnel. The league’s craftiest big man is shooting 38.5 percent from 3 on 3.7 attempts per game this year, and Memphis has done a great job of using the strength and size of guys like Allen to free up Gasol above the break.

Randolph moving to the bench has also freed up his game to be more effective as he climbs in age. Memphis pairs Randolph and Gasol less now; instead, Z-Bo gets to come in as a solo post hub, and feasts on bench bigs with his patented dancing bear repertoire.

They can do this because of the emergence of JaMychal Green, who is pure, concentrated Grit-N-Grind distilled and packaged in a chiseled 6-foot-9 bottle and unleashed on the league. Green is one of the team’s best rebounders, and his length and athleticism help him take a variety of assignments on defense, from opposing stretch bigs to big wings. At times you can watch the Grizzlies when Green and Allen share the floor and get confused which is which, because they share the same unbridled intensity and pure joy from competing on the defensive end. Green also brings that energy under the basket, and he’s a king of hustle plays and physicality.

David Lee and Pau Gasol are going to have to deal with Green at times and I do not envision that going well for the Spurs.

The offensive improvements for the Grizzlies are their wild card moving forward. As Gasol, Conley and Allen age, their defensive prowess is going to start slipping. And while players like Green and rookie Wade Baldwin offer hope for new defense-focused rotation members, Conley and Gasol flourishing as outside shooters and adding players like Troy Daniels have helped their offense turn into something that may have more promise in the future. Grit-N-Grind hasn’t died, and won’t die. Not yet, anyway. It’s morphed into something new, while retaining the pieces that will ensure that the identity and culture stay the same as they bridge into whatever comes next.

Next: Miami Heat find success by spreading the wealth

For the next two weeks, we will see what still needs to be changed as the Grizzlies head into that future. The Grizzlies have had issues with the Spurs, losing eight straight playoff games to them since the 2011 series that started it all. But with a new coach and a reshaping profile, maybe this year will be different. If the Grizzlies can actually throw offensive punches back at the Spurs, that might change the shape of the series. But whatever happens, we know that the Spurs are going to have to work for every win they get. Long live Grit-N-Grind.

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