VANCOUVER - If one of the pleasures of having a rout is the pleasure of having it over, basketball fans in Vancouver can only be thankful the long, hard NBA season is complete.
For if a rout can last six months, this season certainly was one. How else can you describe a 14-68 year?
But the Grizzlies went down in a blaze of glory, beating the playoff-bound Suns in Phoenix in probably the best game in Vancouver history.
The Bears scored franchise records in points scored (121) and field goal percentage (.595), as well as shooting 10 of 13 from three-point land. Not only that, but Big Country Reeves had a career-high 39 points and The Future, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, finished with his first triple-double. Go figure.
Now fans and management alike can look to the lower-case future. As Lee Mayberry said in summing up his first year here, ``I don't think it can get no worse.''
Team architect Stu Jackson has been preaching patience from the get-go, eschewing veterans in favor of inexperienced youth. And his long-range plan is at least half-working: The team is losing. If the experience gained by the young Grizzlies turns them into eventual winners, Jackson will be seen as a basketball genius.
The danger in the patient approach to building a franchise and the constant losing that invariably accompanies it is that free agents might refuse to play for you and the players you have might refuse to re-sign once they gain that invaluable experience.
In other words, it's all a big gamble. ``If it doesn't come to pass the way I foresee it, it'll come to pass another way. In one way or another it'll come together,'' Jackson says optimistically.
That being said, Jackson would like a little more experience on next year's squad. ``We've gotta change this team. I don't think we ever want to be quite this young again.''
With the increase in salary cap, he might be able to sign a quality free agent. It's all very well and good to employ underpaid overachievers, but they are hard to find and don't win you many ball games.
``Let me tell you something,'' he says emphatically. ``In this league talent wins. Period. In your local high school league, less talented players may win. But some things have a single answer. And in this league, you gotta have talent.''
And to get talent, you gotta have money. ``Well, and sometimes you gotta get a little lucky.''
Blue Edwards, one of the 10 players under contract for next season, but one who is unlikely to return, agrees with the slow building process.
``What good is changing your team to have early success if it's not going to last?'' he says. ``We're building a successful team and we're doing it one step at a time. You know, it may take us four years before we become a winning team. But once we get to that point, we can string that out over another seven or eight years.''
The first step has been awkward and painful to watch. But maybe they're on to something.
And when the future looks bright, so does the future.
This is the final Spirit of the West column of the season.