\n
The early playoff baptism for this young Grizzlies team is likely to pay off as their careers progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the best player development you can get,\u201d Memphis Coach Taylor Jenkins said. He added: \u201cThe mental focus that you\u2019ve got to have. The attention to detail we pride ourselves on all season long. Game plan discipline, night in and night out. That\u2019s all the work that our guys put in. When you get to this level and you\u2019re playing high stakes game to game, ups and downs. Just staying even keeled throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bane is quite aware of how unusual his first two seasons in the N.B.A. have been. Not everyone comes into a young team where they can make an immediate impact and also go to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome players go their whole career without ever making the playoffs,\u201d Bane said Thursday morning. \u201cAnd for me to be able to do it my first two years in the league, I don\u2019t want anything else. I want to get to the playoffs every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
A smile brightened his face as he said it and thought about such a future.<\/p>\n
In the shorter term, Bane is thinking bigger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make some noise in this postseason,\u201d Bane said. \u201cWe want to make a run. It\u2019s obviously exciting times, and we\u2019re confident about where we\u2019re at and what we\u2019ve done, but there\u2019s still a lot to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 The job was almost finished, and Memphis Grizzlies guard Desmond Bane looked out across the court, flashed a triumphant smile and wiggled his eyebrows. The Grizzlies had overcome not one but two deficits of more than 20 points. They had fallen behind by 26 points early in the second quarter, pushed around by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[608,2991,2992,493,1886,1445],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15122,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15120\/revisions\/15122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbanewsinsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}