Ten games does not a season make, but it’s close enough to draw some preliminary conclusions. The Grizzlies have played four games at home and six on the road. Record-wise, they’ve played two of the league’s three best teams (Warriors, Nuggets) and three games against two of the league’s three worst (Suns, Wizards). What do we think we know so far? Here’s an annual taking of the temperature, now at a new home. Ten takes after ten games.

(Note: This column will replace my Grizzlies Mailbag, which will return next week.)

1. The Grizzlies are (so far) what we realistically hoped they were, or ... deja-vu all over again

The betting booths and statistical projections generally had the Grizzlies as a 32-35 win team this season. Internally, the team believed it could be a playoff contender, which would mean being 10 games better than that.

If the optimistic view were to become reality, it was likely to take a specific shape, and so far it has: A return to Top 10 defense (so far: #7), a league-average-ish offense (#18), a controlled pace (#30), good health for Mike Conley and Marc Gasol (a combined zero games missed), and effective depth (#7 in bench points) leading to a team that could overperform outside expectations to win fortysomething games. (Current pace: 49.)

For as much as the Grizzlies have overhauled their roster and coaching staff over the past couple of seasons, this is a pretty familiar matrix.

The David Fizdale-led team that won 43 games two seasons ago? Seventh defensively, 19th offensively, 28th in pace, 10th in bench scoring.

Even last season, through 10 games, just before the wheels came off: A 6-4 record, third defense, 17th offense, 26th pace, and third in bench scoring.

As last season’s cautionary first month suggests, it’s achingly early. But the Grizzlies have established a sustainable framework for being a competitive team.

2. The jury’s still out on post-heel-surgery Mike Conley

Want some unsettling additional deja-vu? No? Too bad.

Mike Conley through last season’s 6-4 start: 18 points per game on 40 percent shooting from the floor and 30 percent shooting from the three-point line, in 31 minutes per game.

Mike Conley through this season’s 6-4 start: 17 points per game on 36 percent shooting from the floor and 28 percent shooting from the three-point line, in 32 minutes per game.

Instead of the peak Conley of two seasons ago, the Grizzlies so far this season have gotten a Conley who looks distressingly like last year’s model.

Conley has been meaningfully worse finishing the little flips and floaters and scoop shots that had become a trademark. But the real regression has been on his jumper, both from mid-range and from the three-point line.

Both last season and increasingly in this one, Conley has shown flashes of his old zip, but has more often looked a little labored. Against Denver on Wednesday night, there was a moment when a ball sprang loose on a Nuggets’ possession and two bigger Denver players were converging on it from the sides. Conley was in the middle, a few feet behind them. A couple of years ago, he would have jetted past them to the ball and broken free. This time, he got there, but just barely, poking the ball ahead for a Garrett Temple dunk. It happened right in front of me, and having watched Conley for so many years, there was a disconnect between my instinct of what was about to happen and the moment itself.

Conley was facing longer defenders and trapping schemes, but seemed to struggle turning the corner the way he would have a couple of years ago. None of these observations relate to missed jumpers, but a broader sense of some physical limitation would seem to impact across the board.

The difference between last season’s Conley and the one we’ve seen so far this season, of course, is that one was heading toward a surgery and one is coming off of one. There is a continuity of performance but a major event in the middle. How much of Conley’s offensive struggles are about game conditioning, fatigue, and timing -- the result of recovery and layoff -- and how much of it is about some kind of permanent diminishment, a new normal? Conley and Bickerstaff, at separate times, have suggested the former. The hope is that Conley’s heel surgery was the nadir of a kind of reverse bell curve, and that Conley will trend back up the further he gets from it.

Ten games, in this case, is not enough for an answer. But Conley remains the most important player on this team, and his trajectory this season looms larger by the day. Despite some of these struggles, Conley’s usage rate is at a career high. The Grizzlies could probably stand to rely on him a little less as he’s (hopefully) working his way into shape.

3. Marc Gasol is aging well, but needs to let it fly more

There was something both comforting and amusing about recent consternation over Gasol taking two field-goal attempts in 28 minutes against Golden State. It is ceremony, as much a sign of the season as pumpkin spice or leaves piling up in the yard.

Gasol is in his 11th season, approaching age 34, and ever since he climbed the team’s pecking order, we’ve had a few of these moments every season, when even his teammates or coaches seem frustrated. It’s partly a matter of mentality and partly a matter of a mismatch of skill-set and expectation. Gasol’s a complete player, but has never quite been a volume scorer. And we’re at a stage now where his scoring curve is naturally bending down.

The real story of Gasol’s season so far, I think, is how good he’s been across the board. He’s been palpably better defensively, in a way you could not assume was possible after at least a two-year decline. Gasol seems rejuvenated by the return to a team that cares and the presence of some teammates on the perimeter (particularly Garrett Temple and Kyle Anderson) who can keep the dam from breaking. Instead of trying to stem a deluge, this has allowed Gasol to spend more time dropping into the paint, in basketball middle-linebacker mode, where he can use his size, awareness, and sure hands to act as the kind of hub of and failsafe for a once-again well-functioning team defense. His blocks are at an all-time low, but his steals are at an all-time high. He’s been a below-the-rim protector.

On the boards, a once deferential blockout-based team rebounder has gotten greedier out of necessity, and is putting up a career-best rebound rate, poking above 30 percent on the defensive boards for the first time in his career, and the Grizzlies have needed every bit of it. And while it hasn’t been quite as flashy as in the past, he remains one of the very best passing big men in the league. His assist rate has been the highest of his career and his turnover rate the lowest. (That Golden State game where he wasn’t part of the offense? He had nine assists.)

I lamented before the season that Gasol’s impact on team fortunes was much harder to discern over the past couple of years. No more. Gasol’s net rating (team performance per possession when he's on the floor) has been best on the team among full rotation players.

Not everything is rosy, and that brings us back to scoring. Gasol’s scoring average (14.4) is his lowest since 2010-2011 and his shooting percentage (42 percent) so far matches last season’s career-worst. It’s not all the same though.

Gasol shot terribly inside-the-arc in the preseason and that carried over, but has generally been trending up. There will be times when Gasol will get a mismatch and go to work on the block or sense an opening and drive hard to the rim, as he did twice late against Denver. These moments have never been as frequent as some want, and have now become less so.

The offensive growth area for Gasol? Outside the arc. With more structure around him, Gasol’s three-point shooting has bounced back, to 44 percent so far. That may not hold, but Gasol’s a good shooter and as he crosses into his mid-thirties, those shots should be increasing in frequency.

4. Steady hands and long arms have made turnover-differential the team’s defining trait

The one meaningful statistical area in which the Grizzlies have been tops in the league: Turnover differential, a battle the team has won in every game this season, to the tune of a nearly five-possession per-game swing.

Ever since Conley and Gasol moved up the team’s offensive pecking order, the Grizzlies have been a low turnover team. The team’s penchant for forcing turnovers used to be a matter of force, of Tony Allen acting as a chaos agent. Now, especially in their current starting lineup, the Grizzlies are just so long and active, with Garrett Temple, Kyle Anderson, and Jaren Jackson Jr. linking Gasol and Conley. Anderson’s steal rate isn’t quite as rarefied as prime Tony Allen or his impact as palpable. But those long arms and quick hands have made the kind of defensive impact the Grizzlies were hoping for when they made him their top priority in free agency this summer. And Temple has been even better overall, if less of a turnover catalyst.

The turnover differential has helped offset the team’s abdication on the offensive boards, has juiced an offense (second in points off turnovers at the league’s slowest pace) that needs it, and has been the team-defense tipping point. The Grizzlies worked their way to serviceable on the defensive boards and have stopped the heavy bleeding at the foul line despite Jackson’s growing pains, but are generally more solid than elite in most defensive indicators. It’s forcing turnovers that’s boosted them back into a Top 10 defense, and a Top 10 defense that can allow them to at least daydream about a return to the playoffs.

5. Jaren Jackson Jr. is ahead of schedule but patience is still required

I was an early booster of Jaren Jackson Jr. as a top-tier prospect in last summer’s NBA Draft. I ended up ranking him third (behind Deandre Ayton and Luka Doncic) and advocating that the Grizzlies stay put and snatch him up rather than the more popular notion of trading down or out of the draft.

But I also said that I thought that fans of whichever team took Jackson would be disappointed initially, watching a raw bundle of possibility come off the bench as an NBA teen, averaging about seven points and four rebounds a game. Well, Jackson is ahead of schedule.

In about 24 minutes a night, Jackson’s averaging about 12 points, five rebounds, and more than a steal and block a game.

As Bickerstaff noted on Wednesday night, Jackson has already proven to be more than a 3-and-D big man. Rather than the strength of his offense, his jump shot as so far been a weakness. Jackson’s been more effective in the paint or off the bounce, helping him to 47 percent shooting from the floor despite opening his career 5-24 from beyond the arc.

What’s most exciting about Jackson of late is the way he’s beginning to string together stretches of impact rather than just individual plays and, more specifically, signs of becoming the kind of dynamic defensive presence that remains his highest-ceiling skill. Eight blocks over his past two games is a preview of coming attractions.

But four-point games and 30-minute foul-outs? There’s more of that to come too. Jackson’s foul rate is creeping down but will remain a rookie-season factor. More significant to watch, I think: His three-point shooting and rebounding. The former is a ceiling skill for Jackson, and needs to be nurtured through the rough patches. The latter is a limitation Jackson will need to overcome if he’s going to transition to center over time.

6. The current starting lineup needs a longer look

I was asked at the beginning of the week whether the Grizzlies should move Dillon Brooks into the starting lineup, shifting Kyle Anderson or (less likely) Jaren Jackson to the bench. I suggested a yes, and was planning to make that case here, paired with the notion that Anderson is a better fit at power forward.

But after mulling it more, I think the team should give the current look a little more time.

Statistics are a composite of the past, not a static condition. They tell you what has happened and can suggest probabilities about what will happen. But a basketball team is a living organism, changing every day.

The Grizzlies current starting lineup -- Mike Conley-Garrett Temple-Kyle Anderson-Jaren Jackson Jr.-Marc Gasol -- has only played 79 minutes together. The team’s next-most-used lineup, still, includes two players unseen since Game 3 in JaMychal Green and Chandler Parsons. 

The current lineup has been great defensively, which isn’t much of a surprise. But it’s been bad enough offensively to still have been a net negative so far.

There are structural problems with this look. Playing Anderson as an ostensible wing alongside playmakers Conley and Gasol too frequently turns him into a spot-up shooter (or, more often, non-shooter), which may be his lowest and worst use. The extreme size that works so well to shrink the court defensively also shrinks it offensively, and that limited space might be one factor (though not a primary one) in Conley’s rough offensive play.

If the Grizzlies want to be a playoff team, they probably can’t deploy an in-the-red starting lineup indefinitely. But this lineup probably isn't finished being born.

How will it look if and when Conley turns the corner? If Jackson’s learning curve speeds up? As Anderson gets more reps with his new teammates?

If Jackson and Anderson are true new core pieces and Conley and Gasol have good basketball left in Memphis, the team probably needs to devote some time figuring out how to maximize all four on the floor, even if it means some growing pains. And beyond Conley and Gasol, the Grizzlies simply need to figure out how to maximize Anderson and Jackson together. The future there is probably at the four and five, respectively, but Jackson’s going to need to grow as a rebounder for that to work as a primary look.

Also: This lineup is really good defensively, and the Grizzlies want to be a defense-first team.

Adding Dillon Brooks in place of Anderson has given the team an offensive boost, but with a defensive downside. The same is true, to different degrees, of Wayne Selden and MarShon Brooks.

But, increasingly, the Grizzlies have shifted pretty hard from this super-sized starting unit to smaller and smaller lineups throughout the game, getting Anderson minutes at the four and opening up more minutes for the team’s deep cast of wing players. These smaller lineups may well end up being the best path, and maybe from the very beginning. But the regular season is a laboratory and we’re only 10 games in. All of it, including the current starters, probably warrants more experimentation.

7. JaMychal Green and Chandler Parsons might have a rough re-entry

The Grizzlies have been without two opening night starters since the season’s second game and third game, respectively, and truth be told haven’t missed them much.

Starting Chandler Parsons at small forward was always a curious move. I defended the decision to start Green over fresh-from-campus Jaren Jackson Jr., but now that injuries have forced a switch, I think the Grizzlies would prefer to stick with it.

The Grizzlies are thin up front, and in times when foul trouble has hit, they’ve felt it. Losing Gasol or Jackson to injury would be a significant problem. But Gasol-Jackson-Anderson has shaped up as the kind of effective core “big” rotation that Gasol-Green-Jackson was initially hoped to be. Green’s a good player, but it’s no longer clear that, at full strength, a full, nightly rotation role for him would be better for the team than what they’ve forged without him. There's a role here, but it sure feels likely to be a diminished one. (What does that portend at the trade deadline? Let’s revisit that down the road.)

As for Parsons … it didn’t last three games despite his summer sojourn for German medicine and his mirage of a preseason. The official word is he’ll be back … sometime. I wish him the best, but would view him as a fully sunk cost and put him at the back of the rotational pecking order if and when he returns.

8. “Raising the competitive floor” seems to have worked

This summer, the Grizzlies spent a second-round pick, a couple of (more modest) sunk-cost contracts, and a couple of veteran’s minimum roster spots on Garrett Temple, Shelvin Mack, and Omri Casspi.

This was some really fine bargain shopping. Does it make up for the massive swing-and-miss on Parsons? No, but this string of base hits has made a difference.

Temple has been the greatest find, operating so far as arguably the best three-and-D Grizzlies wing player of the Gasol & Conley era. Temple’s offense has been up and down, but even then he’s scoring at the highest rate of his career. But he’s been a consistent force defensively, where Gasol, Anderson, and Jackson generate more steals and blocks but Temple has functioned as stopper, helping hold such top wing scorers as Bradley Beal, Donovan Mitchell, and Jamal Murray to subpar nights. Maybe Temple’s playing above his head, or maybe he’s a late-bloomer who’s found his best fit. Everybody has a career year sometime.

Mack is less likely to sustain his start, especially his 56 percent (!) three-point shooting. But even if he comes down to earth, he’s still got a chance to be Conley’s best-ever backup, and at a time when Conley needs it most. Conley and Mack have worked together well offensively as a backcourt, but the pairing is a defensive problem.

Casspi came in as the Parsons backup plan, and that didn’t take long. Rising up the pecking order given front court injuries and foul trouble, Casspi has proven a willing scrapper in the paint and a viable shotmaker on the perimeter. It’s nice to have a vet at the back of the bench who you don’t have to play but who can help you in a pinch.

Add in MarShon Brooks, signed to a veteran’s minimum in the spring and starting to pick up more consistent minutes in these smaller lineups, and the team now has four new veteran role players making solid contributions and providing quality play deep into the rotation.

9. J.B. Bickerstaff has something to prove, and so far he’s doing just that

In his third season as an NBA head coach but first not in an interim stint, J.B. Bickerstaff is in a challenging spot.

The Grizzlies aren’t the Warriors, a team that will overwhelm with talent. And they aren’t last season’s Grizzlies, a team incapable of winning with an organizational incentive to not do so.

It looks like a team in the vast middle, with a wide range of outcomes and equally wide range of lineup, rotation, and strategic options. These are the kind of teams where you can see the impact of coaching, from which Coach of the Year contenders and pink slips both come.

Maybe Bickerstaff was forced into better lineups with the Parsons/Green injuries, but since then he seems to have managed his roster well, conducting a nightly negotiation of his myriad options while still forging chemistry. After a shaky preseason and disastrous opener, the Grizzlies have emerged as a team that plays hard and together. And if the team is perhaps not yet maximizing its limited offense arsenal, it’s probably not too far from it.

10. The West playoff race will be lengthy and crowded

I think there’s a good chance that the current Top 8 teams in the Eastern Conference will end the season as that conference’s eight playoff representatives, if not in the same order. In the West? Probably not.

The Warriors were pretty much a lock before the first ball tipped. The Suns and Mavericks are probably already out of the mix and the Timberwolves are probably already in trouble. The Kings seem likely to fall back. That would leave 10 teams competing for seven spots.

Maybe the Nuggets and Blazers continue to pull away, but chances are each will hit a rough patch. Maybe the Jazz or Thunder or Rockets will make a big leap forward. (Maybe the Thunder are already doing so.) The Pelicans and Lakers are currently underwater and the Spurs have a lower point-differential than the Grizzlies. But all of these teams, including the Clippers and Grizzlies, have the ability to hang around if healthy.

Pro-rate current records out to 82 games, and 38 wins would get you in. That won’t hold, but the threshold feels very likely to be lower than preseason projections. It’s only 10 games, but the early signs suggest a chance for a better-than-expected Grizzlies and worse-than-expected West to allow this team to play meaningful basketball into the spring.