Down three with under two minutes to go, Marc Gasol and Kyle Anderson played hot potato when the Grizzlies needed a bucket.

Having to wait until noon on Sunday before buying beer may soon be a thing of the past in several local jurisdictions. 

If you buy a tub of whipped topping, a plastic toy, fried pork rinds or gift wrap at Walmart, you may be contributing to a paycheck for a Memphis-area worker.

Before he leaves his position as superintendent of Shelby County Schools at the end of January, Dorsey Hopson said he will have some “food for thought” for the SCS board on the size of the school system – the number of schools in the city of Memphis and unincorporated Shelby County, including charter schools and schools run by the state through the Achievement School District.

So much for civility, consensus and racial harmony.

At Phil Trenary’s funeral, I spoke about those things that I felt he would want to see happen that would move Memphis forward.

Within minutes of each other and just a few yards apart at City Hall last week, council members Joe Brown and Berlin Boyd each told reporters the vacant and hotly contested council District 1 seat is “the people’s seat.”

The 11-story Poplar Towers was a tired, 45-year-old office building in the middle of Memphis’ newest, most upscale and expensive offices.

Buckman, a locally-based chemical production company with a worldwide customer base, has hired three new executives who will all operate out of the company’s North Memphis headquarters.

In three decades on the Shelby County Election Commission, 24 of them as chairman, O.C. Pleasant oversaw changes from lever voting machines to electronic machines to touch-screen machines and dodged an attempt to introduce punch-card voting in local elections.

Sitting at the dining room table at his home in Bartlett, Dan Merrill, 67, holds his smartphone away from his reading glasses.

Senate Minority Chairman Raumesh Akbari, with an eye toward passage of a Florida referendum on felon voting rights, is planning to sponsor legislation automatically restoring the right to vote for people with low-level felony convictions.

When Scott Cherry’s coaching tenure at High Point University came to an end after a 14-16 record last season, some soothsayers might have seen Tubby Smith – then the University of Memphis coach – losing the Tigers gig and resurrecting at his alma mater in High Point, North Carolina.

Offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham on Sunday joined a growing line of former Tigers assistants who have moved to Power Five jobs after working under head coach Mike Norvell.

Saturday’s Grizzlies home loss to LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers may have just been “one of those nights,” but a loss you want to keep in your rear-view has a way of creeping back in when it’s followed by another.

The departures from Memphis coach Mike Norvell’s coaching staff continued Monday afternoon as defensive coordinator Chris Ball was named the head coach at Northern Arizona.

Memphis head coach Mike Norvell indicated Monday he is not pursuing any other college coaching jobs and intends to stay at the University of Memphis.

Gov.-elect Bill Lee made another round of cabinet appointments Monday, announcing Williamson County Sheriff Jeff Long, a former police officer at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Memphis, will serve as Safety and Homeland Security Department commissioner.

Gary Williams, one of the city’s favorite chefs, beloved by notable Memphians and the workaday people who jockeyed for a table in his tiny Creole soul food restaurant on Florida Street, died on Dec. 5 of a heart attack.

Head coach Mike Norvell will replace another offensive coordinator after Kenny Dillingham accepted the same position at Auburn. 

As 167 health care providers, researchers and foundation executives from 52 different countries made their way into the Marlo Thomas Center for Global Education and Collaboration auditorium, a slideshow depicted photos from their journey. One group was spotted at B.B. King’s Blues Club the night before, others took pictures upon their arrival at Memphis International Airport, and many took pictures at their final destination, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. 

A substantial development emerged Friday for Summer Avenue and the Highland Heights neighborhood with confirmation that a charter school plans to renovate and move into a large, vacant building on the commercial corridor.

FedEx Express gets a new chief Jan. 1, with a rising star in FedEx leadership taking over for a long-tenured executive who embodies the company’s wealth of home-grown talent.

On the fourth consecutive day of what Memphis City Council chairman Berlin Boyd calls “the situation,” the council again could not muster a quorum of seven members to transact business.

The Memphis Sands Aquifer isn’t in danger of drying up, but it remains in federal litigation, and Tennessee leaders say a long-term look at water needs statewide will help prepare for growth and updated systems. State officials say the aquifer produces the purest drinking water in the nation — 159 million gallons daily for public water supplies.