This is perhaps the biggest young star in the NBA, subject to a league gun investigation twice in five weeks. It’s a red alarm issue far beyond Memphis. 

The Memphis Grizzlies have 21 games left in this NBA regular season, and the Western Conference playoff race is so tight that intrigue could linger to the final day.

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Grizzlies Insider: For Memphis, ‘the real test is on the road’

It never looks great on paper, but you can always be guaranteed that great stuff will happen. Like a magisterial Jill Scott cracking jokes and dispensing love advice, Sturgill Simpson surprising with a lacerating, hard country-soul set or that time that a nervy Randy Newman surveyed the afternoon crowd and began playing an unedited version of “Rednecks.”

With the trade deadline over and the All-Star break one game away, Chris Herrington shares his wisdom on all things Memphis Grizzlies.

Before this holiday-season stretch commences, let’s stop to unwrap the most prominent present each main-roster member of the top-seeded Grizzlies has given us in this opening third of the season.

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Grizzlies Insider: Can Memphis keep this road streak alive?

This month’s Grizzlies Mailbag includes thoughts on Jaren Jackson Jr.’s chances to be named Defensive Player of the Year and his declining fouls, along with Chris’ favorite Christmas movies.

A deeper look at what the return of Jaren Jackson Jr. will mean to the Grizzlies.

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Grizzlies Insider: Memphis stayed on track despite Jaren Jackson Jr. absence

This rematch of last spring’s first-round playoff series between the Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves was, for Grizzlies fans, an opportunity for gratitude.

Memphis is awash in dramatic examples of adaptive reuse, from a Downtown shopping mall turned corporate headquarters to a Sears warehouse building turned “vertical urban village” to even a Pyramid-shaped arena turned world’s biggest bait shop. But Mud Island and the Mid-South Coliseum have proved trickier for rebirth. 

Right now, in Memphis, we’re suffering — directly for some, psychologically for all — from a spate of unusual crimes. The fear for some is that the unusual is now morphing into usual. But it’s felt that way before. 

As tensions continue between Memphis in May and the Memphis River Parks Partnership, the festival’s stance has communicated to potential ticket-buyers that anything different than the old festival on the old footprint is destined to be a lesser experience. But it doesn’t have to be. 

The controversy over Tommy Kha’s photography was about art at the airport. But it was also about the living legacy of old, dead Elvis in the city that made him. 

All of the NBA wants two-way wings, midsized players who can affect both ends of the floor. The Grizzlies are among the teams hunting for these players. But in Brooks and Anderson, they might already have one of the league’s best such combos.

Rolling Stone just published its latest list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” and Chris Herrington was among the voters. A look at the Memphis music that did and didn’t make the list, plus Chris’ own ballot. 

Our schools: A two-front political battlefield our kids didn’t ask for and really don’t need right now. Education shouldn’t be conscription, especially in the service of others’ political ambitions.

Road recklessness has been notable for more than a year, the rise perhaps coinciding with pandemic shutdowns. But it doesn’t seem to be diminishing, even as COVID restrictions ease.

The iconography atop the General Lee is the battle flag of a slavery republic. Violence in the name of white supremacy is its inherent, explicit meaning.

It only took a dozen days after that March 8 news conference for Mayor Jim Strickland to invoke the first civil emergency order in Memphis in more than a generation, closing gyms, bars and indoor restaurant dining.

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Year 1 of the novel coronavirus pandemic, by the numbers

With available, clean drinking water an increasingly precious commodity, Memphis’ supply is perhaps the city’s most important asset. We did nothing to earn it. But it’s on us to preserve and manage it. 

Here’s to the iced-over trees that began our winter week. We got the eerie beauty without much of the damage. Here’s to the giant icicles forming from gutters and awnings, giving neighborhood strolls a beyond-the-Wall “Game of Thrones” vibe.

Given what we actually know about COVID spread and what we should value, it’s never felt right to me that I could sit inside a restaurant dining room but my kids couldn’t sit inside a classroom.

The new president’s inaugural address called for unity and a lowering of the political temperature while still drawing some firm lines. Joe Biden said that “politics need not be a raging fire” and called for an end to an “uncivil war.”

Plus, Zach Randolph’s honor, a case for Scooby Doo, and restaurants that are gone but not forgotten.

It was not a question of whether Blackburn or Hagerty or Kustoff would stand with Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden or Mitt Romney. Would they even be willing to stand with Mitch McConnell? None of them wanted what happened on Wednesday afternoon, but they all helped prepare the stage. 

Plus, what we mean when we talk about defunding the police and where to get a good tamale in Midtown on Saturdays.