Mike Conley, Grizzly Man

In Game 2 of his team's match-up against the Golden State Warriors, Mike Conley Jr. slashed the tires of the best team in the NBA in front of their perplexed fans, and did it with a semi-smashed face and a swollen-as-hell bloodshot left eye. There is a certain type of player who does this sort of thing, but Mike Conley—a very good player on a very good team, but one decidedly without any mythic heft—did not necessarily seem like that sort of player. He is working on changing that, in a characteristically polite way. That dazzling Game 2, a perfect painting by a minor artist, was One-Eye Charlie's first and last excuse-me, and a moment sure to be enshrined in playoff esoterica.

No less an authority than Justin Timberlake described Conley as having the "heart of a lion." Leaving aside that male lions are very problematic and that this is a very cliche thing to say, it's tough not to agree with JT. That is the story of Mike Conley, a nice man rearing up on his hind legs and perhaps the one NBA player that every fan can cheer for, once they finally get around to noticing him.

The worst thing you can find about Mike Conley on the internet is that his comfort food is mac and cheese or that he and his best friend Greg Oden once spent some time hanging out with Gene Simmons. He has, slowly and steadily, become as complete a point guard as there is in the NBA. And yet, in any discussion of his position, Conley routinely winds up shoved so far down the depth chart as to be an afterthought, at least when he and his team are not disemboweling your darlings. He's not going to save basketball; he can't destroy it.

Bodies drop quickly in the playoffs. By the next round we'll either have lost Chris Paul or James Harden, LeBron James or Derrick Rose, Kent Bazemore or Drew Gooden, Steph Curry or… Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, and Zach Randolph. This is how it goes, and relative to the major stars in that last sentence, Conley doesn't quite rate. His handle doesn't compare to Kyrie's. He can't shoot like Steph Curry. He's just not Chris Paul. He won't found an empire like Augustus, but he will keep it humming and prosperous like Claudius. He won't split any Red Seas in his time like that Moses guy, but he'll do the dirty little things that need to be done to get the W, like Aaron, the unheralded big brother. Mike Conley is not Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, but he's probably Flip Your Wig. You get it. Mike Conley is a master of the nooks and crannies, and he gets his wins in the margins.

His game is a less-annoying version of Tony Parker's, all floaters and tear drops and weaponized fearlessness. He gives a shit on defense and will lock your ass down if he has to. He never seems unstoppable, and yet at certain times cannot be stopped. The loyalty he inspires from the toughest and grouchiest team in the league was no one's gift. Conley inherited a great deal—he is a member of one of the most distinguished black families in American history; there's hardly a discipline where the Conleys have not made their mark. He has earned even more.

When One-Eyed Charlie returned to his beleaguered Grizzlies like a smallpox vaccine and dropped 22 points in 27 minutes, even Warriors fans had to dip their swollen heads in respect. When Draymond Green you know maybe sort of perhaps intentionally hit Conley in the face when he was already down, there was a palpable shift in the loyalties of the undecided. Conley took that in stride too. He writhed in pain for a minute, got back up, and won his team the game.

Because we have been talking about basketball in the same ways for so long, we have only worn-out words for the Grizzlies—brawny, blue collar, tough, lunchpail, grit-and-grind. The team itself is something stranger and more interesting than all that, a bronze age powerhouse flirting with steel. Out of all these characters, Mike Conley may be the weirdest. Not because he's weird—Conley seems mostly normal, maybe even nice. The weird part is how Conley persists, even as he claws towards greatness, in his strange shadow state, partially taken for granted and partially just ignored.

This how most of us live, as it happens. Every now and then some combination of fate and will conspire to allow a tiny step out of the shadows. Mike Conley got a chance to be the hero and he took it. Mike Conley is worth cheering for, even when you want his team to lose. We should try to remember this, but Mike Conley is going to keep reminding us.