I don’t remember exactly where I was three weeks ago when the Memphis Grizzlies fired their now-former head coach David Fizdale. I do remember gasping at the news.

Fizdale benched franchise cornerstone Marc Gasol the night before, yes. And the Grizzlies were on an eight-game losing streak, sure. But he was a beloved figure around the league, tabbed by many to achieve big things as a head coach. His firing didn’t even feel like a remote possibility just a month ago.

Or was it?

Subsequent reports revealed an untenable relationship between Gasol and Fiz dating back months. Those internal spats usually lead fingers to point squarely at the coach; players are worth more to franchises than clipboard-carriers, and Gasol—a three-time All-Star and hometown hero—is the motherlode for the small-market Grizz.

Word out of Memphis this past summer already was Marc Gasol and Coach Fizdale were on very poor terms after some confrontations in practice. Seemed inevitable they'd have to pick between one or the other eventually. This isn't some recent thing.

— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) November 27, 2017

But Grizzlies brass had only two reasons to fire Fizdale. Either they wanted to keep the peace with their star big man or they wanted to win more games. No other justifications warrant sacking a bright young coach. And here’s the thing: Memphis hasn’t achieved either of those two goals.

The Grizz are 2-9 since interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff took over and have now lost 17 of their past 19 games. The grumbling has continued, too. Gasol called out his teammates for a lack of urgency earlier this month, setting off even more alarm bells about his future.

The drama isn’t exclusive to the locker room, either. Memphis is undergoing a bizarre ownership dispute in the C-Suite, as minority owners Steve Kaplan and Daniel Straus might run majority owner Robert Pera out of town. The two parties are basically playing the relationship game from Master of None.

All that noise surrounding the franchise is bound to cause some on-court dysfunction. But let’s not overcomplicate things. The Grizzlies are 9-21 because they’re just plain bad. They own a minus-9.0 net rating over their last 15 games. The offense has been anemic in that span, racking up just 99.0 points per 100 possessions—a league-worst mark. Their defense, meanwhile, has regressed from solid to flimsy since the beginning of the season.

And that culture change Fizdale and general manager Chris Wallace envisioned? It hasn’t materialized. The Grizzlies have tried to evolve from their grit-and-grind identity, but they still languish at the bottom of the league in pace, despite the loss of veteran plodder Zach Randolph (who is a national treasure, by the way). They’re middle-of-the-pack in three-point attempts, which is fine. At the same time, they’re canning just 35.1 percent of those tries, good for only 24th in the Association.

You can still win with a slow, paint-centric offense—the San Antonio Spurs do it every damn year—but teams are moving away from that style for a reason.

Post-ups and face-ups require outlier efficiency to carry an offense, and the Grizzlies are nonconformists in all the wrong ways. They rank ninth in the league in post-ups per game and sixth in elbow touches, but they sit in 27^th in points per post touch and 25^th in points per elbow touch. The numbers are just as bleak for Gasol, who’s shooting a career-low 42.3 percent from the field. His efficiency at the elbow has improved, but after finishing in the league’s 70th percentile in points per post-up last year, the Spaniard has regressed all the way to the 29th percentile this season.

It doesn’t help that all other reservoirs of offense have dried up. Mike Conley has been out with an Achilles injury for more than half the season, taking away the lethal two-man game between Memphis’s co-stars. The Grizzlies’ sets are now predictable, labored and often fail to crack the paint:

Chandler Parsons is basically a conventional stretch 4 at this point, knee injury after knee injury having sapped him of off-the-bounce dynamism. Tyreke Evans—back in his old college town—is slicing to the rim with ferocity and canning pull-up threes. But the Grizzlies post just 101.3 points per 100 possessions with Evans on the court, roughly the same rancid number as when he sits.

Everything will change when Conley comes back, right? Well, not exactly. The Grizzlies have outscored opponents by just 0.3 points per 100 possessions with their diminutive floor general on the court and healthy. Unless Bickerstaff pulls off a miracle, they aren’t getting anywhere near the playoff race.

And while “tanking” is a dreaded word around Memphis, the franchise needs to face reality: When you’re on pace to win 25 games, you’re already plumbing the depths of rock bottom.

Look up and down the roster, and you’ll see a collection of fringe NBA players, journeymen and not-so-young youngsters surrounding Conley and Gasol. Worse yet, the two stars suffer through trivial or substantive injuries nearly every season. This team isn’t built to make the playoffs—especially when one of them is on the shelf.

The Grizz have tried to spend their way to more wins in the past, dumping $94 million at Parsons’ brittle knees. Add that albatross to Conley and Gasol’s max deals, and they have what NBA Math’s Adam Spinella called “the NBA’s worst salary-cap situation” leading into this season:

The Memphis Grizzlies' cap situation has become a complicated mess. @Spinella14 explains how it got so bad: https://t.co/tzd4uUWEwX pic.twitter.com/8BDW6PlT2J

— NBA Math (@NBA_Math) August 17, 2017

They have about $102 million committed to their payroll next season, which puts them right up against the cap. No stud free agent is walking through that door. They probably won’t even retain the one they have for that matter. Evans is bound to command a pretty penny on the open market, and the Grizzlies don’t own his Bird rights after signing him to a one-year deal at the bi-annual exception.

Trading assets for more talent is off the table. Next year’s pick is owed to the Boston Celtics, with top-eight protection, so they cannot move this June’s selection. And they wouldn’t even if they could. They’re losing about twice as many games as they’re winning. That pick represents their quickest, most effective path to a cost-controlled impact player. And beyond Conley and Gasol, and perhaps Evans, they don’t have any worthwhile sweeteners to headline deals of consequence.

The Grizzlies can always snag a high draft pick this year and resume their playoff chase in 2018-19, leaning heavily on the star duo to carry an otherwise underwhelming roster. But without a pick in 2019, their mini-rebuild will yield only a couple cheap youngsters—who, absent lottery luck, are unlikely to be top-five selections. Their path to future contention will look largely the same as it does now unless they nail the few picks they do have.

And the payoff for standing pat, staying on the 43-win treadmill, isn’t even a guarantee. While the Los Angeles Lakers, Utah Jazz, New Orleans Pelicans, Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets all boast transcendent stars, exciting young nuclei, cap space or all three, the Grizzlies are on the decline. Easily snagging a low playoff seed every season is fine. Perpetually clinging to an outsider’s chance at a postseason spot? Not so much, particularly when you’re on a downward trajectory.

Either the Grizzlies lose with Conley and Gasol through 2020, when Gasol and Parsons’ contracts come off the books, or they lose without them and start the rebuild in earnest. The second option is getting more attractive by the day.

The Grizzlies play in one of the NBA’s smallest media markets, so they need to maximize fan engagement in Memphis to keep revenues up. As many anti-tanking arguments have stressed, supporters don’t like to slog through 30-win seasons. And they definitely don’t like to trade bona fide stars like Gasol and Conley.

But just because you can draw a straight line between talent and attendance doesn’t mean the two are causally related. Fans turn out to watch talented teams because, normally, they win games or have a bright future. The Grizzlies don’t check off either of those boxes, and they rank 19^th in home attendance ­anyway. That pick owed to Boston is also an issue. It presents an obvious impediment to bottoming out, which, as ESPN’s Zach Lowe has suggested, may delay any rebuild.

That’s a lousy excuse.

The pick is top-eight protected in 2019 and top-six protected in 2020, but waiting for it to convey is risky business. What happens if the Grizzlies finish in the bottom eight next season? Do they wait another year to rebuild while the aging Gasol and Conley lose trade value? What if the pick conveys, but whoever owns the team refuses to sign off on tanking?

“We think our window is still very much open with Mike and Marc,” Wallace told Lowe.

Except, it’s not. And the Grizzlies need to recognize as much.

The future carries no guarantees in the NBA. But Memphis needs to embrace change anyway. Losing with stars is just as unattractive—maybe even more so—than losing without them and accumulating long-term assets. What a Gasol or Conley deal may look like is a question for another day.

For now, the Grizzlies must manufacture hope using the meager tools at their disposal.

Follow Nate on Twitter @NateWolfNBA.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from NBA Math, Basketball Reference or NBA.com and are accurate heading into games on Dec. 18.