Does Grizzlies owner Robert Pera care enough to learn from the Wizards’ firing of Ernie Grunfeld?

“Well, we want to make the playoffs. We want 50 wins and I’d like to set a bar that says if we can’t get by the first round and the second round then we didn’t meet our goals.” — Wizards owner Ted Leonsis, September 24, 2018

“I see no reason why we can’t return to being a 50-win plus team.” — Grizzlies owner Robert Pera, June 12, 2018

Neither the Grizzlies nor the Wizards are going to win 50 games. Or 40. The two teams barely reached 30.

And unexpectedly disappointing seasons for their owners aren’t all the two franchises share. Both teams are spending more than $120 million in payroll this year, barely scraping under the NBA’s luxury tax line, for the privilege of losing game after game. And it’s not a one-year thing. The Wizards have a recent playoff history similar to that of the Grit n’ Grind Grizzlies (the Wizards won three playoff series in their run, the Grizzlies won four); both franchises have had their moments, but now both find themselves with a lot of rebuilding and retooling to do to get back into the playoff mix.

The Grizzlies and the Wizards have two of the longest-serving general managers in the NBA: Chris Wallace in Memphis, Ernie Grunfeld in Washington, D.C. Well, had. You see, Leonsis wasn’t about to let Grunfeld have another crack at rebuilding. After 16 seasons, enough was enough.

Grunfeld had maneuvered his way through bad decisions and tough times before, and most observers felt he’d do it again. Sounds familar, right? Grunfeld and Wallace have an awful lot in common. Read this excerpt from my esteemed The Athletic colleague David Aldridge’s recent piece on Grunfeld’s departure:

Grunfeld did make several good trades over the years, getting helpful vets like Marcin Gortat, Trevor Ariza, Emeka Okafor and Markieff Morris. But, he had too many big misses, especially in the last few years. There were bad drafts (Oleksiy Pecherov with the 18th pick in 2006; Jan Vesely with the sixth and Chris Singleton at 18 in 2011) to trades (sending the fifth pick in a 2009 draft that yielded Stephen Curry two picks later to Minnesota for Mike Miller and Randy Foye, going all in to surround Arenas, Butler and Jamison with veteran depth), to Grunfeld’s inexplicable indifference to second-round picks, which were sent out, year after year, for next to nothing in return.

All you’d really need to do is to replace the word “Grunfeld” with “Wallace”, change a few player names, and amend the part about second round picks (Wallace has often bought second round picks, with mixed results), and the same paragraph would apply to Memphis. The Grizzlies have blown multiple lottery picks, whiffed on other first rounders, and made horrendous free agent signings big (Chandler Parsons for $94 million) and small (Ben McLemore for $10.7 million) — all under the watch of Wallace, empowered by Pera.

Both franchises managed to get a very good core group of players, but never did enough to supplement them with the support they needed to win big. Cohesive team-building wasn’t on the cards.

In Grunfeld’s 16 years, the Wizards had five head coaches. In Wallace’s 12 years, the Grizzlies have also had five coaches, three in the past four seasons. At least most of the Wizards’ coaching decisions were somewhat logical; most of the Grizzlies’ moves didn’t make a lot of sense at the time and still don’t. Stability in the locker room has been hard to find in Memphis.

And yet, until Tuesday, both remained in their jobs. They were/are two of the longest-serving GMs in the NBA. Here are the GMs who have served as long or longer than Wallace:

• San Antonio Spurs: R.C. Buford (hired in 2002)
• Boston Celtics: Danny Ainge (2003)
• Washington Wizards: Ernie Grunfeld (2003)
• Dallas Mavericks: Donnie Nelson (2005)
• Houston Rockets: Daryl Morey (2007)
• Oklahoma City Thunder: Sam Presti (2007)
• Memphis Grizzlies: Chris Wallace (2007)

Two names stand out like sore thumbs. Of that group, only Grunfeld, Wallace, and Daryl Morey haven’t overseen at least one trip to the NBA Finals, and Morey’s 65-win Rockets were as close as you could get last year. All the others — Buford, Ainge, Nelson and Presti — made the Finals, with three of the four winning championships.

Leonsis had enough. He made the move his team’s fans wanted for years.

Will Pera do the same?

I’ve often wondered: Does Pera really care about whether or not the Grizzlies win?

Pera started in the technology business at Apple, but his ambitions could not be contained by working under Steve Jobs. He told Forbes magazine in a 2012 profile, “Apple’s a great company, but I realized I wanted to have more success faster.”

Pera started his own company, Ubiquiti, and turned $30,000 in Apple options and credit card debt into the beginnings of what is now a massively successful publicly-traded corporation. Not too bad. Certainly doesn’t sound like a guy willing to accept mediocrity.

It was another quote from Pera that got my attention, though: “My aim is to build something great as efficiently as possible.”

And with Ubiquiti, he has. He took the company public in October of 2011 and, in the intervening years, the stock price has gone through the roof. It started at $17 per share and finished trading on Thursday at $159. That means Pera’s now worth roughly eight billion dollars.

That’s pretty spectacular, to be sure. Pera asked for fast and efficient growth from Ubiquiti, and I’d say he got it.

Now, look at a different chart. This one is the Grizzlies’ regular season winning percentages, year by year since Wallace came aboard.

That X denotes Pera’s purchase of the Grizzlies. While the Grizzlies did grow steadily in Wallace’s first few years, things stagnated, then got worse. And as the chart shows, Pera essentially bought in at the high point of success, rode the solid Grit n’ Grind years, and now is overseeing a team clearly moving in the wrong direction. Quite a contrast from the Ubiquiti chart. One Pera property is on the rise, another is on the decline.

It raises a critical question: Why is a man so driven to success in one field so content with the status quo in another?

Pera reportedly spends most of his time overseas, passionately handling every bit of Ubiquiti business he can personally deal with, yet he’s barely been able to drag himself to more than a handful of Grizzlies games in his time as owner. To be fair, Pera has been more active this season than previous ones. He’s come to Memphis and had in-person meetings with front office personnel, along with Mike Conley and Marc Gasol. He seems to be a bit more attentive since becoming majority controlling owner by buying out his two largest minority owners, Steve Kaplan and Daniel Straus, last April. But only a bit.

Would Pera allow Ubiquiti to flounder? Doubtful. When Ubiquiti was defrauded out of nearly $50 million a few years ago, an undoubtedly massive mistake, there were immediate personnel changes. That mistake didn’t happen again and again.

Meanwhile, the Grizzlies have made mistake after mistake in the draft, have had serious problems with information leaking to the press, have gone through coaches like a hot knife through butter, have botched a trade (coincidentally involving Grunfeld and the Wizards) because no one could figure out which player named Brooks was supposed to be traded, and have wasted nine-digit figures in poor free agent signings. Yet nothing has happened to change the process or the individuals involved. Quite the contrast.

Remember what Pera said about Ubiquiti: “My aim is to build something great as efficiently as possible.” The Grizzlies are not being built efficiently, nor are they headed toward greatness. At what point will Pera’s methods in his technology business translate to basketball?

This is the most important offseason the Grizzlies have faced in years. There are vital decisions that must be made, and mistakes in any of them will have long-lasting negative consequences for the franchise.

• Will the team trade Conley? If so, for what kind of package?
• Are they trying to compete now or are they ready to rebuild?
• Will they have their draft pick? If so, who will they take?
• What, if anything, will they do about Jonas Valanciunas’ future?
• How will they handle what could be more than $50 million in expiring contracts next season?
• Will J.B. Bickerstaff return or will there be a fourth coach in five seasons?

And that doesn’t even include the multiple smaller free agent decisions they’ll have to make.

With all of that on the line, does it make any sense to continue to entrust the future of the team to the same person, the same process, that has led them to this point?

It didn’t for Pelicans owner Gayle Benson, whose team is facing a massive offseason decision about how to handle a potential Anthony Davis trade. She summarily dismissed longtime GM Dell Demps weeks ago.

It didn’t for Leonsis either, who fired Grunfeld with his Wizards facing an uncertain future.

It doesn’t for Pera, either, but that may not be enough to make a difference. Still, it’s time for the young Grizzlies owner to learn from his mistakes and make the change that’s desperately needed. Time to overhaul the basketball operations and empower a true general manager. Time to get a fresh set of ideas into a team that needs it badly. It’s just time.

Does Pera really care enough to do what’s best for his franchise? We’re about to find out.

(Top photo of Chandler Parsons: Steve Dykes / USA Today)