The Memphis Grizzlies were hoping for a better start to the season (11-8) and possibly finding some new lineups that work better than their traditional one with both Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol on the floor could be the answer.

The Grizzlies are trying to find ways to make Jeff Green, overall a disappointment since arriving from the Boston Celtics, become more useful. Mario Chalmers has been fantastic since joining from the Miami Heat, but his help and addition alone won’t cut it in the cutthroat West, even if we’re still not a quarter way through the season, and a lot of teams are still adjusting to changes, even minor ones, they’ve made in the offseason.

An interesting point from  Chris Herrington of The Commercial-Appeal: There’s still reason to be skeptical about Green’s starting lineup fit when the Grizzlies are playing both Randolph and Marc Gasol. Of the 30 most-used two-player combinations since that Nov. 9 demarcation point, Randolph-Green has been by far the least effective. On the season, the Grizzlies have been better with one or the other on the floor than with both, and each player has shot worse with the other on the floor.

While the Grizzlies have had a lot of success (Relatively of course) over the years by playing with two big men who love being in the paint (although Gasol does operate well outside of it too) during most minutes of the game, it might be time for them to break up that tandem, at least for some minutes of the game and go with Jeff Green at the ‘4’ slot, and be another team deferring to four perimeter players and a post player at the center of it, preferably Gasol. The window of maybe winning something (although I doubt it actually happens) with the Conley-Gasol-Randolph trio might be closing, and there’s no point in being headstrong about sticking to something that has always had a very clear ceiling.

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