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2002–03 Memphis Grizzlies season

NBA professional basketball team season

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ3854520 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 2002–03 Memphis Grizzlies season was the eighth season for the Memphis Grizzlies in the National Basketball Association, and their second season in Memphis, Tennessee. The Grizzlies received the fourth overall pick in the 2002 NBA draft, and selected power forward Drew Gooden from the University of Kansas. During the off-season, the team acquired rookie small forward Gordan Giriček from the San Antonio Spurs, acquired Wesley Person from the Cleveland Cavaliers, and signed free agents Earl Watson, and undrafted rookie power forward Mike Batiste.

In their second season in Memphis, and with the addition of Gooden, Giriček and Person, the Grizzlies continued to struggle losing their first eight games of the regular season, as head coach Sidney Lowe resigned and was replaced with 69-year old Hubie Brown, who last coached the New York Knicks midway through the 1986–87 season. Under Brown, the Grizzlies lost their next five games, which led to a 13-game losing streak, before defeating the Washington Wizards at home, 85–74 at the Pyramid Arena on November 23, 2002. After a dreadful 2–18 start to the season, the Grizzlies won 9 of their next 13 games, but later on posted a seven-game losing streak between January and February, and held a 13–35 record at the All-Star break.

At mid-season, the team traded both Gooden, and Giriček to the Orlando Magic in exchange for Mike Miller, and rookie power forward Ryan Humphrey. After the All-Star break, the Grizzlies won 11 of their next 17 games, which included a six-game winning streak in March, but soon posted another seven-game losing streak between March and April, while losing 13 of their final 17 games of the season. The Grizzlies finished in sixth place in the Midwest Division with a 28–54 record, which was a five-game improvement over the previous season; however, for the eighth consecutive year, the franchise failed to reach 30 wins, or qualify for the NBA playoffs.

Second-year star Pau Gasol averaged 19.0 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game, while Miller averaged 12.8 points per game in 16 games after the trade, and Jason Williams provided the team with 12.1 points and 8.3 assists per game, and also led them with 143 three-point field goals.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “2002–03 Memphis Grizzlies season” as nBA professional basketball team season. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Memphis, Grizzlies and season.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2002, 1986—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Memphis, Grizzlies and season providing the first useful test.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3854520. The first chronological checks are 2002 and 1986.

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This entry incorporates text from “2002–03 Memphis Grizzlies season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.