A few hours after Memphis’ 82-79 loss at Georgia on Wednesday night, Emoni Bates, the Tigers’ much-ballyhooed, highly scrutinized freshman guard, asked his coach, Penny Hardaway, to remove him from the starting lineup.
Bates, all of 17 years old, had shown flashes of potential while scoring 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting, but he committed four fouls and two turnovers in 26 minutes. The loss came five days after Memphis’ 19-point drubbing at the hands of Iowa State, and it was dealt by a Georgia squad that was riding a four-game losing streak. The 6-foot-9 Bates’ request to come off the bench was an uncommonly mature move for a player his age to make, but it also reflected the discomfort and desperation he and the entire team were starting to feel. “I was very surprised, but I understood,” Hardaway said. “He’s a 17-year-old kid who just wants to get comfortable.”
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On Saturday, Bates came off the bench for Memphis’ game at Ole Miss, and he looked anything but comfortable. In 28 ragtag minutes, he shot 1-of-10 from the floor (0-of-4 from 3-point range) and scored seven points. His teammates were no better as the Tigers committed 20 turnovers, shot 2-of-11 from 3 and lost their third straight, 67-63. They will fall out of the rankings when they are released Monday. The Tigers were ranked No. 12 in the AP’s preseason poll largely because of the decision of Bates and fellow freshman forward Jalen Duren to reclassify and enroll as freshmen. It’s only early December, but the season already feels like it’s in tatters.
As the once-promising season has quickly spiraled downward, Hardaway has gone from confused to frustrated to downright pissed off. The focus of his ire is not his freshmen but rather the older players who, in Hardaway’s view, have been selfish, unwelcoming and destructive to the bottom line. “We’ve got so much negativity in our locker room with veterans being jealous,” Hardaway told The Athletic during a telephone interview after Saturday’s loss. “Everybody’s trying to get to the NBA off the ranking we had, but nobody is willing to sacrifice minutes, touches, anything. It’s been miserable. You can imagine what a 17-year-old is thinking as he’s trying to figure it out.”
Hardaway declined to name names — “I don’t want to do that. I don’t have time to deal with angry parents,” he said — but the three upperclassmen who had been in the starting lineup with Bates and Duren were 6-foot-5 junior guard Lester Quinones, 6-7 redshirt junior forward Landers Nolley and 6-9 senior forward DeAndre Williams. Quinones and Nolley combined to shoot 1-of-5 with four turnovers Saturday, while Williams had two rebounds in 23 minutes to go along with 13 points. Duren was limited to two points and four rebounds in 21 minutes because of foul trouble.
Hardaway said he intended to shake up the lineup in the days ahead, distributing most of the minutes to the players he believes will play the hardest and put the team first. “I’m going to have to be a complete asshole from this point on and only play the players that care,” he said. “There’s a group of people on this team that if I played them, I really feel in my heart we could be undefeated or only have one loss. The main reason we have these losses is the veterans don’t want to take the young guys under their wings. They want it to be about them. So when adversity hits, they run. I guarantee you we’ll start winning because you’re gonna see guys out there who care and will carry out the game plan. They might make mistakes, but there are not gonna be any character issues.”
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Asked if had enough “asshole” in him to switch things up so drastically, Hardaway laughed. “I’ve got a lot of asshole in me. I’m from the ’hood. I’m respectful because my grandmother raised me the right way. But if you’re destroying the team from the inside and not caring, that’ll make me snap.”
Hardaway said he noticed a problem brewing as soon as Duren and Bates arrived on campus in September. “There was tension every day,” he said. “It kind of calmed down when we started playing because we playing against lesser talent. But once we got more nationally televised games, everyone went their separate ways.”
Hardaway is right to be frustrated with his team’s play, but he shouldn’t be all that surprised that chemistry issues have cropped up. Bates and Duren have great potential, but they are clearly not prepared to carry such a heavy burden out of the gate — especially since they didn’t arrive on campus until later in the summer. Most every coach bemoans the individual agendas that creep into a locker room and divide older and younger players. The potential for jealousy is especially high when the newcomers are highly touted prospects who garner huge attention.
Yet, Hardaway said he was taken off-guard by the extent of the resistance. “I didn’t think there’d be any issues,” he said. “I thought those guys would welcome the young guys with open arms. I know there’s going to be a jealousy factor and everybody’s not going to be happy that you have two young guys come in that have big names, but I didn’t think it would be like this. This is a tug of war over who wants to be the man.”
Even as he criticized some of his players, Hardaway was emphatic that the blame for Memphis’ troubles should fall squarely on his shoulders. “This is all on me. I’m the head coach,” he said. “I’ve tried to think it through as a guy that played the game. Our problems have nothing to do with X’s and O’s. We have character issues all the way around.”
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Despite his frustration, Hardaway saw some things he liked during Saturday’s loss to Ole Miss. He said he liked Bates’ energy, and he noted that the team missed 14 free throws and still had a chance to win. Turnovers have been a huge problem all season. The Tigers average over 19 per game and rank 352nd in the country in turnover percentage, according to KenPom. Hardaway believes that problem results from players trying to beat defenses by themselves. “That’s not how we teach,” he said. “We had it under control (against Georgia), and we only had 11 turnovers. The 20 turnovers (Saturday) came from guys trying to do too much and breaking off the offense. That’s a big part of what’s going on. We’re playing nationally televised games, and they’re trying to be seen.”
Beyond dealing with the frustrations of his team, Hardaway has been stung by the criticism he has received from fans and the. media. “Being attacked personally like this, that shocks me,” he said. “People don’t understand what’s going on in the locker room. I know I’m the head coach, but I’ve seen other people get more grace than what I get. I understand I’m a former NBA player, I said I want to win a championship and all that. But I hear announcers going at me personally. You can have your opinions, you can go at me professionally, but don’t go at me personally.”
Alas, Memphis’ schedule won’t get any easier from here. The Tigers play No. 16 Alabama at home on Dec. 14 and No. 13 Tennessee in Nashville four days later. If they lose both those games, they will be operating with precious little margin for error in the AAC, where the opportunities for quality wins will be hard to come by. Hardaway is not giving up on his season or his team, nor is he deflecting responsibility for what has happened to this point. But he knows his team is running out of time, and he’s eager to get the turnaround started. In his fourth season, Hardaway has yet to make an NCAA Tournament, though he’s won 20 games in each of his first three seasons and the NIT last March.
“It gets very daunting and frustrating when you’ve got to deal with the whole gamut,” he said. “I’m not taking any pressure off myself. Again, it’s on me. I have to fix it, and I promise you I’m gonna fix it.”
(Top photo: Kevin Langley / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)