Grizzlies

The Memphis Grizzlies brought back Hubie Brown from the broadcast booth, picking him to coach the NBA's only winless team after Sidney Lowe resigned yesterday. Jerry West, Memphis' president of basketball operations, said the 69-year-old Turner Sports analyst is what the young Grizzlies need. Brown was scheduled to join the 0-8 Grizzlies today. Memphis' next game is Friday night against Minnesota. "He sounds like a teenager rearing for his first date," West said. Brown's contract reportedly is for 3 years.

THE MEMPHIS Grizzlies traded Marreese Speights, Wayne Ellington, Josh Selby and a future first-round draft pick to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Jon Leuer. The trade Tuesday is the first big move by the Grizzlies' new ownership and clears about $6 million in salary in getting Memphis under the luxury-tax threshold this season. The Grizzlies (26-14) rank fourth in the West and are 6-4 over their past 10 games. The deal gives the lottery-bound Cavs another first-round pick to improve a team that has won only 11 games this season.

Whatever Memphis coach Lionel Hollins said to his team at halftime worked very, very well. The eighth-seeded Grizzlies outscored visiting San Antonio, 30-15, in the third quarter, turning a two-point halftime deficit into a 104-86 rout last night of the Spurs for a commanding 3-1 lead in their opening series. "It was an incredible performance in the third and fourth quarter," Hollins said. "We outscored them 30-15, and from the second quarter on, our defense just kept getting better and better.

What to make of the 76ers as they pack up and head to the West Coast for the last time this season? Until last week, this looked like a team ready to mail in the remainder of the season. They were riding a five-game losing streak, and the losses, particularly a 15-point blowout by Denver at home, had been ugly. Then the Sixers rallied, showing some of the resilience that had stood them in good stead before the all-star break. They won back-to-back games, something they had not done at home since November, and started talking as if they might try to win back some respect in the season's last 29 games.

Just one glimpse at Chase Reynolds reveals that he's a football player. The Montana running back's chiseled frame, thick neck, and protruding calves are giveaways. But being a football player is just a fraction of Reynolds' story. The 22-year-old redshirt junior is also a husband and a father and carries a 3.2 grade-point average while majoring in criminology. In the summers, he works 70-hour weeks at a Montana construction company to make ends meet. And that's not it. He and his wife, Kila, are expecting their second child in April.

"In the NBA, you always hear that bigger is better. " Those were Mike Bibby's words after the 6-2 point guard from Arizona, who was generally projected as the top pick in last night's NBA draft, was taken by the host Grizzlies with the No. 2 choice, behind 7-1 Pacific center Michael Olowokandi. Bibby, who stayed in college just two years, was probably the most polished player available. So much for now. Five years from now, Olowokandi, who has played basketball for only five years, could be the next Hakeem Olajuwon.

Only at the end did the Montana wild things appear. On the 3:30-to-6:30-a.m. drive through Glacier National Park to the airport in Kalispell - yes, it really does take three hours to get over the mountains there - we happened upon: A herd of cow moose crossing the road and standing on the shoulder, staring back at us. Two black ferrets scuttling along the roadway for about 50 yards, declining to absent themselves from what was clearly...

The 76ers will take this one and go home. The Sixers blew a 17-point second-half lead. Allen Iverson did not score in the fourth quarter. And at crunch time, Vancouver rookie Mike Bibby was everything Iverson is supposed to be. What matters, though, is that the Sixers salvaged a three-game West Coast stretch with a 95-90 overtime victory against the Grizzlies in front of 16,615 at the General Motors Building last night. As a result, the Sixers (15-11) could take their six-hour flight to Philadelphia without getting too much grief from coach Larry Brown.

It was a battle of two teams locked in the futility of seasons going nowhere, and the 76ers arrived on weary legs. Still, the 76ers pushed the game into overtime by outscoring the Grizzlies, 26-13, in the fourth quarter. But when Blue Edwards sank a desperation shot at the buzzer last night, the Grizzlies had their sixth win of the season, 103-102. Reeling to the end of an 11-day, six-game road trip and having managed to win but once, the Sixers faced a rested first-year expansion team that had won three of its last nine.

The Vancouver Grizzlies are out $340,000 in salary-cap dollars because top draft pick Antonio Daniels couldn't keep his mouth shut. In the excitement of his Bowling Green graduation last weekend, Daniels told a television station that he had agreed to a contract - "Everything is finished," he said - even though the parties had yet to sign one. The NBA, based on its cap policy, took Daniels's comments literally and ruled that a contract had...