How Courtney Lee’s winding NBA journey ended in Memphis

Courtney Lee doesn’t have the gorgeous shooting stroke of most prototypical shooting guards. He coils the ball on his right wrist, almost resting it on his forehead before letting go. He snaps his wrist when releasing it as if he’s firing a slingshot. He doesn’t hold his guide hand upright, instead sliding it forward like he’s extending his paw for a handshake.

And yet, it works. Lee splashes outside shots with relative ease, to the point where an untrained eye might not even notice the quirks in his form. He’s drained 40 percent of his threes this season for Memphis, providing his team the kind of spacing it’s always lacked.

Lee’s imperfect form makes him a perfect fit for the Grizzlies, a ragtag cast of underappreciated characters that morphed into a well-oiled machine on Beale Street. Like Zach Randolph, Tony Allen and others before him, Lee’s success in Memphis came after a nomadic journey across the NBA, which began seven years ago in Orlando.

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Hedo Turkoglu doesn’t enjoy talking about Game 2 of the 2009 NBA Finals.

With the Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers tied at 88, Turkoglu rejected Kobe Bryant’s game-winning attempt as the clock ticked towards zero. The Magic recovered with 0.6 seconds remaining. They had just enough time to draw up one last play.

As Turkoglu inbounded at half court, Lee broke free of Bryant thanks to a crushing screen from Rashard Lewis just above the foul line. Turkoglu quickly lobbed the ball to Lee airborne at the rim. It was a difficult twisting layup, yet still a shot any NBA player should convert.

Lee’s attempt skipped off the glass and bounced off the front rim.

“He was telling me right after the timeout, ‘Yo, bro, throw the ball close to the basket so I can catch and finish,’” said Turkoglu, now a role player for the Los Angeles Clippers. “So when I passed it to him, he came running over to me like, ‘I’m sorry, bro. I’m sorry. Great pass.’”

Lee’s miss sent the game into overtime and the Lakers ultimately escaped with 101-96 win and a 2-0 series lead. Stealing Game 2 in L.A. would have shifted the momentum in favor of the Magic. Instead, Orlando fell in five games.

“Man, we could have finished the series,” Turkoglu said.

Orlando’s rising roster seemed poised to compete in the Eastern Conference for the next half-decade, but the Magic front office felt it needed refurbishing. Less than two weeks after Game 5, the Magic traded Lee to the New Jersey Nets in a package for Vince Carter.

“It was very difficult to trade him,” then-Magic coach Stan Van Gudy, now the head coach and president of basketball operations for the Detroit Pistons, wrote via email. “To start as a rookie on an NBA finals team is remarkable, but he didn’t play like a rookie. He was smart, a committed defender, played to his strengths offensively and made very few mistakes.”

Howard grew especially close with Lee during the season. He was enraged with the Orlando front office.

“We met and we was talking about things we would do for next year and then a week later I get traded,” Lee said. “He didn’t think it was going to be me. He thought it was going to be someone else and he was upset about it.”

Admitting now to being young and naïve, Lee hated Carter at the time. The trade opened his eyes to the cold business side of the sport he loved so dearly.

It also shipped the Western Kentucky product from one of the best teams in the NBA to one of the worst. New Jersey began the 2009-10 campaign on an 18-game losing streak, the worst regular-season start in NBA history. Lee played 71 games for Lawrence Frank’s Nets, posting a career-high 12.5 points per game despite New Jersey’s horrific 12-70 record.

“It was a learning experience,” Lee said. “It got me together. It helped show my character as far as going to work and working hard every day and playing through the season.”

Despite the team’s struggles, Rod Thorn was impressed by Lee’s professionalism at the ripe age of 24. That’s why the then-Nets president met with Lee and his agent Dan Fegan at season’s end to facilitate a trade that would send Lee back to a contender.

Thorn told them several playoff teams were interested in the young shooting guard’s services. The Houston Rockets were especially aggressive in pursuit of Lee. Fegan recalled the Rockets expressing serious interest in Lee in the 2008 draft, before Orlando selected Lee three spots before Houston could.

“I was like, ‘Let’s go,’” Lee says with a smile on his face.

Lee couldn’t foresee his new team was on the downslope. He arrived in Houston as the Tracy McGrady/Yao Ming era was ending. McGrady was gone and Yao only managed to play five games after his final foot injury. The Rockets missed the playoffs and Lee played just 21 minutes per game off the bench.

The Rockets fired head coach Rick Adelman following the season, but Kevin McHale’s first year in Houston wasn’t an improvement. After the Rockets again missed the playoffs, Lee flashed back to his meeting with Thorn. Playoff teams surely were interested him as he hit free agency for the first time in his career. He was desperate for another taste of the postseason.

That’s when the Boston Celtics -- specifically Rajon Rondo and Kevin Garnett -- fortuitously came calling. The Celtics were nearing the end of their Big Three era and hungered for another shot at a title just like Lee starved for the playoffs altogether.

“If you’re trying to win a championship, this is where you want to be,” Rondo pitched Lee over the phone. “We want you here.”

Lee agreed to a four-year deal worth just over $20 million, but success again eluded him. He drifted in and out of Doc Rivers’ rotation throughout the season and struggled to find consistency with his shot. He made only 18 percent of his threes in November and was climbing uphill ever since.

“It was tough at times (in Boston),” Lee said. “It’s a lot that goes into it, a lot of the mental aspect. They saw my ups and my downs.”

The Knicks bounced the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs and Boston never competed for a title with that group again. It wasn’t long before Lee was on the move once more. Thirty games into the next season, the Celtics traded Lee to Memphis in a salary dump.

A year later, Lee sat courtside following a morning shootaround before a March contest against his old team. A reporter asked Lee why Boston, like every previous stop in his career, didn’t become his home.

“It was just timing of everything and the high expectations of what we wanted to achieve and as the season was going on,” Lee said. “We battled against injuries and a lot of adversity and things just wasn’t going the way it was supposed to go.”

Courtney Lee no longer hates Vince Carter. Lee still calls Orlando home during the offseason, where he, Carter, Turkoglu and several other former Magic players train and hang out together. Carter signed with Memphis prior to the 2014-15 season, making the two wings teammates six years after that first trade began Lee’s journey around the league.

It’s only fitting they combined on the signature highlight of the Grizzlies’ hot 2014-15 start. Trailing 110-109 to the visiting Sacramento Kings with 0.3 seconds left, Carter hit Lee in stride with a half-court alley-oop lob that mirrored Turkoglu’s Finals pass. This time, Lee managed to flip the ball over his shoulder, off the backboard and through the net as the buzzer sounded, completing a wild 26-point comeback effort.

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Lee proved to be a dynamic catalyst on the perimeter during Memphis’ 15-2 start. He shot over 52 percent from three-point land in that span, stretching the defense to give Marc Gasol and Randolph space to operate inside.

“Courtney’s more than just a shooter,” Gasol said. “Of course his shooting helps, but you’ve got to be a playmaker and you’ve got to be a better defender. He’s working on everything, which has been great.”

Lee is third on the team in offensive rating behind only Gasol and Mike Conley. Memphis’ offense scores five more points per 100 possessions with Lee on the court than with him on the bench.

Lee has become Memphis’ barometer. When he’s making shots, Memphis is a legitimate contender. When he doesn’t, they struggle. It’s not a coincidence that the Grizzlies struggled to a 9-8 record during March, when Lee made just 20 percent of his outside attempts while battling a wrist injury.

Gasol is clearly the engine that drives the Grizzlies, Randolph and Allen are the team’s heart and soul and Conley is the conductor of Memphis’ improved offense. In the playoffs, however, Lee has been the difference. Lee averaged 17 points on 55 percent shooting from three-point land and 66 percent overall in Memphis’ 4-1 first-round series win over Portland. Once Conley was sidelined by a facial fracture, Lee became the playmaker Gasol prophesized, consistently bouncing around the perimeter and draining shot after shot off the dribble.

“We’re always encouraging him to shoot the basketball more, get in a rhythm, get it up 10, 12, 14 times, be aggressive,” head coach Dave Joerger said. “Just by taking those shots, it creates better spacing for us.”

It took five teams, seven years and eight coaches, but Lee finally found his home in the NBA. He no longer has to wonder where his journey will take him next.

“A lot of ifs, shoulds and coulds, you know what I mean?” Lee says of his early career. “But if I hit the lottery, I wouldn’t be playing basketball, man.”