Before the Grizzlies took their first steps toward adding the best chapters of a nine-year history, point guard Jason Williams gathered the starters and formed a circle.

Music blared. The SBC Center rocked. The defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs were stomping onto the court. None of that rendered Williams mute.

"He was telling us to have fun," Griz forward Pau Gasol said. "He said, 'Let's do this together.' That was the gist of it."

They didn't have fun for most a 98-74 loss to the Spurs in Game 1 of their Western Conference first-round series. And the Griz, thanks mostly to the Spurs' defense and partly to postseason jitters, were so disjointed offensively that you'd need to remember Dec. 15, 2003, to find a relevant reference for what transpired.

That's the last time the Griz scored so few points in a game. Then, San Antonio held Memphis to 67 points.

"They did to us what they've done in the last 14 games," Griz coach Hubie Brown said of the Spurs, who own a 14-game home win streak dating back to the regular season.

"We never got in a groove," Williams said. "We never did anything we were supposed to do, and we made it easier for them. It's like we got down on ourselves. We weren't having fun."