Saturday sports page: Good news and bad news for the Memphis Hustle
Mar 29, 2025-With the end of the Memphis Hustle season on Saturday afternoon, we thought it might be interesting to do a “good news, bad news” comparison of the NBA G League franchise’s year.
For instance, the good news: in their existence, the Hustle have been in the NBA G League playoffs twice, in 2019 and again in 2023. The bad news: They didn’t make it this year. The team’s overall playoff record is 1-2.
The good news: the Hustle won Saturday’s season-ending game over the Mexico City Capitanes 119-112. The bad news: the Hustle still finished the regular season with a losing record at 15-19, the same record as last year.
The good news: the Hustle held off the Capitanes late in the game for the season-ending victory. The bad news: the Hustle saw a 28-point lead nearly evaporate in the final minutes of the fourth quarter before holding on for the win.
The good news: 2,059 fans bid the Hustle goodbye for the season, one of the larger single-game gatherings of the year. The bad news: During the regular season, the Hustle attracted an average of 1,177 fans a game, a number that initially sounds pretty good.
But take out the two Education Day games where school kids came during the day, that average drops to a mere 761 fans to come watch players of a calibre just short of being in the NBA in what people believe to be a basketball-crazy area, aka “Hoop City.”
G League teams don’t report attendance totals, but they are on the box scores of each individual game, so we went through all of the home game box scores to get these figures.
Including the Education Day kids-day games, the team attracted more than 1,000 fans just seven times during the home season at the Landers Center, and saw a mere 211 fans come for a contest against Iowa on Feb. 3. Saturday’s attendance marked the only time above 2,000 this year for the franchise, outside of the Education Day contests.
By contrast, and likely not a fair comparison, but the Capitanes plays in a 22,000-seat arena in Mexico City that has seen as many as 19,328 take in a game, a G League record.
Hustle coach T.C. Swirsky preaches development and there’s likely been development on the floor from his players this year, although it didn’t translate into more wins than losses. We won’t really know individual success until the future when we see if the Hustle G League experience gets players any closer to an NBA hardcourt.
What’s not developing is the attraction of the game to local fans, as shown by the lack of people almost regularly coming out to see them in person, at times being outnumbered by attendance at DeSoto County high school basketball games. That falls on the front office, where whatever marketing strategies at play are clearly not working.
You can’t market individual players during the off-season because the Hustle won’t know until just before the year starts what the roster looks like and they depart after the year is done. But you can get them into more schools and DeSoto County events during the season, like the old Mississippi RiverKings did, where they had players appear at schools during the season and showing them more about what the game of hockey was about. Do more sponsorship of DeSoto County activities, anything that gets the team more visible in DeSoto County.
Development on the floor by players can also go hand-in-hand with victories and wins will solve a lot of things. It starts with more fans thinking it’s worth paying an admission price for a team that is investing back in the community and punching up records more like the 23-9 playoff year of 2023.
HUSTLE INTRODUCE NEW MASCOT
He’ll not be appearing on the Landers Center floor again until the start of the 2025-26 campaign, but Mane the Lion was introduced Saturday as the team’s new mascot.
BACOT LEADS THE HUSTLE
In Saturday’s win, Armando Bacot led the Hustle in scoring with 31 points and 17 rebounds. DJ Steward followed with 29 points. They were among four Hustle players scoring in double figures. GG Jackson started the game but scored only eight points. After the game, both Jackson and Yuki Kawamura were recalled to the parent Memphis Grizzlies for their game Saturday night against the Lakers.
Former Memphis Tiger David Jones Garcia led all scorers with 36 points and 12 boards. Ivan Gandia-Rosa added 16 points and 12 assists. Greg Brown III finished with 20 points and 11 rebounds.
SCOREBOARD
Saturday, March 29
Prep baseball
- Hernando 18, Collinsville, Ill. 5 (5 innings)
Prep softball
- Hernando 11, Des Arc, Arkansas 0 (5 innings)
NBA G League basketball
- Memphis Hustle 119, Mexico City Capitanes 112
