Fred Smith, who passed away on June 21 at the age of 80, will be remembered around the world as the brilliant, tenacious and visionary founder of FedEx. In the city of Memphis, where Smith grew up and lived most of his life, he will forever be celebrated as a neighbor, friend, philanthropist and sports fanatic. Besides boosting the local economy by choosing Memphis as the site of FedEx’s worldwide headquarters, Smith was a part-owner and sponsor of numerous pro franchises, and a generous supporter of Memphis athletics. When FedEx Forum opened in 2004 with a capacity of nearly 18,000, Smith imagined that it would serve as a thriving home for the city’s nascent NBA franchise and herald a new era of dominance for Memphis basketball.
Alas, an empty feeling has overtaken the building in recent years, at least with respect to the Tigers. Last season, they earned their highest NCAA Tournament seed since 2009, yet the average home attendance (by turnstile count) dipped yet again to 6,827. Long gone are the days when FedEx Forum routinely sold out and Memphis was ranked in the top 10 nationally in attendance. The declining interest is partly due to the popularity of the NBA’s Grizzlies, who arrived in 2001, but it mostly reflects the program’s diminished standing and lack of marquee opponents in the American Athletic Conference.
If there’s one person in Memphis who might be even more beloved than Smith was, it’s Penny Hardaway, who was born and raised there, played two seasons for the Tigers from 1991-93 before becoming a four-time NBA All-Star, returned to coach East High School in 2015 and then took over as head coach at his alma mater three years later. Hardaway has known Smith for his entire adult life. His passing was a sad moment. “We lost a really good person, a great human being who cared about people and cared about our city,” Hardaway told Hoops HQ. “His name will definitely live on.”
Basketball is not life and death, of course, but Smith’s passing capped yet another springtime of loss for Memphis basketball. Last year, Hardaway had just one returning player. Next season, he will have none. Memphis graduated eight seniors and lost seven transfers from the squad that went 29-6, won the AAC regular season and tournament titles and earned a No. 5 seed to the NCAA Tournament, where the Tigers were bounced by Colorado State in the first round. That meant another round of grueling days and infinite phone calls in an effort to replace those losses via the transfer portal. Hardaway succeeded in finding 13 replacements, including nine Division I transfers, but the process took its toll. “It’s exhausting,” he said. “The hours, choosing the right guys. It’s a lot. When you get 13 new guys with different personalities every year, you don’t know who they really are. You only meet them for a weekend and talk to them over the phone.”
Hardaway insists that he is optimistic about the program’s future. The question is how — and whether — the winning will return, and what it will take for the fans to do the same. “I think we’re knocking on the door,” Hardaway said. “We haven’t won enough NCAA Tournament games to solidify ourselves, but I feel like we are right on the cusp of being noticed as one of the top teams around the country.”
The worst defection was that of P.J. Haggerty, a 6-foot-3 junior who led the team in scoring (21.7 points per game, third-highest in the nation) and assists (3.7) and ranked third in rebounds (5.8). Haggerty, who was the AAC’s Player of the Year and is likely to enter the 2025-26 season as a consensus preseason All-American, entered his name both into the NBA Draft and the transfer portal in April. He withdrew from the draft and committed to Kansas State on May 26.
Hardaway said that the money Haggerty eventually took from Kansas State was comparable to what he was being offered at Memphis. “We were definitely competitive with the market,” he said. “I really think that a lot of people told him that he needed to show his talent against bigger teams. That’s just me speculating. I never took it personally. I just think that what he wanted, ultimately, was to change his setting.”
The idea that a player would want to leave Memphis for a bigger stage is exactly the problem. Nor does there appear to be a remedy forthcoming. From 1995-2013, Memphis was a cornerstone of Conference USA, and at one point under John Calipari the Tigers played in three consecutive Elite Eights and the 2008 NCAA championship game, where they lost to Kansas in overtime. In 2013, Memphis joined the fledgling American Athletic Conference, but that league has since been decimated by realignment. Having been left out of the musical chairs, Memphis is now just one of three out of the original 10 members remaining in a league that was ranked No. 11 in KenPom’s national conference ratings last season.
Memphis has had multiple conversations over the last two years with other power conferences and came to joining the reconstituted Pac-12. Geographic and financial constraints prevented that from happening, which means that for the foreseeable future, Memphis is likely to be stuck right where it is.
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Hardaway has done well to put together rigorous non-conference schedules, but once AAC play gets underway, his teams operate under a very small margin for error. “It’s so unfair the way the team is being judged,” he said. “We lose one game in the conference, we drop 15, 18 spots (in the NET). Another team in a better conference loses five games in a row and don’t drop more than one spot.”
As frustrating as that is, Hardaway understands that it is unlikely to change. So he tries to do right by both his program and his conference. “Right now, I’m a proud coach that’s in the American Conference, and I support our president and AD one hundred percent,” he said. “It’s just the elephant in the room right now, because we’re fighting and we’re scrapping. Where do we fit in in the universe?”
One of the bright lights of the off-season is the way Hardaway was able to keep his staff intact, which was a far cry from the tumultuous turnover that preceded last season. “You can’t get a new staff every year and then a new team every year,” he said. “That doesn’t work.” Also unlike last year, when the Tigers were the sixth-oldest team in the country, per KenPom, Hardaway was intentional about looking for non-seniors who can give the program a chance at retention moving forward. Six of the nine transfers will have eligibility remaining after next season.
This will be a smaller team than he has coached in the past. When Hardaway signed Simon Majok, a 7-foot-1 center from South Sudan who played professionally in Serbia the last three years, on Monday, that gave him just two players on the roster who are taller than 6-foot-8. Majok should help fill a big hole that was created last week when the NCAA denied a waiver to 6-foot-9 senior forward Dain Dainja for a fifth season of eligibility.
The rest of the roster is filled with players who have been through multiple stops, often showing glimpses of talent but never quite yielding consistent results. Dug McDaniels, a 5-foot-11 senior guard, started for most of three seasons at Michigan and Kansas State but couldn’t stick at either place. Aaron Bradshaw, a 7-foot junior center, was a McDonald’s All-American out of high school but underperformed his expectations at Kentucky and Ohio State. Senior forward Zachary Davis averaged 8.3 points and 4.6 rebounds as a part-time starter last season at South Carolina. Then there’s Hardaway’s son Ashton, a 6-foot-8 junior forward who played his freshman season at Memphis, then transferred to Saint Mary’s last year, and is now back playing for his dad.
“I like my team because they’re all dogs,” Hardaway said. “I want guys that are hungry. Everybody has a chip on their shoulder.”
While the current roster includes just one freshman (6-foot-4 guard Daniel Vieira-Tuck, who played last season for Overtime Elite), Hardaway hopes to lean more into high school recruiting in hopes of establishing some continuity. He does not have any commitments yet from the Class of 2026, but he will be out aggressively on the summer circuit to try to line some up. “I want to get back into that because I think there needs to be a healthy number of freshmen who you can help get better and grow,” he said.
Hardaway knows the road ahead is unrelenting, but he is forging on as best he can, and for all the right reasons. Unlike many of his coaching peers, Hardaway has all the financial security he needs from his days in the NBA. He coaches the Tigers not because he has bills to pay, but because, like Fred Smith, this is his home. The best way for Hardaway to honor his friend’s memory is to fulfill the big dreams Smith always had for the city of Memphis. That is Hardaway’s mission, although he admits there are times when he wonders whether it’s worth all the effort.
“You’re going to get some days because you’re human where you’re like, man, why are you doing this?” he said. “To me, it’s a matter of pride. That’s what you hope hits the hearts of the fans, that we’re doing this because we want to win something big and do something special for the city. Obviously, I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing it for the love.”
