"In 12 NBA seasons Mike Bibby has played for a bad expansion team in Vancouver, starred in Sacramento as the Kings came within a game of the NBA finals and been part of lots of teams that finished somewhere between those extremes.

One thing Bibby has almost never done in 882 career games is come off the bench. Excluding four games at the start of the 2007-08 season, he has started all of them at point guard.

Bibby hopes to continue in that role even with coach Larry Drew giving second-year guard Jeff Teague a chance to crack the lineup.

"It is up to 'L.D.'" Bibby said. "I've started my whole life. I will see what they want to do. [But] I want to start, yeah."

Starting games is all Bibby has known since Vancouver selected him with the No. 2 overall draft pick in the 1998 draft.

Bibby said Grizzlies had planned to bring him along slowly, but starter Lee Mayberry suffered a broken foot on the first day of camp. Bibby went on to start all 50 games in the strike-shortened season (the Grizzlies won just eight games) and has been the lead guard for each of his teams since.

Teague, by contrast, was the No. 19 overall draft pick last season for a team flush with veteran guards. He played sporadically for former coach Mike Woodson, but Drew plans to give him more minutes with the hope that his quickness will help the Hawks on defense and offense."