Grizzlies guard Ja Morant dunks during the second half of an NBA preseason basketball game against the Detroit Pistons on Oct. 13, 2022, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
As the start of the 2022-23 NBA season grows nearer, I’m taking a closer look at some of the most interesting teams in the NBA (to me, if not necessarily to anyone else). After stops in Denver. New Orleans, and Minnesota, we’re putting 10 toes down in Memphis, where the team behind last season’s best story must now start writing a new chapter.
The Grizzlies entered last season having begun to perform the stations of the NBA cross: bottoming out at the end of a proud era, then finding fresh top-of-the-lottery talent around whom to rebuild; starting to build a new winning culture, but falling shy of the playoffs; making the playoffs, but getting drummed out by a better, more experienced opponent. This was the inflection point — the moment where, if things don’t quite go according to plan, a still-buffering franchise can seize up.
It looked like things might break that way. Even with Ja Morant in the midst of a jaw-dropping start to his third season, Memphis opened 9-10, thanks largely to a dismal defense that ranked dead last in the NBA in points allowed per possession; the situation seemed dire when Morant picked up a left knee injury that promised to put him on the shelf for several weeks. Instead of seizing up, though, the Grizzlies soared, leaning on the league-best depth that personnel chief Zach Kleiman had built up and a snarling defense led by Jaren Jackson Jr. to win 10 of their next 12 with Morant out of the lineup and 21 of their next 25 overall, vaulting into the race for the West’s no. 1 seed.
Few things in sports are as intoxicating as watching a young team not only find itself, but start to feel itself … and man, oh man, were these Grizzlies feeling themselves.
There was Morant, providing an endless supply of highlight-reel dunks, drives, and passes. There was Jackson, destroying shots at the rim to pace a top-five defense and fuel one of the NBA’s most potent transition attacks. There was Desmond Bane, calmly drilling threes, and Dillon Brooks, very-not-calmly spoiling for fights. There was everyone, talking endless smack to everybody within earshot and earnestly believing that nobody could check them — right up until the eventual champion Warriors did just that, eliminating a Grizzlies team that played without Morant for the final free games of the series.
Story continues
And honestly, they even kept talking after that:
While it’s impossible not to find Morant’s fire intoxicating, there are all sorts of reasons to believe the Grizzlies can’t replicate what they did last season. Like, for starters, the fact that winning 56 games is pretty friggin’ hard. Going back to 2004, a span of 15 full seasons not counting campaigns shortened by a lockout or a pandemic, only 57 teams have done it — just under four a year. Just two teams (Memphis and Phoenix) did it last season, and the competition promises to be even fiercer this time around.
Memphis skyrocketed to the second seed in a conference that saw two recent conference finalists, the Clippers and Nuggets, decimated by injuries; both teams are now healthy and deeper than ever. The Timberwolves added Rudy Gobert and the Pelicans got back Zion Williamson; both have their sights set a hell of a lot higher than another trip to the play-in tournament. The Suns and Warriors, for all their drama, return championship-level rosters. The Lakers, for all their drama, return LeBron James and Anthony Davis. There will still be some games you can pencil in as W’s on the schedule — the rebuilding Jazz, Spurs, and Rockets watched those Victor Wembanyama games, too — but not many.
The Grizzlies, on the other hand, didn’t add a single outside free agent; the only established NBA player they added in trade was 35-year-old Danny Green, who tore multiple knee ligaments during the playoffs and likely won’t suit up again until February at the earliest. De’Anthony Melton and Kyle Anderson, both valuable and versatile reserves who played key roles on the league’s best second unit, exited stage left, with Melton dealt to the 76ers and “Slo-Mo” signing with the Wolves. (Watch for newly extended do-everything wing John Konchar — promoter of The Infamous Dunk Shot — to step into a more significant role in their absence.)
The most significant news of Memphis’s offseason — well, besides Ja’s supermax — came just before the start of free agency, when the team announced that Jackson needed surgery “to address a stress fracture in his right foot.” A recovery timeline pegged at four to six months means Jackson will miss at least the start of the season; if it’s closer to the far end of that projection, Memphis could be without its All-Defensive First Team linchpin for nearly 40 percent of the season.
A lengthy absence for Jackson seems like dire straits for Memphis. The Grizzlies’ defense went from top-two-caliber with JJJ last season to middle-of-the-pack in points allowed per possession when he sat. Most of their best lineups last season featured Jackson, including the starting groups where he teamed with Steven Adams to set the defensive tone and the small-ball units where he wreaked havoc alongside spring-heeled combo big Brandon Clarke.
With Anderson now in Minnesota, head coach Taylor Jenkins must choose from a number of relatively untested options to step in at the 4. Clarke, an ace offensive rebounder and multifaceted defender, would seem to have a strong case; the Grizz have outscored opponents by more than nine points per 100 possessions in (admittedly limited) Adams/Clarke minutes over the last two seasons, according to PBP Stats. Perhaps owing to spacing concerns with starting two non-shooting big men together, though, Jenkins has preferred to keep bringing Clarke off the bench in the preseason, turning instead to second-year Spaniard Santi Aldama — who, because Memphis is both the most beautiful land in the world and the most bountiful source of deep-draft riches in the NBA, has responded by averaging 13.8 points on 59/43/82 shooting splits to go with seven rebounds and 1.8 assists in 25.5 minutes per game.
Granted: Aldama’s probably not going to keep putting up solid fourth-option numbers on a Stephen Curry-level true shooting percentage. That’s kind of the thing about these Grizzlies, though: It doesn’t seem like they should be able to do what they’re doing … and then they just keep doing it.
Young teams are typically terrible at getting stops … but Memphis, with rosters greener than the Incredible Hulk, has posted top-10 defenses two years running. (The Grizz still have the league’s fifth-lowest average age, according to RealGM’s roster analysis.) Teams with only one All-Star typically crater when he’s not available … but Memphis went 20-5 without Morant last season, outscoring opponents by a stellar 7.8 points-per-100 with him off the floor. (One more offseason note: Rock-solid backup point guard Tyus Jones returned to the fold on a two-year, $30 million deal.)
Teams who lose their No. 1 perimeter defender typically tend to struggle to get stops … yet Memphis went 33-15 last season without Brooks, whose list of most frequent defensive assignments resembles an All-Star team and who has finished in the 99th percentile in average matchup difficulty in each of the last two seasons, according to The B-Ball Index. My point: When obstacles have entered their path over the past couple of seasons, the Grizzlies have tended to either Kool-Aid Man straight through them — or, if Ja’s got the rock, soar right over the top of them.
Yes, the rest of the conference will probably be better, and yes, starting the season without Jackson will make things tough; it’s certainly possible that Memphis could, virtually through no fault of its own, slide from the top of the West back down toward play-in range, and once again find itself scrapping for its postseason life come late March and early April. It’s also worth considering the glass half full case, though.
Remember: The Grizz won 56 games despite having its expected starting five of Morant, Bane, Brooks, Jackson, and Adams together for a measly 109 minutes over 11 games last season. If Jackson’s return comes sooner rather than later — and Chris Herrington of The Daily Memphian recently reported that “all indications are that Jackson’s in-season absence will be measured in weeks rather than months” — and if Morant and Brooks can stay healthy, then that number may increase significantly.
If that happens, and if Memphis’s armada of gifted youngsters — from 21-and-under-types like Aldama and Ziaire Williams, to rookies Jake LaRavia, David Roddy, and fan-favorite-in-the-making Kenneth Lofton Jr., to the 24-year-old Bane, to Morant himself, still just 23 and with clear areas of improvement right in front of him — continue to improve in what’s become one of the league’s best player development systems, then the Grizzlies might just find themselves at the next stage in an NBA team’s hero’s journey: toppling an established power, reaching the rarefied air reserved for the league’s true-blue championship contenders, and playing for the chance to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
It’s an awfully tough task. This much, though, we know for certain: The Grizzlies won’t shy away from it. When the whole squad is committed to climbing up the chimney, there’s no telling how high you might go.
