Rebuild Retrospective: Memphis Grizzlies
And then what...
Writing this piece in May 2024 might be assumptive; the Memphis Grizzlies have won a single playoff series since being “rebuilt,” and just wrapped up a 27-win season. The idea of this series is to write about teams that have rebuilt, and… does that even count as rebuilding? Upon first look, at least, it doesn’t appear so. If you’re zoomed out, this might even look like a franchise in disarray. But if you’re zoomed in? If you have your high-quality microscope out? It suddenly becomes obvious that Memphis has rebuilt (despite what we saw this year) and will enter 2024-25, and likely the years beyond, as a legitimate Finals competitor. How we got to this point, though, has been anything but ordinary. Let’s make our way down to the home of the blues and find out how these Grizzlies came to be.
I. Gritty and Grindy
There are two kinds of basketball fans—those who appreciate the Grit & Grind Grizzlies of the early-to-mid 2010s, and assholes. If you’re the second kind of fan— i.e, a fan who judges the success of a team’s era solely by whether they won an NBA title— there is still time to change. To find love in your heart. To live a whimsical life.
If you’re the first kind, though, the kind that can appreciate a team for simply being pretty good, having likable personalities on its roster, and playing a unique brand of basketball… then you probably have fond memories of the early-2010s Memphis Grizzlies. And I’d like to drink a beer with you.
Anyway— in order to understand today’s Memphis Grizzlies, we have to understand the last era of Grizzlies basketball. From 2011 to 2015, this franchise had one prerogative; to clamp your ass.
And they did it! In two of those seasons (2012-13 and 2014-15) the Griz had potentially the best defense in the league. Marc Gasol, the large, gentle Spaniard, anchored the Grizz defenses in those years, winning Defensive Player of the Year in 2012-13. He was a unique force who used his rare combo of size, nimbleness, and smarts to wreck games for opposing offenses.
Perhaps just as important as a team’s rim protector is a team’s wing stopper, and Tony Allen fit that role perfectly. Allen had already played six NBA seasons by the time he found his way to Tennessee, serving as a fine— if perhaps forgettable— role player in Boston. A change of scenery was apparently all Allen needed, as he instantly became a perennial All-Defense-level player in Memphis.
Spearheading the offense for Memphis was Mike Conley, the point guard selected fourth in the 2007 NBA Draft who embodied the spirit of Memphis during these years; hardworking, always underappreciated, well-liked by essentially the entire league.
There wasn’t one single day or one giant trade that ended Grit & Grind, but the era ended in essence after the 2016-17 season when Zach Randolph— the beefy power forward who carved a wholly unique niche for himself in the league throughout the 2010s— left to play one season in Sacramento before calling it a career. Allen departed at the same time, and though Conley and Gasol stuck around for a few more years, the writing was on the wall; their days were numbered in Memphis, and the good ole’ days had come to pass.
In 2019, after a few woeful seasons for the Griz, Gasol was traded to Toronto and Conley was dealt to Utah. Grit and Grind was officially dead, soon to be replaced with… something. The basketball world just wasn’t quite sure what. Trading perhaps the most loved player in franchise history— and overall good guy— Mike Conley for… well, definitely a guy in Grayson Allen, who is notorious for kicking opponents, was certainly a way to kick off a rebuild, though. (Allen only played 88 games with Memphis but it’s still a funny trade.)
Grit & Grind never won a championship, never made the Finals, and appeared in the conference finals just once. But it embraced the city and the city showed love right back. Exciting, nasty basketball every night will endear you to a city quickly. Fans love heart.
So, yeah, replicating that energy was always going to be damn hard.
But it wouldn’t take long for the new franchise cornerstone to arrive and ease the burden of an era, ended. In fact, the Conley trade— while a sad goodbye to a beloved team icon— was simultaneously a hello to the new guy, who would arrive about 24 hours later, and quickly become an icon of his own.
II. The Other Guy
The 2019 NBA Draft was, in the eyes of the public, a one-player draft. Zion Williamson was the prize, and everyone who would be picked after him was a consolation. Five years later, that still appears to be a fairly accurate assessment… but sometimes consolation prizes are fucking good!
Ja Morant wasn’t a household name until a few months before the NBA Draft, when the hilariously explosive guard who had some question marks surrounding his shooting burst onto the national stage during the NCAA Tournament, after bursting onto the scouting scene throughout a splendid season at Murray State. Shooting questions and all, the sophomore guard was enchanting enough to solidify himself as the clear second pick in the 2019 Draft— a pick that Memphis, against the odds, owned.
A few weeks earlier, Memphis possessed just a 6.3% chance to acquire that second overall pick. But even that was a better chance than the Grizz would have had in the same spot in years prior, because the NBA’s new lottery odds system was taking effect for the first time in 2019. This new system was meant to discourage egregious tanking by giving the four worst teams equal odds to land the number one pick, as opposed to the prior system, when the single worst team had considerably better odds than every other team in the lottery. The new system also gave better teams higher chances to jump up the lottery. Even with the new system, Memphis had a 65% chance of landing pick number eight or nine, and about a 25% chance of jumping into the top four.
But they did it! Memphis didn’t move all the way to the promised land of Zion, but landing the second pick was still viewed as a massive win for the franchise. Ja was coming.
Talk about a clean handoff from one franchise point guard to a (potential) new franchise point guard. Conley was out, and Morant was immediately in to usher a new era of Grizzlies basketball. He wasn’t a sure thing as a prospect, but he was expected to bring fireworks either way.
As players, the two shared pretty much nothing in common. Conley’s quiet, humble demeanor and his workmanlike playstyle, the way he methodically directed Memphis’ offense— is in stark contrast to Morant’s flashy, high-flying, spectacle-laden brand of hoops, in which he appears to be a split second away from dunking on a defender every instant.
III. Early to the Party
Usually, when a franchise decides to lay rest to the remnants of an era, of a team that stuck together for many years— in other words, blow it up — it takes years before a semblance of a new identity is found. That wasn’t really the case with Memphis— though at first, it looked like it would be.
The slate was wiped clean before the 2019-20 season, and Ja joined a roster stocked with other unproven youngsters. Jaren Jackson Jr was entering his sophomore season and showed real promise as a rim protector— but questions remained about his offensive upside. Dillon Brooks had some moments as a rookie in 2017-18 but was recovering from a pretty serious leg injury. And Brandon Clarke, Morant’s draft mate in the 2019 class, was thrilling at Gonzaga, but what exactly he’d provide on an NBA team remained to be seen. The rest of the roster was just kind of composed of… guys. Some fine NBA players, but most of them just… guys.
It didn’t really matter. Memphis was a competitive team from day one, never once looking like the team full of random kids it was. Morant showed early on that his raucous athleticism and elite vision weren’t applicable only in the Missouri Valley Conference, posting a 30-piece in his third career game, an OT win against Brooklyn.
Morant led Memphis in scoring (17.8 PPG) and assists (7.3) capturing Rookie of the Year comfortably, helped by Zion missing a chunk of the season with injury. The second overall pick exceeded the lofty goals that the NBA world set out for him as a new face of the league.
And the other guys? They showed some life early on, too. Dillon Brooks, though inefficient offensively, developed into a quality on-ball defender, and Brandon Clarke finished just a few spots behind Morant in ROY voting, playing like the in-between, do-everything forward, an archetype that has proved integral on modern NBA contenders.
Memphis finished the season 34-39, good enough for ninth in the Western Conference. This was just a few seasons ago, but still in a pre-Play-In world, so no postseason for the young Grizz.
Were they a new-age Grit and Grind? Probably not. (Or, at least not yet.) These Grizzlies, at least in their first iteration, were more Run & Gun. That’s not to say the constant over-effort that became a calling card of G&G wasn’t immediately evident in these new Grizzlies— they busted some ass. But it was clear they were ready to forge their own identity, bringing a new era to Memphis. They were, after all, a bunch of kids flying around the court, having a blast, blowing whatever (very low) expectations were set for them out of the water. A core had developed quickly.
IV. Loading…
Building a contender in the NBA— really building, from the ground up— takes years. So Memphis’ singular goal for year two of its rebuild after overachieving in year one should have been to continue tending upward. It did that; the improvements were mostly moderate, like improving from 17th to 15th in Net Rating and seeing Ja’s scoring output raise a few points. But some improvements caused eyebrows to raise a little higher around the league, most notably the improvement from the 15th-ranked defense in 2019-20 to sixth in 2020-21. Hints of Grit & Grind started to peek through.
The identity that Memphis established the year prior— young guys having fun and winning more games than anyone expected— morphed into young guys having fun, becoming a solid playoff team, and locking opponents up. All this came without their budding rim protector Jaren Jackson Jr, too, who missed most of the season with a meniscus injury. After narrowly missing out on the bubble playoffs, Memphis finished 38-34 and earned a postseason berth, which wasn’t a playoff run as much as it was a brisk walk and exit after losing 4-1 to the Utah Jazz (that feels like a lifetime ago).
Taylor Jenkins had jumpstarted a rebuild in just two seasons.
V. Who?
Oh, right. Taylor Jenkins! This guy!
Even today, with the Grizzlies rebuild mostly complete, Jenkins is far from a household name in NBA circles. He doesn’t even have a picture on his Wikipedia page. He didn’t come out of nowhere, having a G League championship under his belt when the Grizzlies hired him to lead the Grizzlies rebuild, but— as with any new head coaches in the NBA— questions were asked about his fit and how much space he’d be given to craft the team and identity he envisioned. From The Commercial Appeal in June 2019:
So the question hanging above all this, the question that will probably determine Jenkins’ success here in Memphis, is: How patient is Pera willing to be with Jenkins? If Mike Conley is traded, in the next couple months or at next year's trade deadline, can Pera embrace a full-on rebuild? Does he understand the Grizzlies are headed toward some short-term lumps, no matter how exciting a future with Jaren Jackson Jr. and Ja Morant may seem?
Pera, here, is Robert Pera, who has owned the Grizzlies— in relative anonymity, compared to other, less bashful owners— since 2012. He oversaw successful seasons early on, including the peak of Grit & Grind, and in 2019, was in charge of a rebuilding franchise for the first time as an owner. How much room the new coach would have for error depended on how many losses Pera would be willing to sit through, it seemed.
But Jenkins ran Memphis so smoothly in the first two years of his tenure that his seat was never even lukewarm.
VI. Jawesome
Another moderate leap would have been acceptable for year three of Ja + Jaren + Jenkins. A 45-win season, a middle-of-the-pack finish in the Western Conference, a competitive first-round series, another modest point jump from Ja and a solid showing from JJJ in his return from injury would have kept spirits high around the franchise.
Oh fuck, okay, that works too.
By all measures, Ja Morant became an elite point guard during the 2021-22 season. 27.4 points per game, second-team All-NBA, All-Star in his third year. And his running mate Jaren Jackson Jr won Defensive Player of the Year. DPOY! That’s not a marginal improvement; that’s the highest level you can hope to reach.
Earlier, I said this team was forging its own identity instead of trying to replicate what Grit & Grind did in Memphis. That’s still true here, too, but… there were some more similarities to the last era as this team came to understand itself more.
Its own identity, for sure. Loud, braggadocious, refusing to “act like they’ve been there before.” To hell with subtlety. Have fun, play basketball.
VII. Was That Too Quick?
There’s a point in each rebuild where you stop, look around, and realize that expectations have arrived. It’s not particularly fun, to be honest; when the “ha ha we’re having fun” routine suddenly falls flat. I don’t think this happened for Memphis that season; there was still plenty of fun to be had after the team finished 56-26 in Ja’s breakout year, along the way doing things like perhaps posting the most impressive single-game highlight reel in existence.
Memphis finished second in the West and handled Minnesota in round one of the playoffs, setting up a showdown with a Golden State team at the tail-end (but still very much inside of) a dynasty.
When Memphis couldn’t quite overtake the soon-to-be four-time champion Warriors, the reaction was generally… eh, that’s fine, great things are on the horizon. Especially because they looked, for the entirety of the series, like they knew they belonged.
But that horizon arrives quickly for NBA teams. And when it does, folks start to expect things from a team, a player, a franchise. The 2022-23 Grizzlies were still going to be fun, folks knew that. But they also weren’t going to surprise anyone. They weren’t going to sneak their way to 56 wins.
Expectations make a 51-win season and a first-round playoff exit feel… a little disappointing? Whether fair or not (definitely not) it’s kind of true. Memphis exploded on the scene, and whenever a young team does that, the rebuild inevitably gets rushed. Maybe “disappointing” is the wrong word. Fifty-one wins is never disappointing. But 2022-23 felt like a gap year, and the stakes were raised for 2023-24… once again, whether fair or not (not.)
VIII. Ah, What the Hell
Late in the 2022-23 season, Ja Morant was suspended after he flashed a gun in a nightclub during an Instagram Live stream. That’s pretty stupid! Nike, which Morant has a deal with, had to release a statement, Morant met with Adam Silver, deactivated his social media accounts and entered a counseling program in Florida.
A few weeks later, Morant was back on the floor for the Grizzlies. Ok, fine. He did one dumb thing, but lesson learned, right? He’s a kid in his early 20s, it would be scarier if he never messed up. Necessary steps were taken and Morant can move on now, right?
On June 16th, the NBA announced that Ja Morant would be suspended for 25 games to start the 2023-24 season because, once again, Morant was caught showing off a gun during an Instagram Live stream. Christ.
Let’s put the basketball on the back burner for a second. Here’s what I think: Ja was pretty dumb, consistently, throughout this whole fiasco. He was careless and irresponsible, putting his career at risk for seemingly no reason. He didn’t learn from his first mistake, and it gets a lot harder to forgive him when he made the same mistake more than once.
Here’s what I also think: the conversation regarding Ja got so racist, so quickly. People both in basketball and outside of basketball used Morant’s mistakes as a chance to show the world just how racist they can be— and turns out, they can be awfully racist. In their heads, Morant, the young, rich, basketball star finally crumbled back into the wild, unpredictable, violent shadow of a person they assumed he was in the first place. They believed that their beliefs about who does what and who belongs where were confirmed.
I don’t know if Morant is genuine when he says that he really learned his lesson this time. I’m going to choose to believe him. Mostly, the situation just bummed me out and I hope Ja has grown past making decisions that do nothing but hinder him and his career.
IX: Losing All Hope Was Freedom
So, Ja would miss the first 25 games. That’s not the end of the world, right? The beginning of the season will probably be rough, but by the end of the year, when everyone is healthy, this team will look formidable again. Let’s jump to the tail end of the season and see how the team is doi- WHO THE FUCK ARE THOSE GUYS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES
Okay, so something went horribly wrong in the months between Ja Morant returning from suspension and the end of the 2023-24 season. Let’s see if we can find the culprit.
Oh, okay, I found it.
Yes, every team deals with injuries throughout an NBA season but the Grizzlies injury luck this season was astounding. The team was putting on blindfolds and throwing darts at its G League roster to determine who the next starting power forward would be on a nightly basis. NBA players I have never heard of were suiting up each night for the Memphis Grizzlies.
Morant wasn’t exempt from that injury last, either. After returning from suspension and playing in nine games— where he appeared back in form— the team announced that he’d need season-ending shoulder surgery. What the hell, again.
So, superstar out most of the season, other two stars missing extended time, created players getting 30 minutes a game during the stretch of the season. Wasted season, right?
So wrong! Because it turns out Memphis had the 45th overall pick in the draft and some guy named Vince to make everything ok.
That might be a tad simplistic way to view things, but there’s also some truth in it. GG Jackson, a mid-second round pick in the 2023 draft, sprouted into a promising wing prospect, averaging almost 15 points per game, while Vince Williams Jr (one of my Guys, if you’ve been here for a bit) does everything well, showing in his second year that he’s going to be around the NBA for a while.
Memphis finished the season 27-55, but these two guys were effective enough for long enough stretches that Griz fans exit this season feeling… good? Feeling like this was a productive season even if it came at the expense of immediate success?
X: And Then…
Of all the Rebuild Retrospective’s I’ve written (and plan to write) the Grizzlies “And Then” section is the most confounding, because I know what this core can be if absolutely everything goes right; it can win a championship. But we’ve already seen things go wrong, both on the court and off of it, so to assume the best when we’ve already watched things go sideways a few times would be ignorant.
Here’s what we know so far. Barring a big trade, Memphis will enter the 2024-25 season with a core lineup of Ja Morant, Desmond Bane, Marcus Smart, Vince Williams Jr, Jaren Jackson Jr, Brandon Clarke, GG Jackson, Luke Kennard, Santi Aldama and some deep bench guys.
Memphis will also have the seventh-best draft lottery odds next week. Even in a weak draft, a team that drafts as well as Memphis should find starting-caliber talent in the top 10. Or if Memphis thinks there’s a veteran out there that a team is willing to part with in exchange for whatever pick the Griz end up with, they can take that path too. Either way, they gained an asset by losing a bunch of games this season.
But at the same time, it almost feels as though the NBA is passing Memphis by; Oklahoma City and Minnesota both emerged as high-octane forces in the Western Conference that sure as hell won’t be leaving the party soon while Denver has already established itself as the top of the pack. What we’ve seen from Memphis in its two real seasons with this team still gives me confidence that it can join the Nugs, Wolves, and Thunder in that tier, even if there’s not a lot of momentum on the Grizz side at the moment.
Memphis built an incredibly entertaining and talented young team about as quickly and organically as a franchise possibly can. Now, can the Grizzlies pick up where they left off in 2024-25? Sure. Why not. 2025 is not even a real year in my brain.
What I’m Listening to: Mk.gee
One More Thing: The Kids are Cool as hell
I’ve been extremely heartened by the bravery of college students around the US protesting for a free Palestine over the past few weeks. They’ll try to say that these protests are silly or pointless or won’t make a difference and that you’re going about it all wrong. If you ask me, it’s when the freak reptiles in the offices start using all of their energy to tell you that you’re just going about it all wrong… that you know they’re getting nervous. That you know you’re on the right track.
Never stop fighting, never ever stop fighting. Free Palestine, free every god damn body.
From Portland State University, via Robert Evans on Twitter:
Really enjoyed the article and voice you wrote with - thank you!