After watching his Memphis Grizzlies players celebrate in the visitors locker room, having just defeated the Golden State Warriors in a second play-in game for the final postseason spot in the Western Conference, Taylor Jenkins -- the Grizzlies' young coach -- retreated to a separate room with his staff.
They sought quiet, a moment to reflect on what the young Grizzlies had just done -- and what they were about to face. The Grizzlies had played a league-high 40 regular-season games after the All-Star break -- the helter-skelter schedule resulting from several postponements linked to health and safety protocols. They'd finished with eight games in 12 nights in five cities -- before hosting the San Antonio Spurs in the first play-in game and then hopscotching to San Francisco.
"Sometimes," Jenkins says, "it was like, 'Wait, where are we?'"
Two players suddenly popped their heads in to see what the coaches were up to: Ja Morant and Dillon Brooks. The coaches looked up, surprised.
"We have more work to do," Morant assured them, according to Morant and Jenkins.
"We are built for this," Brooks added.
"It wasn't ever, 'I am built for this,'" Jenkins says now. "It was 'we.' For such a young team, there's a confidence and a belief in what we are supposed to do, how to build for these kinds of moments and what we can achieve."
Three-plus years ago, the "Grit and Grind" era was dying. Marc Gasol and Mike Conley were the marquee holdovers, aging and injured. The team had fired coach David Fizdale, the anointed successor with the Miami Heat sheen, amid some tension between Fizdale and Gasol. The Chandler Parsons deal had busted. They owed a valuable first-round pick to the Boston Celtics. Only one player on the 2017-18 team that finished 22-60 -- Brooks -- is on the roster today.
They sniffed .500 way ahead of schedule last season before losing the bubble play-in, with Morant gutting through a thumb injury. A lot of analysts -- this one included -- cautioned about a potential step back this season; the Grizzlies are one of the league's youngest teams, and the West was loaded.
There was no such slide, despite Jaren Jackson Jr. missing almost the entire regular season. Memphis finished 38-34, won the No. 8 seed, and pushed the top-seeded Utah Jazz in a hard-fought, five-game, first-round loss that concluded Wednesday.
"Now, we just need to grow," says Jonas Valanciunas, the Grizzlies' battering ram of a center. "We have the right people -- good people. It's not going to happen overnight. But we are headed in the right direction."
The right people. Good people.
The Grizzlies play with a steely toughness and unselfishness that flows from Morant. He is a star in the most traditional sense: a supernova with a zeal for highlight dunks and a snarling confidence.
"He goes so fast sometimes, I can't even really process what he's seeing," Jenkins says.
In his third NBA start, Morant tied a game against the Brooklyn Nets on a layup with seven seconds remaining, blocked Kyrie Irving's jumper at the end of regulation, and screamed and flexed in celebration -- a brazen, fearless declaration: I am here. I back down from no one.
"Basketball skills are basketball skills," Valanciunas says. "If you have talent, and you're working, you'll improve. But Ja is a warrior. He's always locked in. He plays hurt. He has that light in his eyes, and that's what you have to have."
"I don't care who I'm going against," Morant says. "I'm going to be me, and I'm going to prove myself."
But Morant doesn't play like he cares about the trappings of superstardom -- about bending the Grizzlies to his will, controlling the ball, controlling the franchise. He is happy to get off the ball and let others cook, and in those instances, he weaponizes his speed as a cutter -- something you don't say about many 21-year-old star point guards. It was not an accident that his signature almost-highlight of the first round -- an audacious attempt to dunk over Rudy Gobert -- came off a give-and-go with Kyle Anderson.
Even in transition, Morant will often slow down and let waves of players cascade over him -- knowing someone will pop open trailing the play. He could run Valanciunas out of the offense, but instead makes sure to feed him.
"I don't really care about scoring too much," Morant says.
He is an advanced playmaker for a second-year point guard -- a master of pass fakes and lookaways. Morant manipulates defenses. During free throws and timeouts, he and Jenkins huddle about what they are seeing. "Our dialogue has gone up another level," Jenkins says.
Against the Jazz, the Grizzlies experimented with stashing Valanciunas in the corner and having a wing screen for Morant -- a method of removing Gobert from the action. Morant suggested having Valanciunas creep in from the baseline as Morant drove -- and for a shooter to slash down into the corner to replace Valanciunas. "Sometimes, I'm like, 'Holy crap,'" Jenkins says. "This is the next layer."
It's early days, but Morant appears to be the kind of franchise player who inspires teammates -- who makes them want to play for him, and with him.
"We have the makings," Jenkins says, "of a very special player."
All the smart fringe moves Memphis has made under general manager Zach Kleiman -- and there have been several -- would not have added up to anything like this without the lottery luck of 2019, when the Grizzlies shot up from the No. 8 slot to No. 2. They knew right away they would select Morant, sources say.
On a pre-draft visit, they escorted Morant into the FedExForum and surprised him by playing a montage of his highlights on the scoreboard -- set to music from Lil Baby, Morant's favorite rapper. "They did their homework," Morant says. Jackson happened to be shooting in the arena. Morant, in street clothes, joined in.
Jackson looms as perhaps the team's biggest swing player. If he becomes a high-end All-Star, the Grizzlies have the foundation of something potentially special. If Jackson is merely good, the path to being something more than a solid first- or second-round playoff team is murkier.
Jackson is eligible for an extension this summer after what has been mostly a lost season. He has too often felt like an afterthought next to three high-usage starters -- Morant, Valanciunas, and Brooks -- even though the Grizzlies badly need his 3-point shooting. That can happen to sweet-shooting, tweener bigs who start at power forward next to dominant ball handlers.
Jenkins scripts plays to invigorate Jackson: handoffs, inverted pick-and-rolls in which Jackson acts as ball handler, face-up drives. He also plays Jackson at backup center, where his pick-and-pop shooting can stretch opposing centers beyond their breaking points.
But Jackson has been a minus on defense at both frontcourt positions. He isn't a natural rim protector or dropback defender on the pick-and-roll.
Jenkins is optimistic that Jackson can defend both positions -- perhaps by switching, he says. Finding the proper level of involvement for Jackson on offense is one of the biggest projects of the offseason. Jackson is only 21.
"We are still in the exploratory phase with him," Jenkins says. "He has so much untapped potential."
If you created a potential one-two championship tandem in a lab, you might not craft Morant and Jackson. Morant is a skinny, 6-foot-3 point guard in a league that has been dominated at the very top for decades by apex predator wings. He has struggled on defense, and teams test his jumper. Morant improving his jumper would help steady Memphis in close games. (Morant has hit about 37% of his past 160 3s.)
Jackson might be between positions, with holes in his game.
But teams in markets like Memphis don't get to pluck superstars of their choosing. No pair of superstars in their primes has ever decided to team up in free agency in a non-glamour, smaller market. The Grizzlies have to take what the lottery gods give them, and what they unearth in the draft, and make the best of it.
In that sense, the Jazz are an aspirational analog. Donovan Mitchell is a 6-foot-1 hybrid guard drafted at the back of the lottery. Gobert, a No. 27 pick, has no shooting range and minimal ball skills, yet the Jazz built an entire ecosystem -- on both ends -- around what he does well.
Then they churned the roster to find the right role players. The Jazz hit on two undrafted free agents -- Royce O'Neale and Joe Ingles -- and signed them to tradable contracts. They turned players who didn't work out as well as hoped -- George Hill, Dante Exum, Rodney Hood, Jae Crowder -- into replacements who fit better.
One of those players -- Crowder -- was a key player in Utah's future-for-present deal for Mike Conley. The Jazz used one cap-space bullet -- a rare thing when you have two stars -- on Bojan Bogdanovic.
The Jazz didn't craft the coveted big three of superstars, but they built a powerful roster of very good players -- while staying nimble. The Grizzlies will have to do the same thing. Justise Winslow was their moonshot at a glitzy third cog, and that has blown up in their faces. The Grizz sacrificed a good player -- Crowder -- and valuable cap space to get him. Winslow is out of their rotation.
With Jackson and Morant sure to sign fat, new contracts in the next two years -- Morant seems a lock for a max deal -- the clock on Memphis' cap space might be ticking, depending on whether they re-sign Valanciunas and Anderson.
The Winslow deal will probably go down as a mistake, but it is not a crippling one. It is recoverable. The Grizzlies did not forfeit any first-round picks, or young players. Memphis is not going to rush. It won't fling away picks for veterans to chase the 2022 or 2023 championship; it will strike when the time is right.
The Grizzlies have nailed most everything else besides Winslow. They got good value for both Conley and Gasol considering both were past their primes when Memphis hit the reset button.
Valanciunas and Anderson each have one year left on what turned out to be movable contracts. Brooks' three-year, $35 million deal is solid, at worst. The Grizzlies somehow landed De'Anthony Melton from the Suns in a Phoenix salary dump, and re-signed him to a declining four-year, $35 million deal -- with the last year only partially guaranteed -- right before what has turned out to be a career season.
They turned low first-round picks acquired via trades into Desmond Bane and Brandon Clarke. They have another Warriors first-rounder coming from the deal in which they absorbed Andre Iguodala's salary into a trade exception that originated in the Conley swap. Xavier Tillman, the 35th pick in 2020, contributed as a rookie.
If anything, the Grizzlies might have too many good players. All of Melton, Clarke, Tillman, Winslow, Tyus Jones, and John Konchar have spent time out of the rotation. That has created some natural tension. "We argue too," Valanciunas says. "We get in fights. But it's healthy. We hold everyone accountable."
The Grizzlies won't be able to pay everyone as younger players cycle off rookie contracts. They'll have to make tough choices -- maybe a consolidation trade or two. They need more shooting; Brooks is in too big of a scoring role.
But the crowded roster has fostered healthy competition. There is no room for lax play.
"We want to be the hardest-playing team," Valanciunas says. "'We're young. We don't have the right to be tired."
In film sessions, Jenkins is not shy pointing out mistakes. "We're not unselfish in this clip," Jenkins might announce. "How can we be unselfish next time?"
Jenkins and his staff challenge players to come in for off-hours work, and watch extra film of upcoming opponents. On game days, coaches pepper players with questions about opposing players and schemes. If a player seems hazy on answers, Jenkins might approach him privately and push him to prepare harder. For next season, Jenkins says he is thinking about instituting teamwide quizzes about each opponent -- and, of course, tracking the results.
Jenkins is incredibly detail-oriented. As an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks, he would send the staff long, unprompted emails about what they might work on. He helped redesign the layout of the Bucks' coaching offices, and had a hand in laying out the Atlanta Hawks' new practice facility when he was an assistant there under Mike Budenholzer.
It was obvious from Memphis' first game last season that Jenkins had instituted a clear architecture. The Grizzlies pushed, filled the corners -- including almost always slotting a big man in one corner -- and had specific rules for defending every common action.
The players know Jenkins puts in the work, but he also doesn't lord it over them. He is even-keeled, picking his spots for angry timeouts. He has tried to keep things light, organizing team activities -- including kickball games -- to pass the time in a grueling pandemic season.
After the Grizzlies hired him in June 2019, he met several times with Valanciunas -- a free agent that summer. They discussed defensive coverages, and how Jenkins might use him in the offense. Valanciunas felt reassured that this new, young coach appreciated his old-school game. "I really trust this guy," Valanciunas says. "I'm a traditional big man, and I want to be good at that kind of game."
Kleiman and Jenkins have grown close. In the weeks leading up to the 2020 draft, they decided to road-trip together on long drives to visit prospects -- spending hours in the car bonding over basketball and life.
The team is united in its patient resolve. Every aspect of team building is fragile. One blip -- an injury, one discontented player, one bad trade -- can knock an organization sideways. But right now, the Grizzlies are onto something -- and maybe something really good.
"I try to focus on just today," Morant says. "But with the crew we have here, we have a bright future."
Lowe: Why Ja Morant and the Grizzlies are primed for ascension - ESPN Philippines
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment