Nothing in recent NBA history can match the shock level of the Dallas Mavericks sending Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers, but the Memphis Grizzlies parting ways with a widely respected coach whose team was tied for fourth place in the Western Conference, despite having dealt with significant injuries to key players, made little sense to many within the league when it was announced Friday — at least at first glance.
But when it came to Taylor Jenkins and his future in “Grind City,” the writing was on the wall last summer. And it was written in tears.
In early July, three months after a disastrous, injury-riddled 27-55 season had come to an end, the Grizzlies front office, led by executive vice president of basketball operations Zach Kleiman, made the unilateral choice to swap out five members of Jenkins’ coaching staff. For Jenkins, who was hired by Memphis as a first-time head coach in the summer of 2019 and went on to record more wins than any coach in the franchise’s 30-year history (250-214), that meant saying goodbye to Blake Ahearn, Brad Jones, Scoonie Penn, Sonia Raman and Vitaly Potapenko. Per league and team sources, Jenkins became emotional in those final exchanges with his jettisoned coaching colleagues.
While Jenkins consulted with the front-office on the hires for six replacements to his staff, those final interactions between Jenkins and the assistants he was forced to fire, league sources say, would set an uneasy tone for the season to come. As some close to the Grizzlies saw the situation, it was only a matter of time before Jenkins would be gone, too.
The fourth-place Grizzlies letting go of the 40-year-old Jenkins caught the league by surprise if only because of the timing — with just a few weeks remaining in the regular season and with Jenkins under contract beyond just 2024-25, according to a league source. This talent-laden team, dubbed the Western Conference’s next great young squad not long ago, fell off in recent years. A subpar playoff record (9-14) and record against .500-plus teams this season (11-20) clearly hurt Jenkins’ cause, with league sources indicating the Grizzlies’ most recent struggles were the main reason he was fired.
Former assistant Tuomas Iisalo, whom the Grizzlies hired before this season, will take over as interim head coach, the team announced. He and fellow newcomer assistant Nate LaRoche were driving forces behind Memphis implementing a renovated, motion offense this season, which lifted the Grizzlies to sixth in points per possession, an adjustment the front office encouraged. On Friday, Memphis also fired LaRoche, as well as Patrick St. Andrews, another assistant hired before the season, a league source confirmed. In the end, it’s clear Jenkins’ diminished organizational support coupled with the Grizzlies’ decline over the past two months did him in.
Despite All-Star point guard Ja Morant missing 30 games due to injury — including the last six — Memphis is 44-29. But the Grizzlies have struggled lately, dropping 13 of their last 22 games after a 35-16 start that placed them second in the West at the time. That stretch began Feb. 8 with a 125-112 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the same group that throttled Memphis in Jenkins’ final game as head coach.
The Grizzlies can’t seem to beat top-notch competition. They have lost nine consecutive games to teams at or above .500 by an average of 12.8 points.
The defense has dipped during this 22-game falloff, over which Memphis is allowing 116.7 points per 100 possessions, 19th in the NBA. The return of Defensive Player of the Year candidate Jaren Jackson Jr., who missed five games after spraining his left ankle on March 3 and returned two weeks ago, hasn’t solved the issues. The team had vaulted to the top five in defense for most of the season’s first half. But over the preceding weeks, league sources said, the Grizzlies worried greatly about buy-in.
The breaking point came Thursday, when they unraveled against the NBA-best Thunder. After grabbing a two-point lead with under eight minutes to go in regulation, Memphis allowed a 28-5 run. OKC decimated the Grizzlies in a 125-104 blowout.
Even the wins lately haven’t been all that sweet.
Earlier this week, during a 37-point shellacking of the Utah Jazz, starting guard Desmond Bane and reserve Santi Aldama exchanged shoves on the bench after a disagreement about defense. According to a league source who witnessed the interaction in person, effort — or lack thereof — was the focus of their friction.
It began when Bane asked Aldama a rhetorical question.
“Are you gonna f—ing guard anybody?” he shouted.
Aldama responded, “F— you,” to which Bane fired back, “No, f— you. Play harder.”
Now it’s Iisalo’s job to persuade these Grizzlies to get back to winning. Memphis enticed him to come over from Europe this season with an above-market deal for an assistant worth millions, and also paid a buyout to Paris Basketball, according to league sources. And though this is Iisalo’s initial NBA season, the Finnish native has succeeded as a head coach before.
Just last season, he deployed a similar motion offense to the one Memphis runs as the head coach of Paris Basketball, which Iisalo helped to victories in the Leaders Cup and the EuroCup championship. Iisalo’s inventive offense was impressive enough that, after he left for the Grizzlies last summer, Paris Basketball’s search for a replacement included one mandate, according to a league source: No new coach could change the system. The team ended up hiring former NBA player Tiago Splitter, who is now running Iisalo’s offense.
In large part because of its first-year assistants, Memphis has revamped an offense that formerly struggled in the halfcourt. Once reliant on pick-and-rolls, it now leans on clever cutting and off-ball movement. The Grizzlies set fewer screens than any other NBA team. This philosophical shift was a point of contention as this season progressed.
Around the league, meanwhile, the inevitable question in the wake of the Jenkins decision is this: What does this mean for Morant’s future in Memphis?
League sources say Morant, in particular, was upset that last summer the team let go of one assistant with whom he was particularly close, Ahearn, who worked with the two-time All-Star more than anyone on staff. This season, Morant worked most commonly with LaRoche, a former trainer with individual players who was in his first season as an NBA assistant and, like Iisalo, played a pivotal part in implementing the new offensive system.
Morant played his entire career for Jenkins and remained supportive of the coach up to the end, a league source said. Morant did not, however, like the new offense. He has played in just 43 games this season, missing this most recent stretch because of a hamstring injury while also dealing with right shoulder soreness. But when he’s been on the court, according to a league source, Morant has complained about the new scheme, which takes the ball out of his hands and removes the screens he likes to use as a ball handler to make plays.
One league source who has seen Morant work out with the Grizzlies recently said, “Some days he looks like he’s ready to play, and some days he looks like he doesn’t want to be there … because he hates the offense.”
Jenkins had begun to reinstall some of the plays Morant likes, a league source said, reimplementing the pick-and-roll and other plays involving screens Morant could use to break free. If doing so angered Kleiman and played a role in Jenkins’ firing, one could understand, but LaRoche was the driving force behind the Grizzlies going away from ball screens to begin with — and he’s gone too.
In other words, Memphis dismissed Morant’s guy in Jenkins, and the man primarily responsible for the offense Morant didn’t like. Iisalo, like LaRoche, promotes a high pace and cutting. He has a saying, “3-to-3” which means the Grizzlies need to race from defense to the 3-point line in three seconds — and Morant is as dangerous as any player in the NBA in transition. But when it comes to a player of Morant’s star power, the discussion is never really about whether he fits into a coach’s offense.
Morant, 25, is a two-time All-Star in the middle of a five-year, nearly $200 million contract. He has struggled to stay healthy and been suspended for off-court incidents on multiple occasions. He could return to the court Saturday against the Lakers, according to a league source. In February, Kleiman publicly pushed back, with brute force, against the notion that he might trade Morant this summer.
“I can’t blame other ‘executives’ for fantasizing about us trading Ja,” Kleiman said at the time. “But it’s just that — fantasy. We are not trading Ja. Continue to underestimate Ja, this team and this city, and we will let our performance on the floor speak for itself. I’m not going to give this nonsense further oxygen and look forward to getting back to basketball.”
At least two league executives, however, questioned the demand for Morant in the trade market.
And firing Morant’s only coach, while the Grizzlies are headed for the playoffs with just two weeks left in the regular season, isn’t going to quell questions about where, exactly, the franchise is headed. Or, more importantly in league circles, whether Morant will want to remain there for the long term.
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Joe Murphy / NBAE via Getty Images, Soobum Im / Getty Images)
