The Memphis Grizzlies: From Championship Contenders to First-Round Exits

It is no secret now that the Memphis Grizzlies’ season has come to an end. Following a mix of poor play and the loss of Ja Morant in their first-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Grizzlies suffered multiple blowout losses before ultimately being swept. This type of play, though, and this type of exit, would have seemed a shock to the NBA world just several weeks ago when the Grizzlies were viewed as a serious championship contender. How then did this team collapse? How did a team that was flying on all cylinders become a mere shell of what they once were? To start, it’s important to provide context.

At the start of the season, expectations for the Grizzlies were high. Morant, coming off his disastrous season involving multiple suspensions and injuries, was back in action. Jaren Jackson Jr and Desmond Bane were expected to continue improving as they expanded upon their still-forming abilities, and the addition of Zach Edey added more size to Memphis to help the team on the defensive end. Needless to say, it appeared in the eyes of many that the Grizzlies would return to the prominence they had seen just a couple of years ago, where they notched the number two seed in the Western Conference in back-to-back years, and, to no one’s surprise, this is exactly what they did.

The date was February 5th when the Memphis Grizzlies notched their tenth win in an eleven-game span. Their record was 35-16, and they solidified themselves as the hottest team in the NBA. This record, at the time, was the fourth-best in the entire league, and Memphis was only five games back of the Oklahoma City Thunder who stood atop the Western Conference standings. Wins against the Celtics, Lakers, Nuggets, Bucks, Warriors, and Rockets, all teams with winning records at the times of their matchups, seemingly proved that the Grizzlies had returned to prominence. Even when the Grizzlies stagnated as a team, winning roughly half their games over the next month following their red-hot first half of the season, there was no panic. As is often the case, teams tend to cool down following hot stretches, and the Grizzlies, even as of mid-March, were still tied for the second seed in the Western Conference. However, it was the next month that saw the Grizzlies, a team that could beat virtually anyone in the league, regress to a mere phantom of their former self before our very eyes.

The first trouble arrived in the form of yet another Ja Morant injury, this time a left hamstring strain. While Morant has been prone to injuries throughout his career, an injury to your star player that requires a couple of weeks to heal is a significant blow for a team looking to find their rhythm going into the playoffs. The second domino to fall was the loss of Brandon Clarke. After suffering a high-grade PCL sprain when falling to the floor against the Portland Trail Blazers on March 19, the Grizzlies power forward was ruled out for the rest of the season. A big body who isn’t afraid to do the dirty work, Brandon Clarke was instrumental in the Grizzlies' recent playoff runs delivering big buckets whilst providing key defensive rebounds when needed. His loss, with Morant already being out, provided two major blows to the Grizzlies who by now were in the midst of a losing streak before they even had time to process what had occurred.

Several games later the Grizzlies, now losers of five of their last seven outings, had dropped to fifth in the Western Conference. With the team now in freefall, it was here that Grizzlies ownership decided to move on from head coach Taylor Jenkins just over a week before the playoffs were set to begin, shocking not only the Grizzlies’ fan base but the entire NBA community. This year marked Jenkins’ sixth season with the Grizzlies, a career that included multiple playoff appearances and a 250-214 career record thus making him the winningest coach in franchise history. Following his ousting and the promotion of Tuomas Iisalo to the head coaching position, the Grizzlies proceeded to drop three straight games despite the return of  Morant. These losses included big matchups against the Lakers and Warriors, each of whom were only a game or two apart from the other in the crowded Western Conference standings at the time. It was only a few days later when the Grizzlies would also drop games against the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves, matchups which, if the Grizzlies had won, could have potentially given them home-court advantage in the playoffs. Nonetheless, the Grizzlies fell to the eighth seed slotting them into the Play-In Tournament.

While the Grizzlies managed to get out of the Play-In by defeating the Dallas Mavericks, they now squared up against the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder as the eighth seed in the Western Conference, a team that just a few weeks earlier they were only a few games behind. Quickly the Thunder made a mockery of the Grizzlies defeating them by a combined 70 points across the first two games. Upon returning to Memphis, the Grizzlies seemingly gained back their winning ways, building a 29-point lead on the Thunder before Morant took a scary fall going in for a layup in the second quarter. Now with a hip contusion, Ja Morant would miss the remainder of that game, which the Thunder would come back to win whilst the Grizzlies’ bench were seemingly star-struck as they stared off into oblivion. The game after would serve as the final for the Grizzlies as the Thunder would complete the sweep off of clutch buckets by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander adding heartbreak to injury.

So to answer the topic of inquiry, what then was the true cause of the Grizzlies' collapse? How could a team so good and so hot fall off the face of the basketball world in such a short time? It seems it was a myriad of factors. Untimely injuries by Ja Morant late in the season coupled with the injury to Brandon Clarke took out two of the Grizzlies’ most important pieces entering the final stretch before the playoffs. With the team now struggling more than ever, the Grizzlies ownership likely decided they needed to make some kind of change to reignite the team's chances and thus moved on from Taylor Jenkins. 

While in the moment this may have seemed like a plausible option, Taylor Jenkins had been in the league for a while at that point and had been through several playoff runs. His experience could have served as a reassuring, calming presence to the team amidst their late-season struggles instead of throwing a first-time head coach into the middle of a team’s collapse with the playoffs just days away. That’s a lot for an interim coach to handle and merely added more drama and confusion to a team already scrambling for answers. Couple all of this with now having to face the team with the best record in the entire league and it makes perfect sense why the Grizzlies had fallen so far even before Morant got injured in their first-round playoff series.

The Grizzlies' collapse from true championship contenders to first-round exits is truly a story that is both intriguing to follow from a storytelling perspective, but also heartbreaking for those close to the team. Dreams were squashed, hopes were dashed, and what was once a promising season turned out to be another disappointment. Now it’s up to the Grizzlies themselves to determine what their future holds. Will they allow this collapse to hold them back, to continue to regress before our very eyes, or will they rise and reclaim the ending of the story that many think they are capable of? Only time will tell.