Firing Taylor Jenkins may have been the Grizzlies' plan all along
Firing Taylor Jenkins may have been the Grizzlies' plan all along
Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win's basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here's Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you've had a great week and have a great weekend ahead of you.
The Grizzlies firing Taylor Jenkins with nine games left in Memphis' season might be the second-most shocking thing to happen this season besides The Trade.
Since Memphis made the move on Friday afternoon, we've learned a little bit more about the team's plans in the interim. The Grizzlies announced Tuomas Iisalo as the interim head coach. Memphis hired Iisalo this summer following his electric season coaching Paris Basketball to a Eurocup championship in 2024.
EVERYTHING WE KNOW: Here's all the information we have so far about Taylor Jenkins being let go
Still, Memphis hasn't really explained why this is happening. All we know is that the team is simply moving on from someone who is inarguably one of the best coaches in the NBA. Even team president Zach Kleiman had to acknowledge how far Taylor has taken the team in the statement about the coach's release.
For now, all we can do is speculate. Given the timing of this, it's hard to believe that this is purely a basketball move. At least on the surface. But if you dig a little deeper, there's a potential basketball justification for doing something this drastic.
It starts with this: The Grizzlies have been a mess following the NBA All-Star break. Memphis has been a losing team for the last month and change with an 8-11 record in that time span. The team's net rating is only slightly negative at -0.2, according to the NBA's stats tool. Memphis is in the middle of a current skid where it's lost four of its last five games. That's not where you want to be as a team heading into the playoffs.
Could Memphis' leadership have seen how things were going and decided to make a change? That's certainly possible.
That feels more like a plausible explanation, considering how quickly Memphis moved to name Iisalo its interim head coach. The Grizzlies decided within just a couple of hours of Jenkins' firing. You don't move that quickly unless you've already got a successor in mind. Iisalo was always the guy.
He was hired away from a head coaching job at Paris Basketball after the Grizzlies overhauled Jenkins' coaching staff after the team's losing season last year. The team installed Iisalo's motion offense that abandoned common NBA principles like pick-and-rolls and handoffs, instead focusing on proper spacing and motion around drives. That offense led Iisalo's Paris team to a 126.8 offensive rating last season — the best in league history.
With tensions reportedly brewing between Jenkins, his staff, his players and the front office, the recent losing might've given the Grizzlies' decision makers the perfect excuse to move on to the guy who they'd planned on giving the keys to in the first place. They were just able to do it a bit early.
Is this a sound decision? I'd argue no. There are only a handful of games left in the season. Memphis may as well have just ridden things out and moved on this summer. But maybe Memphis feels it has a real opportunity to do something special in these playoffs. We'll see.
Breaking news: The Wizards stink
Imagine allowing a team to score 162 points in your home arena and then hearing your own fans boo that team because it refused to score anymore on you in the last minute.
You don't have to imagine, folks, because the 2025 Washington Wizards are here. I've never seen anything like this.
If Cooper Flagg ain't at the end of this tunnel? I don't know what I'm going to do. But it won't be pretty.
Shootaround
— Blake Schuster has the skinny on Tuomas Iisalo here. This dude can really coach, man.
— It's still unbelievable the Bulls won like this. Mary Clarke has more on Josh Giddey's wild buzzer beater against the Lakers.
— Magic Johnson saw himself in Nikola Jokic's incredible pass and, yeah, I see it, too.
— Meg Hall dropped a WNBA mock draft that you should absolutely check out.
That's a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for reading this week. Appreciate you. Have a great weekend. Peace.
-Sykes ✌️
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