[Bane] “I miss Taylor Jenkins. I think that everybody over there does”
Everyone blamed Ja for the Jenkins firing as if the FO didn’t push him out.
They fired some of Jenkins assistants and forced Lisalo + some of his staff onto his coaching staff and made Jenkins implement his offense and fired Jenkins right before the playoffs because he went awol and went back the old style offense and minutes distribution that Ja preferred in the second half of the season.
Jenkins and Ja have always had a good relationship based on reports. Someone in the Grizzlies org just thinks Lisalo is some basketball gigabrained savant. David Blatt 2.0, except the organization is backing Blatt this time around.
He complained constantly about the system the assistants deployed which is now being used in Miami. Iisalo is a point guard centric coach who was intended to ease the tension. Hard to do when the point guard is playing poorly.
That’s why I keep being confused by Miami as a potential destination, because no fucking way will Ja comply with Noah LaRoche’s offensive scheme, which is being run at Spo’s behest.
or not playing at all
It’s iisalo. With an i
Tom Salo, 120 days of sodom in Memphis
How’s it pronounced? Ee-saw-low?
Exactly
Ii-sa-lo
Jenkins and Ja had a great relationship because Jenkins let Ja do whatever he wanted. He had no accountability for him.
They didn’t make Jenkins implement anything. What Jenkins was doing was not working in the playoffs, so Jenkins wanted to try different schemes.
Jenkins minutes distributions have always been at the bottom of the league. That never changed with him. Ja was our leading minutes guy, and he was ranked 49th or something in the league. Jenkins rotations were SHORT.
Unfortunately Iisalo is getting a pass from the organization and a surprising amount of fans because of injuries. Which admittedly we have had a shit ton of injuries but I don’t think there’s any way that can justify being 3-18 against winning teams this season, even worse if you go back to last season too.
Inevitably we’re going to give up Ja for nothing and then when/if we get healthy we’ll still suck and everyone will act like no one could’ve seen it coming.
Well didn’t Jenkins have those same injuries and the grizzlies were still competitive like it’s nothing new but I coulda sworn that when Jenkins was coaching just bc there best 3 players were out didn’t mean you were winning the game
Edey has been out most of the year. Pippen and Jerome haven’t played. Brandon Clarke had a few minutes. Ja is his usual unavailable self.
Yeah but in the early days jjj and ja were still inexpensive so they were surrounded with highly paid quality vets to right the ship. Now they are highly paid so when they go down the surrounding cast is cheap and inexperienced. We were 27-55 in the last super injured year under jenkins.
Jenkins had the same problem last season against winning teams to be fair.
IDK it’s too early to say in my opinion and I assume the Grizzlies are about to become sellers after the Ja trade (and most likely a JJJ trade)
[deleted]
Are you really allowed to have a legitimate opinion of the coach if you can’t even spell his name right?
I do have strong feelings about rudy tomjohnovich and mike zschechesky
It’s not like it makes a huge difference in this sub, I don’t expect anyone who isn’t a Grizzlies fan to be super informed about the Grizzlies, I wouldn’t consider myself educated enough to have a strong opinion on anyone else’s coach.
I just don’t get why people think it’s Lisalo. The first letter of names is capitalized and a capital l looks like L and not l. A capital I looks like I though…
A strong opinion you should have on my team’s coach is that he has striking eyes.
At this point I just assume everyone who’s misspelling it is doing it as a meme and that makes it somehow less annoying to me lol.
With that logic dyslexic people shouldn’t be allowed to have an opinion about anything
Nothing more lame than internet spelling/grammar police. Most people are posting with swipe to text with one finger on their phone. This is reddit, not a college paper. You knew who he was talking about.
I feel like he deserves a pass strictly on account of his star player quitting on him for trying to hold him accountable?
You’re defending ja Iike this before he even gets to your team. Chill.
Heat fans did the same thing with Lillard and the Blazers front office. Then the trade never happened and they started criticizing him. Lol.
This is just a standard Heat fan. Up is down & left is right.
Ironically, the Miami Heat run a similar offense as Iisalo does. I imagine Morant would grow tired of that very quickly.
Wasn’t Spoelstra specifically inspired by that offense and then he decided to implement it after seeing it?
Spo builds schemes to fit the personnel that he has. The heat have exactly zero true lead ball handlers on the team which is why they went more egalitarian. If they get Ja I doubt Spo will have any issue with playing a lot more pnr heavy to accentuate Ja’s talents.
they hired the coach that was mostly responsible for implementing it and are running it to an even greater extreme than memphis did, mostly because they don’t have to placate ja and their players do what their coach says
I also don’t think they have a guy who’s as good as Ja has been on ball. They have a bunch of decent creators. Not likely that they change it all up mid season if they go for him but I can see it being a bit different. But that’s also not saying changing for him is the best approach because I think Miami tries to get everyone to buy in instead of capitulating to star power. Would be interesting to see how the personality dynamic would work out
Herro has been better than ja the past few years
They don’t run a similar offense at all. Reports were that Ja hated the other assistant coach LaRoche offense, so Memphis fired him & Jenkins and implemented the extremely pick & roll heavy style of Iisalo that Ja wanted.
Heat runs the offense that reportedly Ja hates, since you picked up LaRoche as a consultant, which throws another spin to Morant wanting to join the Heat rumours.
At the same time the Heat offense is really not very good. They are middling in offensive rating for pretty much all year.
Brother, we were terrible offensively last season and the year before and the year before.
If you don’t like that, you don’t like Miami Heat basketball!
Thats really good with their personel
Which is why they would consider moving for Ja. They are over performing their shot creating talent with the scheme
Nah hes just not making a scapegoat. Every problem with the Grizzlies isnt because of Ja being childish.
David Blatt 2.0, except the organization is backing Blatt this time around.
Tbf Blatt was hired to coach a shit team that’s had the first pick three out of four previous years that was mostly young guys.
Bron coming back changed all that into win now mode.
Must be stressful as hell being a LeBron coach. We know you get way more scrutiny and he throws his weight around. I am curious about how long his coaches last relative to league average and records when fired but I even remember he tried to get Spo removed and Pat said no
He’s definitely been through a lot of them, I don’t really think of him as a true “coach killer,” though, it’s just kind of the nature of basketball that coaches don’t last long. Yeah he did off Blatt, but that was just a bad fit with him coming from Europe expecting to grow with a young team. The Vogel firing is really the only other sketchy one, the other ones who got canned all deserved it (Luke Walton, Darvin Ham).
KD is worse in that regard, he’s actively slit the throat of some coaches, hell he MADE the Nets hire Steve Nash and then got him fired.
KD is worse in that regard, he’s actively slit the throat of some coaches
lmao? like who? You definitely have the hater goggles on. How did Durant get Nash fired? If that’s really the case, why would they trade Durant three months later?
Didnt get Scott Brooks, Didn’t get Kerr, to suggest he “got Monty” after one season on the team when Booker is there the whole time is absurd. So it’s really just Nash you are leaning on here?
And LeBron and Kyrie were largely refusing to run his offense before their first season together even started. Very little you can do when your superstars immediately undermine your control of the locker room.
Ong I never thought in anyway Jenkins was the problem he was just coaching with what he had avaible and did a hell of a job doing it
Finally someone who understands!
I think many teams across various sports are now beginning to realize how dumb and ridiculous the notion is that it’s easier to replace the coach than the players.
Too many players get too much power. It should be far easier to get rid of them than the players.
Miami will bench Ja in a month if he doesn’t obey Spoelstra. Spoelstra isn’t retiring or getting fired, but Ja is losing the extension.
Jenkins from the outside seemed to be a fantastic coach, his role players always greatly overperformed even down to the 12th guy and his teams won more than they should have given the talent imo.
The Lakers series was only Ja’s third year. No coach would take a team to the finals after multiple gun incidents and season ending injuries to your star player over the next 3 years. But I bet there was no saving that locker room by the time he was fired anyways.
So Ja Morant never complained about Jenkins and didn’t have anything to do with his ousting? Revisionism is great when the change you fought for makes you end up with egg on your face.
Can you link when this happened? I remember reports at that time stating the literal opposite, that Ja was upset at the departure of Jenkins
Ja liked Jenkins and did not request to get him out lol. Jenkins was fired after the Grizz tanked from 2nd in the west to the play-in
That wasn’t exactly the Iisalo offense last year. That was the Noah LaRoche offense in halfcourt with Iisalo more on transition and other elements. Iisalo is a heavy screen guy for instance.
The plan was definitely to go to Iisalo as head coach once Jenkins was forced to fire all of his assistants as long as Iisalo fit in okay, though, I believe.
Yes exactly what its been pointing to the whole time. David Blatt 2.0. If u cant handle a locker room, you cant coach in the nba. Doesn’t matter what kinda basketball knowledge/expertise you have.
Players have always loved Jenkins, but being super buddy-buddy isn’t always a good thing.
Is being a back to back top 2 seed in the West with an extremely young team a good thing?
Sure. And part of the reason that we never built on that is because he couldn’t control Dillon Brooks’s 0 IQ offense or get through to Ja. Of course that isn’t all on him, but as a coach, that’s part of his job. Also, his offensive and defensive schemes got majorly exposed in his last year and resulted in an insane collapse after the ASB. We had an atrocious record against winning teams because they knew how to pressure the “everyone passes” offense and just spam drive and kick on defense. Giving up the 2nd most wide open 3s per game (only behind the esteemed Jazz) is not a winning strategy.
Has Lisalo gotten through to Ja? Maybe Ja is the problem.
And I know Brooks isn’t super popular around here but he went on to be productive for two different teams after Memphis, and both times his teams won games. Are you sure he wasn’t actually a big reason you guys were winning so much? If anything he seems like a culture builder.
Ja is absolutely the bigger part of that problem.
But Dillon Brooks is getting some legendary revisionist history nowadays. His shot selection was TERRIBLE and he couldn’t accept his role of a fourth option at all. He was one of the worst offensive players in the league and definitely the lowest IQ. This went on for years without Jenkins being able or willing to control him.
Kudos to him for getting the wake up call he needed and improving his 3 point shot/role acceptance, but people are giving him way too much credit for what he was here
Do we know how much better at offense Brooks has actually gotten? His playoff series with Houston didn’t inspire much confidence
Nah he has gotten way better. People don’t remember how disgusting it was lol. All of his seasons after leaving would be miles better than his best one here
No I remember it being bad but I went back to check his playoff numbers and I was stunned at his 2020-2021 stats which was his best year.
So I’m still interested in how he does if Phoenix makes the playoffs although he is putting up career highs rn
You guys know that the first letter in the Grizz coach’s last name is I, not L, right? Seen this error like 10x in this thread alone.
I did not know that, thank you friend
No idea who the fuck you are but it looks like you’re in your feelings
Seems like people are getting really vindictive lately over nothing. Someone else did this to me yesterday when I deleted a comment and acted like I owed him something cuz I deleted my comment before he could reply
lol
He was not going to be that guy on Memphis. Not hard to find the old threads on reddit about what the end was like. He was the laughingstock of the sports world.
He was majorly humbled and reigned in his shooting, kind of like how Memphis had been begging him to for 2 seasons
Dillon Brooks playing better on his next 2 teams than he did under Jenkins only proves u/TitanTigers point
Him and Udoka were a match made in heaven
He was something like 675th in the league in fg% that season and he shot like he was the second option. He absolutely contributed to winning but the fact that he refused to shoot less or make more was a big problem. He looked a lot better on his future teams because he shot less and made more.
Ja was a mid-major under-the-radar guy and everyone spoke highly of him. Imo, Jenkins’ lack of accountability for Ja is what enabled him to spiral out of control.
I’m not saying Pat riley type of tough love would have helped either, but Jenkins’ approach(or lack of approach) didn’t help at all.
I haven’t watched the tape on Memphis at that time but I remember for a long time the big criticism of the Bucks in the Budenholzer era was how many open threes they gave up. But they were usually a top defense and won a chip so I’m not sure that by itself is a good measure of how good a defense is
I don’t think anyone is getting to Ja, not in Memphis. And Dillon is thriving in Phoenix because it’s really just him and Book right now. so Dillon gets a long enough leash to goof off.
Dillon was taking 15 shots per game with 50% TS for 5 years. He had long enough of a leash. He had more leash than he should have considering he was supposed to be a 4th option.
Yeah that’s my point lol
Good thing the tactical genius they brought in fixed things
We aren’t much worse off now than we were at the end of last year despite having traded bane and having 4-8 players out literally every game (yes, literally every game). We actually have a better win% this season than last season post-asb
Look at the lineups he’s been forced to play and it’ll make sense I promise.
I mean, are the Grizz supposed to be better than their record? They sold their second best player in the summer, Ja is clearly a couple of levels below what he used to be. What are people expecting from at team that is slowly heading towards a tear down?
They just wanna hate irrationally.
They are in a lateral position from the last half of the last season and now.
I have issues with Iisalo dont get me wrong, but this is a a short sighted take.
I think it worked out better than the current situation lol
How so? We have a better win% now than we did post-asb with a better, healthier team
Y’all are fucked for years until you get another top pick lol its over
How would you know
this is such a classic reddit comment. feigning knowledge. perfect
The real Reddit comment is acting smug and high and mighty without providing anything of value to the discussion
I used to say, “man I wish we got more attention from the national media.”
What an idiot I am.
It’s a gift and a curse
Monkey’s paw didn’t curl, it folded.
Why do you think Lakers fans hate the media. Every little problem turns into a worldwide talking point.
Since we got Wemby it’s been annoying af with all the attention
“My penis is too big and I have too much money”
Matt Kalil?
im sure grizzlies fans are crying rivers for you lol
I think people are focusing on the Wemby part of my comment. What im saying is I agree the medias attention isn’t all it seems to be when you’re a fan of a small market team, which I have only realized since we got Wemby
Wanna swap?
We couldn’t have predicted this as the Finnish are known for being extremely friendly and gregarious.
Get the whole Grizzlies team to a sauna retreat!
Exactly lol
Suomi
I’m not on r/2westerneurope4u enough, can someone get me a TLDR on Finnish sterotypes?
I mean the TLDR on Finnish culture is take the northern bits of Scandinavia and turn the drinking knob up from German to Russian
Iisalo coached and played (for 14 years!) in European leagues, so he’s not just not American, not just not a player-coach, but he comes from that environment where the coaching scheme is generally respected more
For better and evidently for worse, he doesn’t know how to be Doc Rivers at all
Why’s his leg shiny
Ice bag taped to his knee.
Is this sarcasm lol
legendary subtle shit-stirring move by Bane
The leagues up and coming ragebaiter
Mind you when the grizzlies made Tuomas the head coach. Every player on the team vouched for him, said that they liked his offense way better than last year’s offense. They said he brought “realness” to the team
It feels like no one in this franchise wants to take accountability. Both players and the FO.
Jenkins actually knew how to run an offense, he probably misses that too
Jenkins’ halfcourt offense design was to pray for Steven Adams to get 6+ offensive rebounds a night
Ah so the rocket’s offense still
The Rockets aren’t depending on just Steven Adams tho. He’s their second center, they start Sengun and also have Clint Capela in case Adams gets hurt. And they also play bigger wings like Amen & KD. They’re much more consistently good at rebounding across the board than those Jenkins Memphis teams were.
Issa joke
still a more effective game plan than we have now lol. Mose is clueless running offensive sets
Alright guys, on this play I want everyone to stand around and watch Paolo dribble for like 20 seconds…
Mose watching/coaching Luka in Dallas has done unrecoverable amounts of damage to how he thinks an NBA offense should run.
There is 1-2 other guys who can play like Luka and run an elite offense, the Magic don’t even have anyone close to that archetype. Hell the Magic have barely had a passable PG for over a decade.
That is fair but “depend on offensive rebounding” is still not a good offensive gameplan 99% of the time, even if it is better than whatever Mosley comes up with
and it was working! Yet when Adams got injured, everyone clowned on the Grizz saying “if you’re offense relies on steven adams you’re already cooked.” Meanwhile the Rockets are beating people despite a poor half-court offense (stemming from no pg) mainly on the backs of adams’ rebounding and you don’t hear anyone talking shit to them about it
Tbf the Rockets play Adams as their second center and they have Capela in case Adams gets hurt. They also play really big - Amen & KD at the 2 & 3 sometimes. They are better built to dominate the boards than the Grizz were, especially in the case of Adams potentially getting hurt. You guys, as much as I loved that team, had 6’9 Brandon Clarke (who also got hurt) and Xavier Tillman, who sucks.
Adams doesn’t work in playoffs.
Maybe he does in a perfect situation(say, dynasty Warriors in a Bogut role), but not in Grizz/Rockets role. It’s nice for regular season, but his lack of any offensive bag and inability to switch is too much to compensate with his rebounding/screens.
Grizzlies offense was the main weakness in the playoffs under Jenkins….
mose offense is a weakness all the time , i’ll take it
Bc he had Ja morant running it
Ik this sub has a hateboner for Ja but let’s not act like he wasn’t playing well in the playoffs with Jenkins
Are you looking for upvotes? They don’t mean anything
Jenkins offense was horrible in the playoffs. Jenkins knew how to organize defense, but he couldn’t run an offense or manage team egos.
Everyone talking out their ass in this thread lol
I know, I keep seeing every interpretation about the situation possible. It’s making me think grizzlies fans don’t know what the fuck they were watching or watching now. Seems like everyone has a drastically different viewpoint.
This is just wrong for the sake of being wrong.
Jenkins was a considered a defensive minded coach and had issues with his offense until last year when they tried the Laroche style.
What?
You people genuinely never watched a Grizzlies game, and it shows. This entire sub was pissed with Jenkins’ lack of gameplan
It seems like the front-office decided after the 23-24 season they were not giving another extension to either the coach or Ja. When they brought in these new coaches for Jenkins, I think the front-office already felt at that point it was over.
It was easy then to make Iisalo the “bad guy” and move on from Ja. They knew Iisalo wouldn’t mind that role and that’s probably one of the main reasons why they hired him.
His name is still Iisalo, not Lisalo. With an I
corrected, thanks
I hope the Kings eventually hire Jenkins if we can’t get Jordi back.
Jordi ain’t going anywhere, that’s our best asset
Matter of fact next season we will add Jenkins to Jordi’s squad, I say we make it happen.
Trade for Ja then hire Jenkins in the summer. That will speed up the rebuild by 2 years. Thank you for your service Doug.
No, keep Ja far away from the Kings
Iisalo is doing great, we’re almost .500 with at least 5 players injured for every game of the season
That will speed up the next rebuild by 2 years. Because the Kings will be rebuilding again within two years of trading for Ja .
Unless he quits, I’m not sure why he wouldn’t have a job with the nets. He’s clearly a good coach.
Agreed, I’m just being hopeful lol
Jenkins is a high floor coach. If that’s what you’re looking for, he’s great.
No chance Jordi’s going back lol
A man can dream
We need an old school coach like Thibs. I’m so tired of the 28 mpg BS we’ve been doing since like 2019. Get Iisalo far away from the organization. It’s so tiring.
He was a good coach man like Taylor Jenkins was having Memphis competitive no matter who was on that court every night.
I think lisalo is gonna be good for them once they move ja and tjink Jenkins Can coach in this league still and be good too
The first domino was trading Brooks. The 2nd was forcing Taylor to get a new assistant coach that wound up taking his job. Ja, Bane and JJJ probably knew what was up after those 2 moves. Some guys handle the business messing up personal relationships better than others. But I think it’s crystal clear, Ja has been angry with the organization ever since
There’s been so many conflicting reports surrounding the Jenkins firing, that no one knows what the heck actually happened. The players may have hated Jenkins by the time he left, they may have loved him and still do.
You can really feel honesty in this. When players say they miss their coach, that says everything. Respect to Taylor Jenkins fr.
Respect my ass. They miss him because he let them do as they pleased.
I think you mean 2026 Bucks Head Coach.
Magic should fire their coach anyway, go out and get Jenkins
From what I’ve heard, Iisalo’s style is revolutionary and he worked wonders in Europe.
I’m more inclined to give him a chance than to side with Ja, who has caused nothing but headaches for the team over the past few years.
God damn his arms are short
T-Rex 🦖 😂
Hello, Ja wouldn’t be acting like he’s acting and having the outburst he’s having if Taylor Jenkins was still there. They fired a great coach for no reason
Hello. You’re wrong and uninformed.
Enlighten us all then since I’m so wrong.
Damn, Cat must got yo tongue
lol, I got it now. You’re a troll and just looking for attention. That’s on me for taking the bait.
Coaches always the scapegoat. Sometimes management isn’t the smartest guys in the room.
This guy is a messy menace
There’s no coincidence the guys that are paid suck for the Grizzlies right now. They don’t give a damn.
I actually think the Grizzlies are doing pretty well this season considering the roster they have available.
As somewhat of a fan of Ja before all that shit (gun shit, coach shit) went down… I thought Jenkins was one of the top 5 coaches in the league. Him getting fired was mind blowing. I mean I’m a Curry fan first off, so it was fine that shit happened but still mind blowing that it even happened.
Hindsight is 20⁄20.
It essentially came down to Ja vs Jenkins in a time where players have the leverage these days.
Who cares
Grizzles organization ruined a good thing.
Ja Morant’s narcissism and an injury plague ruined a good thing. By the time Jenkins was fired, there was no good thing left to salvage.
Crazy because Memphis was the 2 seed last season just after the all star break
And then collapsed as the schedule got harder, leading to the jenkins firing. Also, Ja wasn’t an all star caliber player last season or really since Adams got hurt in 2023; Jaren was very clearly the best player on the team.
are all NBA fans as smug and judgmental as Grizz fans?
Dillon Brooks’ shot diet, Ja Morant’s lack of self control, and cosmically-bad injury luck ruined a good thing. I implore you to not get it twisted.
Brooks left the year before. Grizzlies had a stretch of the worst injuries in NBA history
This is what bad organization say. Rome was not built in a day. Instead of working with brooks you ship him out and don’t replace him. Tyus Jones leaves and you don’t replace him. Ja being injured sucks but unlike the Bulls with Derrick Rose who built out the team to withstand when he was injured the Grizzles lose the players that help that cause and don’t replace them. Their rebuild from the grit and grind Grizzles was young and was the 2nd seed 2 straight seasons and got bad matchups but they were young and the organization started blowing it up already that’s bad organization. To think Dillion Brooks couldn’t morph into what he is now in Memphis is bad foresight. The team had a gap year and didn’t improve after and fired the coach everybody on the team liked because they weren’t as good when they brooks, Adam’s, & Jones but never replaced them.
You know less about the Grizzlies than you think you do.
Tyus and Brooks were replaced with Marcus Smart. Find me anyone who wasn’t in favor of that move. Smart played a handful of games in 2 years.
That’s not an indication of a bad FO.
You can’t view him as a replacement because he played less than half a season with the team. Also 1 player can’t replace 2.
The front office doesn’t determine his availability.
Everyone knew the team had too many alright guys and we needed a consolation trade. Smart was the perfect move.
Im sure they didnt plan for Brooks replacement to get injured. Doesnt mean Smart wasnt his replacement.