I am as surprised as everyone else about the recent firing of Taylor Jenkins by Memphis. At the time of his firing, Jenkins had a robust 44-29 record but did have some recent struggles. He was replaced by his assistant Tuomas Iisalo, a first year NBA assistant (he coached in Europe from 2014 to 2025). Firing a coach with a winning record so close to the playoffs is rarely done because the difficulty in getting a new head coach acclimated (even if it’s a promoted internal assistant), is likely to outweigh whatever benefit the new coach might bring. Let’s try to figure what happened based on the available facts…
What was the stated rationale for such a bold move? Grizzlies GM Zach Kleiman, per William Guillory of The Athletic, at a presser spoke for only three minutes about the decision and gave mostly platitudes: “Kleiman said several times that the decision was ‘mine and mine only’ and that he did not consult the Grizzlies players before making his decision. Kleiman said the decision was ‘in the best interest of the team….Urgency is a core principle of ours. So, (I) decided to go on with the move.’”
Assuming that Kleiman is being mostly truthful, it seems he concluded that Jenkins was no longer fit to coach and it was better to sever the relationship as soon as possible. Does that jive with the facts and data? We don’t have all the facts yet, but let’s examine what we do know:
Worse than their record indicates?
While the Grizz actually have a better point-differential than actual record, there was a sense that they were not a real playoff threat because they were only 11-20 in games against plus .500 teams this year. Digging a little deeper, the Grizz are 17-6 against the weaker divisions (Southeast and Southwest) and 24-24 against everyone else.
Memphis was/is likely to be the five or six seed in the playoffs and the potential matchup are fluid but here’s how Memphis has done against these teams:
Denver: 1-1
Golden State: 1-2
Houston: 1-3
Clippers: 0-3
Lakers: 1-3
Minnesota: 2-0
That’s 5-12 against the group and it is reasonable to assume that all those teams (even Minnesota) would be favored in a series against Memphis. It’s not a fait accompli but the indicators are not pointing towards Memphis getting a first round playoff victory. The unlikelihood of a sustained playoff run supports a conclusion that the team’s playoff outcome would probably not be affected by changing coaches so late in the season. I disagree with such a conclusion because the Grizz are now less likely to win a first round series than they were before the firing, even if Jenkins was more likely to lose a first round series than win.
Recent frustrations
Kleiman’s terse press conference announcing the firing is stark in how different the Grizz were talking in April 2022. At that time, Mark Giannotto of the Commercial Appeal wrote about the unity between Kleiman and Jenkins, quoting Jenkins as saying: “It’s unbelievable how lock-step we are. The synergy is unbelievable. The trust that [owner] Robert [Pera] has for Zach, myself, in obviously building the team and coaching the team. The trust that Zach has in me. We do a great job of pushing each other because if we want to elevate this organization, this team to do great things and win championships, we’ve got to push each other.”
Well, a lot has changed internally since then. Though the Grizz have been pretty good most of the time under Jenkins, the vibe with Kleiman has changed. In a recent report by Sam Amick, Fred Katz, and Joe Vardon, the vibe shift came when the Grizz made Jenkins fire all his assistants after the injury riddled 2023-24 season, where they went 27-55 (Ja Morant missed basically the whole season, Marcus Smart missed 62 games, and Desmond Bane missed 40 games). Apparently, Kleiman did not give Jenkins a pass for this flukey down year and, as a result, friction between Jenkins and Kleiman was inevitable. (Kleiman didn’t exactly help Jenkins by trading for the cooked Smart).
Jenkins obviously started this season on the defensive but the team was playing well until very recently. Jenkins was fired right after a 21-point loss to OKC, which was a 2-point game entering the fourth before a terrible finish for the Grizz. The team had been in a recent general malaise as well. Memphis was 2-5 in their last seven games before the firing and 8-12 over their last 20 games. The low ceiling of the team in the playoffs coupled with recent poor play, may have spurred Kleiman to have that “sense of urgency” he was talking about at the press conference.
Ja unhappy?
Guillory also reported that Ja Morant was unhappy with the new offensive scheme that had him playing more off the ball, as opposed to initiating the offense via frequent pick-and-roll. This may be true but the stats show the offense was working. The Grizz are currently 6th in offensive rating, after finishing dead last 30th in 2023-24. Yes, 2023-24 doesn’t matter because Memphis was decimated by injuries, but this year’s offense also represents improvement over the healthier 2022-23 squad (15th) and about even with 2021-22 (5th).
Nevertheless, Morant may see his numbers are down and that might bother him regardless of team efficiency. Here’s how Ja’s stats compare with his last healthy 2022-23 season:
2022-23: 31.9 mpg, 26.2 ppg, .557 TS%, .307 3FG%, 5.9 rpg, 8.1 apg, 34.9 USG%, 23.2 PER, .148 WS48, 5.7 BPM
2024-25: 30 mpg, 22.3 ppg, .556 TS%, .289 3FG%, 4.2 rpg, 7.5 apg, 31.8 USG%, 18.8 PER, .107 WS48, 1.9 BPM
Ja’s numbers are down quite a bit (but still pretty good). He’s never been a great shooter but he’s getting to the rim less (24% versus 29% two years ago) and his three-point shot has regressed from bad to unacceptable. Granted, Ja historically has been asked to take harder threes than most players, but he is getting more threes off the pass and his shot is still trending in the wrong direction. In 2024-25, Morant’s assisted threes have jumped up from 56% for his career to 66% and his corner threes have also jumped up from 11% to 17%. Yet, the increase in pass-created threes hasn’t helped his three-point percentage.
So, there is definitely some circumstantial evidence that Ja may be hurt by the new offense. It’s an open question whether it’s the offensive scheme that may have blunted Morant’s numbers or whether it’s just the result of repeated lower body injuries he’s had this season. In either case, the Grizz elevated the very coach who created the offensive scheme that Morant may not like. That doesn’t seem like a move designed to placate Ja.
The Larry Brown Corollary: Don’t Fire Your Coach in Anger Late in the Season
It’s apparent that Kleiman wanted to fire Jenkins after the 2023-24 season. He either didn’t have the authority to do so or just wanted to coerce Jenkins to resign. Ultimately, Kleiman didn’t take the bait and came back with a new staff that he may have felt more tepid about. He got off to a good start but Kleiman fired him the minute he felt the team topped out, even if no team has fired a coach of a top seeded team so late in a season since Larry Brown was forced out on the eve of the 1982-83 playoffs by the Nets.
A brief review of Brown’s demise in New Jersey shows why firing a coach so shortly before the playoffs makes little sense. Brown, a notorious wanderer, had built a very nice team in 1982-83 in Jersey around star power forward Buck Williams and a bunch of good pros (Michael Ray Richardson, Otis Birdsong, Albert King, and Darryl Dawkins). Brown had his issues (he traded point guards three times before settling on Richardson and antagonized some of his vets for no apparent reason) but the team was pretty good.
In typical Brown fashion, the Nets had the best defensive rating in the NBA and were an impressive 47-29. The Nets weren’t quite a serious contender, as the Julius Erving-Moses Malone 76ers were at their peak and Boston and Milwaukee were also better teams. Nevertheless, New Jersey had a very strong chance of making it past the first round for the first time in their NBA history, which would’ve been nice for a franchise that struggled after giving away Erving in1976.
In early April 1983, Brown covertly took an interview with Kansas and basically accepted the job offer on the spot. As reported by Chuck Woodling at the time, Brown’s old coach Dean Smith recommended Brown for the job when it surprisingly came available. KU’s athletic director Monte Johnson somehow got the deal done quickly: “’He (Brown) was at the airport ready to go to Detroit and we offered him the job,’ Johnson explained. Brown accepted, even though no firm salary has been set and there’s no guarantee the new KU coach will be able to supplement his income with a summer basketball camp….‘We’ll firm up the contract when he (Brown) gets here. From our discussions, though, he was satisfied.’”
The Nets were blindsided by the move. Guy Kipp wrote in “From Julius to Jason,” that “Brown, who at first denied to Nets owner Joe Taub that he’d sought the Kansas job, relented and admitted that he had interviewed for it. Taub gave Brown an ultimatum….make a decision on the spot whether to stay in New Jersey or leave town.” Brown chose Kansas and was fired with six games left in the season and replaced by assistant Bill Blair.
The Nets went 2-4 with Blair and Kipp described the team as “dazed and leaderless” and “turning in listless efforts in losses to the Celtics and Knicks.” In the playoffs, the Nets drew the 44-38 Knicks in a three-game mini-series. The Knicks dominated the series and swept the Nets 2-0 behind peak Bernard King (29 ppg on 63% shooting). Richardson was miserable for New Jersey (9.5 ppg on bad shooting) and was going through issues.
Unlike the Jenkins situation, for the Nets, it was the coach who created the controversy with his wandering eye towards the next job that pissed off management so much that they acted emotionally in firing Brown when the better path was to wait until after the season. In Memphis, Kleiman clearly wanted Jenkins gone earlier or, at the very least, was no longer willing to afford Jenkins any benefit of the doubt and fired him when the first potential opportunity presented itself. Again, we don’t have also the information but it seems that firing Jenkins now was premature and will probably not lead the Grizz to a better outcome in the 2024-25 playoffs.