Elite talent wins titles. 

In NBA basketball, that’s a truism, accepted as self-evident. 

Two seasons ago, when the Memphis Grizzlies won 56 games and went six in the second round to the eventual champion Golden State Warriors, Ja Morant made second-team All-NBA and finished seventh in the MVP vote. 

That’s pretty rarefied stuff, but still more knocking on the door of the elite than crashing through it. First-team and top five. Those are harder lines, separating great from greater still. 

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The three favorites for the title this season are so certified at the top of their pecking order. Reigning champion Denver has a recent MVP in Nikola Jokic. So does East co-favorite Milwaukee with Giannis Antetokounmpo. For fellow East fave Boston, Jayson Tatum is a two-time first-teamer who finished fourth for MVP last season. 

Among teams trying to topple the Nuggets out West, the Warriors (Stephen Curry), Suns (Devin Booker, Kevin Durant), Lakers (LeBron James, Anthony Davis), Mavericks (Luka Doncic), Clippers (Kawhi Leonard, Paul George) and even Thunder (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) have at least one player who’s reached this level in recent seasons. 

The Grizzlies are arguably the best team in the conference that doesn’t boast a player with these credentials. It’s the main reason to doubt the team’s ultimate ceiling, which is why Morant returning to his prior trajectory is so crucial.

But if the Grizzlies don’t currently have a certified elite talent, they can perhaps claim an unusual abundance of elite attributes.

Jaren Jackson Jr. has led the NBA in blocks per game in each of the past two seasons, and the broader underlying evidence, along with a certain trophy, adds to his claim as the NBA’s top rim protector.

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Jackson’s frontcourt partner Steven Adams led the NBA in both offensive rebounds and “screen assists” per game last season, and can reasonably claim to be the NBA’s best in these two crucial big-man fields.

Luke Kennard has led the NBA in 3-point percentage in each of the past two seasons, finishing ahead of only future teammate Desmond Bane in 2021-2022. 

Morant led all guards in paint scoring two seasons ago and was second to Gilgeous-Alexander this past season. If he’s not the best attacking guard in the league, there’s a strong case he’s top two.

Perimeter defense? Harder to capture, but newbie Marcus Smart is a year removed from winning Defensive Player of the Year, the only guard to win it this century. He’s at least a “best perimeter defender” candidate. 

Attacking, shooting, screening, rebounding, defending on the perimeter and at the rim. These are the core components of the game. 

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But can elite attributes be aligned to defeat elite talent?

Even if so, that assembly is complex. There’s a challenge in finding the right balance, moment to moment. 

Pairing Morant’s downhill attack with Kennard’s deep shooting can stretch an opposing defense to the breaking point. But it leaves two weak perimeter defenders for that same opponent to hunt and isolate at the other end. Does it give as much as it takes against the best teams in the biggest moments?

The Grizzlies will likely start Morant, Smart and Adams together after Morant’s return, and that’s an imposing trio in many ways. Does it saddle a lineup with few good shooters to function against playoff defenses?

These are the kind of puzzles that Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins and his staff will have to solve.

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But they have at least two pieces that can always be part of a solution.

Perhaps alone on this roster, Bane and Jackson — Des & Trip — help the Grizzlies on both ends of the court and at multiple positions. They uplift any five-man combination you put them in. Their broad-based impact is the glue that joins the elite attributes of more one-dimensional teammates into coherent lineups. 

Jackson’s defense was transformative last season at both power forward and center. Offensively, he took a leap from a dire 2021-2022, improving significantly both inside and outside the arc, and took on more of the scoring burden late in the season, in Morant’s absence.

At 6’5” and with an immaculate jumper, Bane is a prototypical shooting guard. But he’s strong enough to hold up defensively at small forward. And he’s developed enough playmaking pop to function as a de facto point guard. 

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Jackson had a fabulous 2022-2023 season, making his first All-Star team and then winning Defensive Player of the Year. 

What followed put those considerable accomplishments into some context. Jackson was Defensive Player of the Year. The Lakers’ Anthony Davis was Defensive Player of the Series as the Grizzlies were booted from the playoffs in round one. 

Jackson, badly misused, got too much blame for Team USA’s failure to medal at the FIBA World Cup, but also played too poorly as the tournament went on. 

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This was all a reminder that as good as Jackson was last season, he still has so much room to get better, and in so many areas: Rebounding, (not) fouling, passing, screening and self-created scoring are all either weaknesses Jackson can further shore up or areas where he can still significantly improve. 

Ask Jenkins what the focus areas are for his star big man this season, and you might as well settle in for a while.

“He and I have talked about that it’s pretty much every single area,” Jenkins said this week. “He has the unique ability to be an impact player at the highest level on both sides of the floor. (He should) continue to do what he’s been doing on the defensive side, but take even more ownership there in reading the game and communicating the game. 

“Staying on the floor. Being active but still being smart. Avoiding the foul trouble. And enhanced playmaking, but efficient playmaking. We’re obviously going to lean on him to start the season, but that can’t just be the first 25 games. It’s all year long. I have to do a better job of putting him in primary playmaking roles, let him be a creator for us, in attack mode to score. It’s on the perimeter, it’s in the post, it’s as a screener-roller … he’s definitely been a focal point of mine throughout the offseason.”

Apparently so. Whew. 

Jackson had a big finish to last season, averaging 22 points after the All-Star break and 26 points over the season’s final 15 games, and he could be primed for a big start to this season for much the same reason: Morant’s absence.

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Among all regular rotation Grizzlies players last season, Jackson’s usage and scoring rate increased the most when Morant was off the floor (or off the team).

While Jackson is a versatile scoring threat, he’s not as efficient as he could be. His two-point shooting improved significantly last season and his 3-point shooting rebounded modestly but meaningfully. But Jackson could still stand to finish better at the rim, and through contact. And as much as some fans want him to stop shooting 3s during bad stretches, being a plus outside shooter, on both volume and accuracy, remains an absolute key to maximizing Jackson’s value.

Passing has always seemed like the very last piece to the Jackson puzzle, the one you may never really get to, which is okay given how much else he brings. Jackson’s low assist rate relative to his fairly high usage was among the bigger imbalances in the league last season at his position. 

But Jackson isn’t ceding that territory either.

“Decision-making, playmaking,” he said of his own keys for the coming season. “I’m going to get doubled more. I was doubled a lot late last season, and expanding off that, I need to find my teammates better.” 

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While offensive improvements are the key to Jackson crashing the All-NBA conversation, it’s still the rebounding and fouling that garners the most grief. 

The former has a strong situational component, as FIBA play illustrated and teammate Adams ably explained on media day, noting that the defensive role Jackson often plays as a switching defender and roving shot contester limits his opportunities. But even accounting for that, it remains a weakness. 

When Jackson and Adams shared the floor last season, the Grizzlies’ were in the 98th percentile in opponent shooting and 92nd percentile in defensive rebounding, per stats site Cleaning the Glass (where many of the numbers cited here originate). The result was a 99th percentile defense. It’s a devastating combination. 

When Jackson played without Adams, the team’s defensive rebounding collapsed, down to the 23rd percentile. But opponent shooting barely budged, still at 95th. The overall defense was still 93rd percentile. That’s how great Jackson’s defensive impact was, even with poor rebounding. But he and the team are hungry for more. 

“Rebounding’s huge,” Jackson said at media day. “Steve-O went out last year and it just became more and more evident that I needed to do that at a higher rate, and I still need to. It just needs to increase. You always think of things you can get better at, and I have so many responsibilities on the floor. I just need to be that anchor. I need to be that guy.”

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It was hard to tell people last season that Bane was playing hurt. 

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His scoring in his third NBA season jumped by more than three points per game, to 21.5, and came while shooting 48% from the floor, 41% from the 3-point line and 88% from the foul line. 

Meanwhile, he also boosted his assists and rebounds. Seems pretty healthy.

But you could see it at times in the tightness of his movements, and more so in the loss of capacity when he returned from a November foot injury that had not healed and continued to play.

In his first dozen games, before missing more than a month with the injury, Bane notched four games north of 30 points and had five games north of 35 minutes. In the 46 games he played after coming back, he only cracked the 30-point mark three times and all seven of his heavy-minute games came in the season’s final weeks. 

Now, Bane is healthy following summer foot surgery and, per lead executive Zach Kleiman, was “maniacal” in his off-season work. He’s arrived at camp full bore, and big things loom. 

Only three seasons into his career, Bane has already established himself as one of the game’s top shooters, deadly on pull-ups, step-backs, pump-fakes and runners in addition to clean catch-and-shoot shots. 

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He’s also able to put the ball on the floor and bully his way to the rim. Last season, Bane got into the paint more frequently, though he’s still not a great finisher there, and his free-throw rate nearly doubled. His percentage of baskets that were assisted dropped, with nearly half of his inside-the-arc points self-created. 

A great shooter becoming a very good scorer. 

And Bane’s ability as a playmaker is also blooming. Bane’s assist rate increased by more than 50% last season, and the Grizzlies have performed well the past two seasons with Bane as the primary ball handler in lineups without a true point guard. 

To start this season, Bane will have a new backcourt partner in Smart. And while Smart will be considered the “point guard” and Bane the “off guard,” Smart’s adept enough, and willing enough, off the ball for it to be more of a shared burden. If anything, look for much of the offense to run through Bane. 

“I’ve just been telling him, regardless of who you play with, you’ve grown into a primary playmaker role for us,” Jenkins said. 

With another nudge or two, Bane could emerge as one of the game’s best offensive players. Even last season, only 15 players finished above the 80th percentile in usage, scoring efficiency and assist rate, essentially doing a lot, and doing it well, for both themselves and others. Bane was the only one who hasn’t been an All-Star. Eleven of the 15 have made All-NBA teams. 

Bane did this on a bum toe. 

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And what if he improves more on the side of the ball where he’s previously been merely solid? 

Bane’s not long but is smart and strong. He watched teammate Dillon Brooks take a similar mix of strengths and limitations to the All-Defense team last season. Brooks confirmed an old axiom: Most of defense is “want to.” 

Bane wants it all. 

“Cardio,” he said about an off-season focus. “Elite two-way guards are in great shape, they’re always moving around. (I want to) really get to that level where I can do it on the ball and off the ball, and on the defensive end of the floor too. That’s an area I want to excel in as well.”

Jenkins encourages this goal.

“He needs to take more responsibility and ownership on the defensive side too. He’s excited about that. He wants to take tougher matchups. It engages him more. (We want to) unlock his ability to truly be an impact two-way player. That’s a goal of his this year.”

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The acquisition of Smart is thought to replace Brooks’ defensive role. But it could be a little different. Brooks was a great on-ball defender, locked in on the top opposing scorer each night. Smart can be used the same way but is a more effective off-ball defender than Brooks. Bane stepping up to take on the top scorer at times could free up Smart to wreak havoc in help defense. It would increase the team’s versatility. 

A time for Des and Trip

Last season, when Bane and Jackson shared the floor, the Grizzlies outscored the opposition by nearly 10 points per 100 possessions, in the 95th percentile of league performance.

When they shared the floor without Morant, as they will to begin this season, team performance dropped off only slightly, still +8.4 points or 93rd percentile. 

Very little of that came alongside Adams, who elevates both players (a Subject for Further Research) and who missed the second half of the season while Bane and Jackson missed time early. Little of it came with Kennard, who arrived late and whose pairing with Bane turned an eras-old franchise weakness (3-point shooting) into a sudden strength. None of it came with Smart, who, relative to departed backup point guard Tyus Jones, should both improve the defense and free up Bane’s offense even more. 

People have wondered if the Grizzlies can survive Morant’s absence. The team should take nothing for granted, but the Grizzlies should aim for much more than survival. 

Perhaps Morant’s the key to the Grizzlies’ ceiling, but Bane and Jackson provide a firm floor? Or maybe that undersells these erstwhile Morant sidekicks, who will share the spotlight to begin this season. 

What if Jackson continues what he’s done defensively the past two seasons while taking another step forward on offense?

What if a healthy Bane further gooses last season’s scoring-playmaking mix while becoming a clear plus rather than merely a solid defender? 

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These opening months are their moment together. It could set the stage for Morant’s return to form. It could also give the Grizzlies a sense of how strong their foundation is even if Morant doesn’t.