NASHVILLE —The Memphis Grizzlies finished up Nashville training camp on Thursday. 

It was just like the two days before it.

The players came off the court covered in sweat. They lauded the team’s overall competitiveness, then they muttered what is becoming a popular tagline, “speed kills.”

A team that played at one of the fastest paces last season wants to play even faster under new head coach Tuomas Iisalo.

That's certainly news, but it's also a straightforward concept for both players and fans to discuss and digest without needing to delve into details. 

The Grizzlies want to grab the defensive rebound quickly. They want to throw it up the court quickly. They want to shoot it quickly. 

Who isn’t excited about that? It seems simple enough. 

In reality, however, there are layers to this Iisalo system that was developed well before he ever coached in Memphis. 

Because, well, basketball is more than just offense — and Iisalo has a pretty complex background himself. 

So, in the spirit of variety, let’s take a peek at one of Iisalo’s previous tactics that isn’t about speed.

In fact, it’s about the opposite.

But first, some background about how we got here

In order to understand how Iisalo arrived at his general coaching philosophies — and his pragmatic approach — it’s important to know the situation that he comes from. 

Before he was winning Coach of the Year awards in Europe, he was leading clubs with a budget nearly a quarter of what its competitors could spend. The financial inequalities created a need for coaching innovation and experimentation because the talent gap needed to be bridged. 

Here’s what Iisalo said about the birth of his system during an interview with EuroLeague.net in April of 2024:

“We thought the only way we can get to this is not to put talent against talent, but we can put five-man units or lineups against other teams that rely on talent and make them compete against us on our terms,” Iisalo said. 

“A couple of those things was to speed them up, to have them enter kind of our training methods instead of being in theirs. And the other things being like, ‘Okay, they might have two players that both make one million a year and we have a team that’s making 400,000 combined, but together we can play better than they can.’

“We developed those and little by little, we went to clubs that had a little bit bigger budget each time, like let’s say a moderate rise from Crailsheim to Bonn, from Bonn to Paris. We noticed that when we have even better talent and more professional players, it gives a boost to the overall idea.”

A year later, it’s fair to wonder if the Memphis Grizzlies will be the final test of Iisalo’s ideology. If it works with better talent, why would it not work in the NBA?

And what is the basis for this system, anyway? 

Is it speed?

Nope. It’s defense. 

“Very few people agree with that, but I do,” Iisalo told Euroleague in 2024. “And if you ask our players, they will also say the same thing,” Coach Iisalo said. “Defense is the one thing that I feel separates the really great teams from the good teams.

“I think it sets up everything; in defense, you build the team chemistry, you build the trust. Defense is a little bit more, let’s say, structured, in my opinion, than offense. You obviously need both, but a lot of people, when they see our teams, they think about offense first. However, to be a great team you have to be very good on both ends.”

A reminder: It wasn’t the Memphis Grizzlies’ offense that took a dip during the franchise’s February plummet that knocked them out of a playoff spot and into the play-in tournament. 

It was the defense. 

So, although it may be much more enjoyable to talk about a heavier dose of pick-and-roll, or the potential return of the running alley-oop, it may actually be secondary to the Grizzlies’ future success. 

What does Iisalo want to build on the defensive end?

“The simple answer is to try to get the defensive rating as low as possible and find the pieces around each other that make that happen — having the right amount of rim protection, having rebounding, but also disruption in there,” Iisalo said. “Overall, we want to make it very difficult to play against us.”

Iisalo pointed to an Italian soccer coach whose teams were so tough defensively that playing against them was described as “going to the dentist.”

“That’s how it should feel (playing the Grizzlies),” Iisalo said. “It should be an unpleasant experience.”

An important defensive element

How will the Memphis reach for a higher standard defensively this season?

The process began with taking a different approach to roster building in the offseason and it could be followed by prioritizing different defensive tactics. 

The Grizzlies traded away Desmond Bane and added Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a quick and disruptive perimeter defender with lots of experience in guarding some of the NBA’s best players. 

Memphis also drafted rookie Cedric Coward, who they identified as a player with several different avenues to breakthrough at the professional level. 

“That was one of the things that intrigued us about Cedric,” Iisalo said. “He has several different pathways. He could end up being a very good 3-and-D player, an on-ball wing, a protection defender, or a secondary rim protector.”

Pair the new additions with known defensive commodities such as Jaren Jackson Jr., Zach Edey and Scotty Pippen Jr., and suddenly, Memphis believes it has more defensive depth.

Stockpiling those types of players has become a trend across the NBA, most notably made successful by the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder. 

It’s also possible Iisalo may put his own twist on the team’s defensive tactics and more prominently feature a strategy that was a staple for his European teams called “tagging up.”

The simple explanation for tagging up is sending all five players to the glass for an offensive rebound when the team puts up a shot. All five players stay on the high side, or behind the players on the team going for a defensive rebound. 

The idea is to drive opponents under the basket to free space for long rebounds, but in the process slow down opponents from grabbing uncontested rebounds and starting transition opportunities. 

This is not an unfamiliar concept for the Grizzlies. They did some of it last season, as did other teams across the NBA. 

Here are some clips from the preseason in 2024:

Another concept Tuomas Iisalo brought with him from Europe, to the Memphis Grizzlies, is tagging offensive rebounds

Sending multiple rebounders to the glass on the offensive end in hopes of producing extra possessions and limiting opponents transition game https://t.co/rWkiR4DQG4 pic.twitter.com/V5uoiuE7iX

— Adam Pike (@GrizzliesFilm) October 17, 2024

“We tagged up (and) we were one of the rare teams in Europe who were consistently top three in offensive rebounding and defensive transition,” Iisalo said. “So, I think the misconception about tagging up conceptually is that it is an offensive rebounding system, but it’s a defensive transition system and the rebounds are a byproduct of that.”

Tagging up can be a complex system to utilize, in part because it requires collective effort from all five players on the floor and tremendous discipline to execute. 

High-side pressure when rebounding can lead to more offensive fouls, and it can sometimes allow players to leak out past the shooter. 

Last season, Memphis struggled at times with transition defense off live rebounds. Grizzlies opponents turned 31.4% of live rebounds into transition chances, per Cleaning the Glass. The Utah Jazz were the only team to allow transition chances off live rebounds more frequently. 

“(Tagging up) is a very intense way to do it and a collective way to do it,” Iisalo said. “It’s very hard to do it, but we were able to do it in Europe for several years.”

It may be fair to wonder if the general explanation for the strategy fits with a player like Zach Edey, who had an offensive rebounding percentage above 15% last season. It wouldn’t make sense to dissuade Edey from ever getting traditional positioning for offensive rebounds. 

But, again, it’s more complex than it appears on the surface. 

“You can nuance things,” Iisalo said. “It’s just the name for a concept. Last year, I think we were plus-10%, or so, with Zach on the floor while doing pretty much the same thing. 

“It’s actually those great offensive rebounders who seem to supercharge that system and they benefit from the system just as much as the system benefits from them.”

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