This should have been one of the highlights of the season.

A Memphis Grizzlies team near the top of the conference, returning home from a long road trip. The defending champion Golden State Warriors, scuffling most of the year but suddenly on the rise, coming into town for the first time since last spring’s playoffs, after beating the Grizzlies twice this season in San Francisco.

Superstar Stephen Curry back from injury and back in the lineup, facing off with Ja Morant. A rivalry renewed, with stakes in the standings and in the All-NBA battle. A national television showcase on TNT. 

Ja Morant ‘to remain away’ for next four games, Grizzlies say

The NBA, it’s fantastic?

Some of that remains true as the Warriors face the Grizzlies on Thursday night (6:30 p.m., TNT, 92.9 FM) at FedExForum.

Curry is back, and in regard to the battle for playoff seeding, the climbing Warriors are suddenly relevant to the teetering Grizzlies. That is, if playoff seeding still matters in this fraught moment. 

But Curry won’t see Morant across the floor on Thursday night. Instead, the Warriors will be the homecoming opponent for a now depleted and perhaps glassy-eyed Grizzlies team staggering back east from the worst road trip in franchise history. 

This trip was so momentous that three straight nationally televised losses felt like a collective afterthought, the final two in Los Angeles akin to nuisance appointments the team had to keep despite dealing with bigger personal problems. 

Colorado police: No charges on Ja Morant video incident

Like waiting for a police investigation in Colorado, which concluded Wednesday with no charges against Morant. Like still waiting for an NBA investigation that is ongoing, and for new turns in a personal journey for their absent star that’s so far been kept mostly private.

But games remain. Eighteen of them before the end of this regular season. 

If the wheels perhaps haven’t come off this once-promising Grizzlies season, they’ve at least gone flat, lost a few bolts and are wobbling back down the road, maybe emitting flames.

 A playoff race, but for what?

The Grizzlies’ grip on second place in the Western Conference was another casualty of a road trip that cost the team injured Brandon Clarke for the rest of this season (and beyond) and Morant for a still unknown period of time. 

At 38-26, the Grizzlies return home now tied with the Sacramento Kings for second place. Due to tiebreakers, if the playoffs started today the Grizzlies would be the third seed. 

Herrington: The crucial part of the Grizzlies’ (regular) season starts now

And both teams now must watch out for the Phoenix Suns, who have won three straight and are 2.5 games back.

What’s the competitive floor for the Grizzlies this season? 

While they could well fall behind Sacramento and Phoenix, it seems unlikely the Grizzlies would drop out of the West’s top four, the line for home-court advantage in a first-round series. 

Heading into Wednesday night’s games, the Grizzlies were five games up on Golden State and the Dallas Mavericks, who were tied for fifth in the conference.

Danny Green comments on Grizzlies’ handling of Ja Morant situation

Five games is an awful lot of ground to lose with 18 games to go. But the Grizzlies will play the Warriors and Mavericks a combined five times in the team’s next seven games, including facing each at home this week, on Thursday (Warriors) and Saturday (Mavericks). 

These five games could harden the Grizzlies' floor as a top-four seed, or they could leave open the chance of falling through it. And the team now knows it will be without Morant for, at minimum, three of them.

A too familiar feeling

There’s no parallel in Grizzlies franchise history for either the character or magnitude of the Morant issue at the core of the team’s current malaise. 

But as sudden problems, on court and off court, overwhelm the stretch run of an ongoing season, the potential undoing of that competitive enterprise carries a little deja vu.

Grizzlies Podcast: Reacting to Ja Morant’s ‘suspension,’ Brandon Clarke’s injury

I bring you the 2015-2016 Grizzlies season.

This was the penultimate year in a seven-season “grit and grind”-era playoff run. 

Then, the Grizzlies were still 37-24 on March 4, despite having lost starting center Marc Gasol for the season about a month earlier. 

Now, the Grizzlies were 38-24 on March 3, despite playing without starting center Steven Adams for more than a month.

Then, key reserve Mario Chalmers was lost for the season with an Achilles tendon injury. 

Herrington: Thoughts on Ja Morant’s absence, and Brandon Clarke’s

Now, key reserve Brandon Clarke was lost for the season with an Achilles tendon injury.

Then, starting point guard Mike Conley, due to injury maintenance, was taken off the floor for an uncertain amount of time. 

Now, it’s star point guard Morant, for very different reasons. 

That season, Conley never returned. The team won only five more games, finishing 42-40, and was swept in the first round by the San Antonio Spurs.

Grizzlies Podcast: Reacting to Ja Morant’s ‘suspension,’ Brandon Clarke’s injury

Matt Barnes and Vince Carter figured prominently. A dozen in-season journeymen (no exaggeration) filtered in and out of the roster. Head coach Dave Joerger cried at his final playoff press gathering. 

This season remains more recoverable. Unlike Gasol, Adams will return. Unlike Conley, Morant still could. 

But Adams still won’t be back for Thursday against Golden State. Morant, the Grizzlies announced Wednesday, will miss at least four more games. “At least” seems significant.

Those flat and flaming wheels could still come flying off. 

Grizzlies Insider: Jaren Jackson Jr., other teammates voice support for Ja Morant

One day it will please us to remember even this? 

That might be true now of 2015-2016, where bit players such as Briante Weber or Xavier Munford might inspire a smile of recognition among longtime fans who suffered through it all. 

The late winter and early spring of this Grizzlies season seems unlikely to inspire any similar nostalgia down the line.