While acknowledging the pall of uncertainty from the sight of Ja Morant in a shoulder sling and coach Taylor Jenkins’ “we’ll know more in a couple of days” comments, we must ask: Was this the best Grizzlies weekend ever? 

Ok, so that’s too much. 

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Was it the best Grizzlies weekend of this season so far? 

Easy.

In taking down the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday and then the Phoenix Suns on Sunday, the Grizzlies won consecutive games for only the third time this season. They had a 2-0 weekend for the first time, in their eighth opportunity, and won both on the road, on the heels of a dispiriting home loss to Toronto last Wednesday.

But what made it even better were the particulars.

Friday night’s comeback win over LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Lakers was a kind of exorcism. Yes, a regular-season win doesn’t quite make up for a playoff loss. But the last time the Grizzlies had played that team in that building, in mid-November, they lost by 27. The time before that was Game 6 of last spring’s first round playoff series, when they were blown out by 40.

That’s the formula: Minus Morant, Grizzlies storm back to beat Suns

If beating the Lakers was arguably the win of the season so far, Sunday’s comeback win over the Suns was at least the best win the team’s had without Morant on the floor. 

Five thoughts from the weekend:

The new math

Heading into the weekend, I noted the math on the Grizzlies’ place in the standings, how they’d performed since Morant’s return from his 25-game NBA suspension and what the trajectory looked like. 

Let’s update. 

Going into the weekend, with 48 games to go, the Grizzlies were 5.5 games back of the Lakers for the final postseason spot. They now enter the week 4.5 games back with 46 to play.

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The Grizzlies are now 7-4 since Morant’s return (1-1 with Morant missing games in the stretch).

That would be a 52-win pace over a full season. Is it possible that the reconstituted Grizzlies can maintain that pace? Yes, but it’s probably a little on the optimistic side given the team’s very limited center situation. 

If the Grizzlies did maintain a 7-4 pace the rest of the way, they’d finish with 42 wins. Even at the previous 5-4 pace, after booking two more wins this weekend they’d be on a 39-win pace.

The current pace of the 10-seed Lakers?

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Forty wins. 

At 13-23, the Grizzlies still have an awful lot of ground to makeup, but this weekend has made things more interesting … provided Morant’s current injury isn’t more than a hiccup. 

Jaren Jackson Jr., carrying the load

If this probably wasn’t the Grizzlies’ best weekend ever, is it possible it was Jackson’s?

OK, so I’m not really going to do the research on that either. But it has to be a contender.

Jackson just averaged 30 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and two blocks on 65-57-88 shooting splits, in back-to-back road wins over teams the Grizzlies are chasing in the standings. 

I did note on social media Sunday night that Jackson’s performance against the Suns, in particular, had to be among his better career games. 

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Someone responded: His previous game was pretty good.

Point taken: Jackson actually scored more (31 to 28) on fewer shots (14 to 20) against the Lakers, added nine rebounds and three blocks, and did so against a matchup that’s tormented him in Davis. 

In those aforementioned two prior games against the Lakers? Jackson combined to shoot 6-of-28.

But I’m going to stand by the claim. A few of the all things considered:

Sunday night was only the 13th 20-point, 10-rebound game of Jackson’s career, and was the fourth-highest scoring of those. 

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Jackson notched a career-high six assists, which matches his combined total in the three higher-scoring 20-10 games. 

And, crucially, he carried the team. There was no Morant on Sunday. And no season-best, team-wide 3-point explosion of the kind Memphis rained down on the Lakers. 

In Jackson’s 32 minutes, the Grizzlies outscored the Suns by 25. In the 16 minutes he was on the bench, they were outscored by 19. 

The Grizzlies were down five when Jackson picked up his fourth foul, three minutes into the third quarter, and down 11 when Jenkins finally brought him back to start the fourth quarter. Jackson then played the full fourth, leading the team in points, rebounds and assists as the Grizzlies nearly doubled up the Suns (35-18) to come back and pull away.

After the game, Suns star Kevin Durant testified to the growth in Jackson’s offensive game this season. 

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Jackson entered the league more of a play finisher, and while his up-and-down 3-point shooting has been very up of late (46% in his past 10 games), his growth has been as a self-creator. 

His ball-handling ability has grown, and among frontcourt players leaguewide, only six – including Durant and recent MVPs Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid – are scoring more points per game on drives, per NBA tracking data.

Jackson’s also top 10 in the league in post scoring, though the numbers get low fast in that vanishing art. 

With more self-created scoring comes more defensive attention, and the single biggest growth area of Jackson’s game this season has probably come in what’s long been his biggest weakness: Passing, where Jackson’s meager assist rate has nearly doubled this season.

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There was nothing fancy in Jackson’s career-high six assists against the Suns. Rather, it was the exact thing Jackson volunteered as a personal key way back in training camp: recognizing double teams early and making the right, simple read. 

Those double-teams have become more frequent. Sometimes they’re triple-teams now:

Vince Williams Jr., everywhere

Speaking of career highs and career breakthroughs, two-way find Williams scored a career-best 19 against the Suns in what might have been his finest all-around game yet. 

But even on a night when he put points on the board, scoring was not Williams’ chief calling card. Thanks to former Grizzlies video coordinator Steve Jones for clipping up one of my favorite Grizzlies possessions of the season:

The Grizzlies were down two with under two minutes to play when they hit a go-ahead 3-pointer and then pulled away.

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Desmond Bane hit the shot. Jackson had the assist. The player of the possession: Williams. 

First, he doesn’t run the floor; he races, streaking past multiple defenders to get a shot at the rim. He misses, out-fights 7-foot Suns center Jusuf Nurkic for the rebound and kicks the ball out to Jackson for an open corner 3. When Jackson misses, Williams out-quicks Suns star Devin Booker to keep the play alive, popping the ball back out to Jackson, who finds Bane (that sixth assist) for the dagger. 

Williams’ physical abilities – his length and quickness and strength – are a prerequisite. But it’s his combination of effort and awareness that has him shaping up to be a special role player. 

He’s the kind of secondary figure who frequently makes “swing plays,” like this late second-quarter combo meal against the Suns:

Williams earned a sidekick spot alongside Jackson in the game’s walk-off interview, with Morant on the periphery, joking that the dynamic defensive duo are actually siblings:

Long-armed elite defenders, one in the frontcourt, one on the perimeter, both capable of knocking down open shots? Sounds like a good combo. 

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And, it turns out, of the 33 two-player combos that have logged at least 200 minutes for the Grizzlies this season, the Williams-Jackson pairing has easily the best results so far, the Grizzlies outscoring opponents by nearly six points per 100 possessions when Jackson and Williams share the floor. 

Williams is exactly the kind of role player I most love, and fits into a lineage of roughly similar types the Grizzlies have been gifted over the years. I’m overdue to write more about him, where he fits in that lineage and what his future with the team might hold. There was too much else to note from this weekend to do that now. But this particular Subject for Further Research is coming soon. 

Marcus Smart’s double showcase

Ahead of the weekend in this space, I wondered whether Williams, who pairs great defense without the need to hold the ball, might be a better fit than Smart in a starting lineup where Morant, Bane and Jackson will create most of the offense.

Williams’ spectacular play off the bench Sunday, after returning from a two-game injury absence, didn’t exactly detract from that notion. 

But, with Morant out, the Grizzlies didn’t have all of their Big 3 on Sunday, shifting Smart to point guard. And across both games Smart delivered a kind of overdue proof of concept on how he can fill diverse roles on the team. 

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As noted last week, Smart has been as advertised as a defensive disruptor and find-a-way-to-win late-game playmaker. 

This was on display in the fourth quarter against the Lakers:

And again against the Suns:

But with near career-low 3-point shooting and a career-high turnover rate, Smart had largely struggled in both of his projected offensive roles: playing off the ball alongside Morant and Bane and on the ball when filling in for Morant. 

Friday in Los Angeles was a showcase of the former, with Smart shooting 8-14 from 3-point range. 

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Don’t expect to see that too often, but Smart does have 27 career games making five or more 3-pointers, and that’s just in the regular season. He’s done it 10 times in the playoffs. 

Smart’s career 32% 3-point shooting isn’t good, but is meaningfully better than the 26% he was shooting for the Grizzlies before the weekend. Friday may not be a common sight, but it was a reminder that Smart is capable of better. 

Sunday in Phoenix was a showcase of Smart at point guard. 

He still had a lot of turnovers (five), but logged 38 minutes as the team’s only nominal point guard, scoring 25 points on 20 shots (a more reasonable 4-13 from 3), with six rebounds, eight assists and three steals.

Prior to this weekend, Smart’s time with the Grizzlies had been a mixed-bag at best, but it’s an experiment of sorts that needed more time to gel and more evidence to build before judgements were passed. That remains true, but these games added an awful lot of positive evidence to the case. 

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Going small

Another subject of speculation in this space ahead of the weekend was whether the Grizzlies would begin to lean into more lineups featuring Jackson and backup forward Santi Aldama, given the limitations of centers Bismack Biyombo and Xavier Tillman Sr.

I’m going to give myself partial credit at best on this front. 

The team stayed big against a Lakers team that has tended to bully them, with Biyombo and Tillman combining to soak up 43 of 48 minutes and Biyombo notching only his third double-digit rebound game since mid-November. 

Against the Suns, despite Nurkic gobbling up 19 rebounds, the Grizzlies played their centers only 29 minutes and not at all in the team’s closing stretch.

The recipient here was not Aldama, however. 

It was a rough weekend for the third-year forward, who went scoreless in nine minutes against the Lakers after Jenkins seemed to not like what he saw defensively and who missed six of seven 3-point attempts in 15 minutes against the Suns. 

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Aldama has so far not seized what seems to be a considerable opportunity before him. 

With the team’s stark limitations at center, Aldama disappointing and Williams emerging, five of the Grizzlies’ six best players right now are probably guards or small wings, with Bane and sharpshooter Luke Kennard, at 6-5, the tallest among them.

Add a somewhat resurgent Ziaire Williams (6-9 but light as meringue), who closed over Kennard in Phoenix, to the list and lineups that feature some quartet of those six guards, and wings surrounding Jackson are growing more common. 

It’s not ideal, but that can and will be addressed with returns to health and roster changes going into next season. For now, though, Vince Williams’ ability to rebound like a power forward, the stout Smart’s ability to guard them and Ziaire Williams’ ability to play above the rim all help make these lineups work.

One imagines the Grizzlies will keep turning to these small-ball lineups until Aldama forces his way into more minutes or the roster changes.