Just because it’s a coping mechanism doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

As Memphis Grizzlies fans have told themselves countless times since Ja Morant’s January 2024 shoulder injury ended the competitive hopes of an already sputtering 2023-2024 season, the most disappointing campaign in franchise history was not a fully lost cause. 

It came with at least a couple of silver linings: The dual emergence of GG Jackson II and Vince Williams Jr. 

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And the only serious drag so far on renewed optimism for the coming season is that fans will have to wait to see these new toys play in a more meaningful context. 

Jackson is likely out until December while recovering from summer foot surgery and Williams is almost certainly out to open the season while rehabbing from an eve-of-training-camp stress reaction. 

Bummer that it is, these absences shift the spotlight to a couple of prior additions.

Luke Kennard and Marcus Smart are veteran role players with elite skills, sought out precisely because franchise decision-makers believed each would augment the team’s core young stars and, as a result, raise the team’s ultimate ceiling. 

Though Kennard and Smart are ostensibly guards themselves, they were acquired in particular to ease the basketball lives of the Grizzlies’ starting backcourt, Ja Morant and Desmond Bane, albeit in nearly opposite ways. 

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Kennard’s 3-point shooting was meant to reduce opposing defensive attention on Morant and Bane, giving them more space to operate. Smart’s ability to guard top opposing scorers across multiple positions was meant to reduce the defensive burden on Morant and Bane. 

Kennard and Smart arrived via trade within six months of each other in the first half of 2023 and, more than a year later, they each remain a kind of unproven concept. 

The team could have easily pivoted from either this summer. 

The Grizzlies could have let Kennard leave in free agency after declining his $14.8 million option, signing a different player with their mid-level exception. Instead, they negotiated Kennard’s return on a smaller one-year deal.

Smart is under contract for roughly $42 million over the next two seasons. That’s no longer a bargain, but even after Smart’s injury-marred season, he would have been easy to deal. While it’s not clear what might have been available, one imagines that rather than bet on Zach Edey with the No. 9 pick in this summer’s draft, the Grizzlies could have packaged Smart with that pick, or a different one, to trade for a veteran center. 

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Even this month, there have been mild reports of the New York Knicks having interest in Smart. I wouldn’t make too much of that, but I do think it correctly suggests that Smart is someone who has value both on the court and on the trade market. 

Call it a double do-over. Given the opportunity to second guess their decisions on Kennard and Smart, the Grizzlies have instead chosen a second chance for both. 

What we know about the Smart and Kennard impact

The Grizzlies only got 20 games from Smart in his Grizzlies debut, and even that sample needs to be partitioned.

Smart’s first 11 appearances came early, during Morant’s absence, either starting at point guard alongside non-scoring wing Ziaire Williams or replacing Williams to make room for non-scoring point guard Jacob Gilyard. With a non-scoring center in either configuration, those lineups were an offensive disaster.

Smart’s next and final nine games came after Morant’s return, when he played more of the team’s imagined blend between backcourt and wing, on and off the ball, alongside better talent. 

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Smart shot better and turned the ball over less in the second set of games. 

Overall, amid the wreckage of the season, the Grizzlies were a little better on both ends of the court when Smart played. Among players to log at least 500 non-“garbage-time” minutes, per stats site Cleaning the Glass, Smart had the team’s best on-court/off-court numbers. 

Defensively, the Grizzlies played at a 90th percentile level across all of Smart’s minutes. And, for what it’s worth, the highly regarded metric Estimated Plus-Minus ranked Smart as the most effective per-minute perimeter defender in the league last season. 

Samples of Smart playing alongside any of the team’s stars last season produced similar results: bad offense, better defense, including lineups with Morant. All of these samples are quite small, especially those with Morant. 

To the degree you believe this evidence, and the results certainly match any reasonable eye test, the question going forward may be how much an Edey upgrade at center unlocks the offense. Otherwise, it raises a question not so much about Smart’s fit on the team as about his fit in the starting lineup.

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The sample’s a little bigger with Kennard, who’s logged 63 regular-season games since joining the Grizzlies, shooting 48% from 3-point range. I’d say he can’t keep doing that, but this is someone whose career 3-point percentage is 44% and he hasn’t been below that over a full season since 2020. So maybe he can?

As you would imagine with shooting that hot, Kennard’s had a big impact on the team’s offense. 

During his post-trade-deadline cameo in the spring of 2023, Kennard’s shooting overwhelmed his drag on team defense. Last season, it was quite the opposite. This see-saw effect is likely more a commentary on the surrounding talent than on Kennard’s own play. The Grizzlies’ offensive struggles were so profound last season that no one player could tip it. 

Kennard’s a shot-maker, not a shot-creator. So far, with the Grizzlies, he hasn’t been able to make otherwise bad offensive units good, but has been able to make otherwise good offensive units great. And when those good offense units are strong on defense, they’ve been able to more than withstand Kennard’s limitations.

Lineups featuring Morant and Kennard have been particularly lights-out whenever they’ve seen the floor. If something works, keep doing it until it doesn’t. 

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Given how oppositely lopsided their respective games are, you might think Kennard and Smart would function pretty well together. The evidence last season was the same as with pretty much any other Smart lineup (bad offense, good defense, small sample), but this bears watching. 

What roles are Smart and Kennard expected to play this season?

Because of real concerns about Smart’s offense, there might have been an argument this preseason to start Jackson or, more likely, Williams rather than Smart. 

The Jackson and Williams injuries have effectively ended that speculation, at least for now, and while you could mount an argument for Kennard to start, no one has done so, and I won’t be the first.

The Grizzlies traded for Smart last summer with the idea that he’d start alongside Morant, Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr., and that seems almost certainly what the team will do to open the season, provided all four are available. 

While Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins has not officially named a starting lineup, I asked him at training camp in Nashville whether that thinking on Smart had changed. 

“No, that’s still something that’s front of our mind,” said Jenkins. “I think (Smart) showed us a lot of good things when it became that three-headed monster of Ja, Des and Marcus in (December and) January.”

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And while I doubt the team’s marketing department gets intel from the coaching staff, this is the message the organization has been sending, circulating posed photos from media day of this quintet and using images of these five players together in a season-ticket promotion at this past weekend’s open practice. 

If Smart seems set to start, Kennard might be something like the sixth man to open the season. Given that the team’s projected starting lineup features only one player (Bane) with a career 3-point percentage above 35%, the Grizzlies may find themselves wanting Kennard on the floor early and often. 

If durability is a concern for the Grizzlies’ starting backcourt, it might be as much of one for this second-tier pairing. 

Kennard has only played 98 of 164 games the past two seasons. Smart has missed fewer than 20 games only once in his past five seasons. 

Next men up: Scotty Pippen Jr. and Jake LaRavia

Smart and Kennard were always going to play major roles. The more prominent trickle-down effect of the GG Jackson and Williams injuries is to open rotation roles for others.

Scotty Pippen Jr. seems next in line for minutes even if, for the moment, he’s not even on the main roster. 

When asked about Smart’s role last week, Jenkins hinted that Smart would start, but offered a cloudier picture on whether Smart would also soak up backup point guard minutes as bench players cycled in. 

“I like what I’m seeing from Scotty too. I think he’s doing a lot of great things (in that role),” said Jenkins. “Organizing the team, setting a tone with his defense. So I think we’ve got some optionality there.”

Pippen played well in a brief stint after joining the team last season and was arguably the best player at the Las Vegas Summer League. 

Both Pippen and lead executive Zach Kleiman suggested at media day that Pippen was on course to take the team’s now-vacant 14th main-roster spot, which has to be filled by the season’s second week. 

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There’s work to be done honing his playmaking, but Pippen is an athletic guard who attacks the paint and gets after it on defense. While 3-point shooting is often a tipping-point skill for perimeter players, Pippen has cited defense and decision-making as the keys to nailing down a nightly job. 

This will be Pippen’s age 24 season, and his time seems to be now. He knows that. 

“This is my first year going into a season feeling comfortable with a team,” said Pippen on the eve of training camp. “I feel like I have something to be excited about whether it’s the roster spot or just playing for a team that believes in me, teammates that trust me. Regardless, I’m just happy to be here.”

In theory, the team could add Pippen to Kennard, Brandon Clarke and Santi Aldama off the bench and stick with a nine-man rotation.

Odds are, though, the team will still go 10-deep. The next spot is not guaranteed, but it’s there to take for third-year forward Jake LaRavia.

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Both Smart and Kennard volunteered LaRavia, unprompted, as a player helping himself in the run-up to the season. 

Smart cited LaRavia on media day as best equipped to take on tough defensive assignments when Smart and Williams aren’t in the game. 

“He has the athleticism, the height, the strength. He’s just got to continue to build his confidence and know that he’s supposed to be here and he can guard anybody out there,” Smart said a few days later. 

“I think Jake had a really good camp. He’s ready to prove something and get out there and be a big piece for this team,” said Kennard. 

With the 6-foot-8 Jackson and the long-limbed 6-6 Williams unavailable to start the season, the Grizzlies are pretty small across the perimeter. At 6-7, LaRavia’s the biggest option available. After his end-of-season and summer play, LaRavia has some momentum and, for now, clear opportunity. To keep pushing through, the defensive effort is essential, but so is improving on his career 34% 3-point shooting. 

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LaRavia will have to earn this role, because even with Jackson and Williams out, the Grizzlies have other options. 

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There’s still Jitty.

The fan base seems to have grown less enchanted with John Konchar. That’ll happen when you’re losing, and when Konchar’s 3-point shooting falls off and he’s still struggling to average five points a game on a team desperate for scoring.

But this season’s team should offer a different context, and coaches know that Konchar works better alongside greater talent, where his low-usage, do-the-little-things style makes more sense. 

Jenkins made a point to bring up Konchar when talking about his options, citing Konchar’s “unique ability to play in different lineups, the possessions game and just the connective tissue he plays with on both sides of the floor.”

By “possessions game,” Jenkins means that Konchar tends to force more turnovers than he commits while being a net positive on the boards. Make open shots at a decent rate, and this profile fits nicely alongside teammates more adept at creating shots. 

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At the back end of the roster are a couple of second-round rookies with good-looking shooting strokes but questions about their athleticism. Also, they’re second-round rookies. 

At 6-7, Jaylen Wells is bigger than the 6-3 Cam Spencer, has the advantage of being on the main roster rather than on a two-way contract and faces fewer athletic questions. There should be no immediate expectations on this front, but Wells would be more than welcome to force his way into the mix.