Two weeks ago, the Grizzlies had their worst three-game stretch of the season, losing by 20 each time, twice on their home floor to move to 0-8 at FedExForum. 

Then, last week, they suddenly had their best three-game stretch, low bar that it may be: A home win (finally) against Utah, a first consecutive win at Dallas, and then a respectable single-digit road loss on a back-to-back against the starry Phoenix Suns. 

What changed?

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Was it a moment of reckoning in the wake of Marcus Smart’s sideline admonishment and subsequent player-led practice?

Was it the good fortune of facing the Jazz and Mavericks without each team’s best player?

Was it the season’s constant, desperate roster and rotation churn producing a couple of new solutions? 

All of the above. 

Perhaps Smart’s speech and the following practice were a combined catalyst, or maybe they were merely emblems of an imperiled team refocusing. Either way, the Grizzlies had volunteered frustration about their winless home record in the lead-up to Utah, then treated that game like the “must-win” you rarely see in November. 

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The Grizzlies will issue no apologies about catching teams short-handed. They’ve been forced to play every game that way. 

More interesting as we look forward is the roster and rotation churn, and the decisions that will flow from it. 

Seven Grizzlies were in the team’s rotation for all three games last week. 

Three of them are currently outside the team’s core 15-man roster. 

Starting center Bismack Biyombo is signed to a temporary 16th roster spot, which will disappear when Ja Morant returns from suspension in two weeks. 

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Scoring guard Jaylen Nowell, the first player off the bench in his fourth game for the Grizzlies and then a starter in his fifth, is signed via a hardship exception. The team signed Nowell to a second 10-day contract on Monday. They will not be allowed a third, even if the exception remains.

And small forward Vince Williams Jr., who filled up the box score at Dallas, is on one of the team’s three “two-way” contracts, which imposes limits on how many regular-season NBA games a player can log and precludes those players from appearing in the postseason.

As presently constituted, if this Grizzlies team were able to fight its way into the play-in tournament, none of this trio could be there, and adding any, much less all, to the currently full 15-man main roster would come with complication and cost. 

Bismack Biyombo

When the team signed Biyombo in the wake of Steven Adams’ decision to have season-ending surgery, it seemed likely he would slot in at backup center, pairing with Santi Aldama on second units and toggling with Jaren Jackson Jr. to keep a rim protector on the floor. Instead, Biyombo’s arrival coincided with an injury to then-starter Xavier Tillman Sr. 

Biyombo stepped into the suddenly open job and now seems a decent bet to keep it. 

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A decent bet isn’t a lock. Tillman has started playoff games for the Grizzlies, Aldama is probably the team’s second-best frontcourt player, and Biyombo’s regressed a little. After grabbing double-digit rebounds in his first four Grizzlies starts, Biyombo hasn’t done so again. 

But he’s been a defensive presence in the paint and has replaced at least some of the screening and offensive rebounding the team got from Adams, leading the team in both areas. And the soft-spoken Biyombo’s arrival has been a plus off the court as well.

With Adams out for the season and Brandon Clarke’s chances for an in-season return dicey at best, there’s probably no help coming at Biyombo’s position, unlike with Nowell or Williams on the perimeter. With the team still harboring postseason hopes, keeping Biyombo even after Morant’s return seems like a foregone conclusion. 

Jaylen Nowell

A four-year vet at age 24, Nowell had produced three useful seasons of bench scoring for the Minnesota Timberwolves, so it was a minor surprise when the offseason game of musical chairs left him without a seat. 

Nowell’s quick ascent in the Grizzlies’ pecking order was a by-product of many backcourt absences — Morant, Marcus Smart, Luke Kennard, and then Derrick Rose on the back-to-back in Phoenix — but also illustrated a hunger on the roster for Nowell’s skill set.

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Unlike all of the team’s remaining perimeter role players, Nowell combines decent size (6-foot-4) with individual shot-creation ability. 

In other words, Nowell has enough length, handle and athletic pop to get off jumpers in tight spaces and to get past defenders with the ball.

It may be that the Grizzlies have put so much effort into finding off-ball role players to play alongside their core trio that they left themselves short of on-ball creators. Nowell’s presence probably highlights that deficiency more than solves it. 

Nowell’s 19 points on 8-14 shooting at Dallas had fans developing firm, fast convictions on a player they’d probably barely noticed before. In Nowell’s other four appearances for the Grizzlies, he’s shot a combined 5-22. 

Those fans aren’t wrong, however, to note that Nowell’s skill set has helped even when the shots haven’t fallen. He’s a good addition to the roster, and would remain so. But where does Nowell slot when Morant, Smart, Kennard and Rose are all available? And does that warrant what it would cost to keep him? More on that in a bit, but first … 

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Vince Williams Jr. 

The fourth of five rookies acquired by the Grizzlies in the summer of 2022, Williams has looked the part of the classic “3-and-D” NBA wing since his first summer league game. 

It’s taken a while to get a real opportunity, but Williams has been seizing it of late, his high-impact 15 points, nine rebounds, three assists and two blocks off the bench at Dallas followed by 12 points and five boards off the bench against Phoenix. 

That’s one weekend of work, but there have been earlier hints: Eight rebounds in the win over the Jazz, a combo meal of two 3-pointers and two blocks in the near-win against Boston, 12 points and three blocks in an earlier loss to Utah. 

The 23-year-old Williams barely played as a rookie. He only logged 15 games in the G League, compared to 30 by fellow two-way player Kenneth Lofton Jr. Instead, Williams stuck around with the parent club but didn’t play for them either, appearing in only 15 NBA games and getting to double-digit minutes only twice. 

Given the meager sample, what’s to be believed about his recent play? 

I say believe in the defense and activity. 

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Among the other young wings playing above him, Ziaire Williams is quick and David Roddy is strong. Jake LaRavia and John Konchar aren’t quite either. 

Vince Williams Jr. is both. 

With a sturdy frame, quick feet and a seven-foot wingspan, Williams has the classic physical profile of an NBA perimeter stopper, and also seems to have the demeanor. 

Williams’ on-ball defense, off-ball activity, and rebounding have all been consistent from college to the G League to his NBA opportunities. 

Williams currently has the third-best block rate on the team, behind big men Jackson and Biyombo. He also has the third-best deflection rate, behind guards Jacob Gilyard and Smart. And he has the best defensive rebound rate, ahead of everyone. 

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The samples are small and the rates may regress, but I’d bet these all remain strengths. Like departed bench anchors Kyle Anderson and De’Anthony Melton, Williams’ defense and rebounding seem reliable, something to depend on at a position where the Grizzlies have struggled to find anything repeatable. 

If anything, Williams’ game is akin to a bigger, less explosive Melton. But as with Melton before him, it’s offense that’s the question. 

Unlike Nowell, Williams doesn’t seem to have much in the way of guard skills. The question is how reliable the “3” part of “3-and-D” becomes. 

Williams shot 5-12 from long-range in his rotation breakthrough last week, but the longer track record suggests caution. Williams is at 24% on a total of 55 NBA 3-point attempts. He’s at 33% on 84 G League attempts. He began his college career at Virginia Commonwealth as a non-shooter but shot 40% on 272 attempts from the college line across his junior and senior seasons. 

There’s reason for hope on this front, but not certainty.

But Williams’ high-motor, high-defense, limited offense game might play even better once Morant and Kennard are back in the mix to boost scoring.

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Decisions to make

As a starter at a position where the need won’t wane, Biyombo is more important than Nowell. With a decision on his future due soon, he’s more pressing than Williams, who could remain on his two-way deal all season. 

The Grizzlies have one realistic path to clear a roster spot without needing to make a trade or buy out guaranteed salary for the 2024-2025 season: Waiving Lofton, whose contract next season is non-guaranteed.

That would be unfortunate for a developmental player who was the G League’s Rookie of the Year last year. But early season roster chaos has not proven to be a ladder for Lofton, who has topped 15 minutes only once this season and has been out of the rotation entirely the past six games. 

Waiving Lofton to keep Biyombo feels like a default scenario waiting to be enacted. 

If so, the Grizzlies face a decision on Nowell without a clear path to keep him. Freeing up a second spot without a trade would mean cutting another player fully under contract for next season, thus adding dead money to the books in a season where the team should be better able to compete but might also be moving into luxury tax territory.

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Cutting LaRavia would mean $3.4 million of dead money next season. Cutting Ziaire Williams would mean $6.1 million. Cutting Konchar would mean swallowing $18.5 million over three seasons. 

The Grizzlies aren’t doing that. Any of it. And while a trade could potentially open up a roster spot or reduce the cost of creating one, to retain Nowell it would have to happen in the next two weeks, which seems unlikely. 

But the other complication in opening up a second roster spot to keep Nowell: Opening up one for Vince Williams Jr. is probably more important. 

The Grizzlies don’t need to do anything to keep Williams for the rest of the season. They can keep him on this two-way and make him a restricted free agent next summer. But if Williams continues to make a strong case for a rotation spot, the team likely won’t want to stay on that path.

As a two-way player, Williams can only be on the active roster for 50 games, and he seems to have already used up 19 of those, appearing on the active roster even in games he hasn’t played. As mentioned before, he would not be eligible for the postseason. 

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If Williams builds on his current momentum and firmly passes some of the team’s other young wings, the Grizzlies will likely want him on the active roster for more than 50 games this season and will want to keep the option of using Williams in the postseason alive. Perhaps most of all, they may want to lock him up on a multi-year deal ahead of free agency. 

Efforts to open up a spot for Nowell now could make it more difficult to open up one for Williams later, and the team is likely to prioritize Williams. 

None of these decisions are likely to come until there’s more pressure to make them. Plans sometimes change, as the plan to sign Shaq Harrison for the 16th spot changed to signing Biyombo once Adams was unavailable.

But, for now, the most likely scenario is that the Grizzlies will make a move to keep Biyombo once Morant returns, reluctantly let Nowell go when his second 10-day contract is up, and keep a close eye on Williams’ progress, with the notion of finding a way to move Williams up to the main roster after February’s trade deadline. 

Those are most likely scenarios, not certain ones. 

If this season has taught us anything, it’s that plans and assumptions can change. Stay tuned.