ODDBALL - Ja Morant and the Grizzlies Lose Their Head (Coach)

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Speaker 3 Welcome to Oddball. I'm Amino Hassan.
That over there is Izzy Gutierrez. This is the show where we debate whether Cooper Cooper flag is going to be a bigger deal than Bronnie James.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 All the clicks, all the clicks.

Speaker 3 But seriously, this show is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours.

Speaker 3 Izzy, we had big stuff happen and go down this week. Big stuff.

Speaker 3 Taylor Jenkins, head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies, got let go

Speaker 3 Friday. It's only nine games left in the season.
He's the all-time winningest coach in Grizzlies history. They had a big showdown with the Lakers, with whom they're fighting for the four seed against.

Speaker 3 And they kicked them out. They told them to hit the pavement.
Izzy, how surprised were you by the timing? I think him getting five, not as surprising as the timing.

Speaker 4 Definitely not. I think I was sort of still getting over the Lakers and Bulls just taking all the madness from March or themselves with the finish of that game.

Speaker 4 And then I'm sort of getting the Taylor Jenkins news. And it's just,

Speaker 4 it's weird for a few reasons. One, you've seen over the course of these six years with this core of players, what they can be when they're healthy and they look good, right?

Speaker 4 Like they're not 100% healthy. Obviously, Ja has missed like 30 games.

Speaker 4 They have been significantly worse since the all-star break.

Speaker 4 And I think when you've had a coach for as long as he's been there, when you've seen the ups, you've seen the downs, you kind of notice when it's not going to cycle back to be a, you know, a winning team again, to be at their peak.

Speaker 4 And if you look at their top six guys really their top seven guys these days if you include scotty pippen jr every single one of them have only known one coach and that's taylor jenkins except for triple j his first year he had jb bickerstaff everybody else only taylor jenkins so you kind of get the feeling of when hey this might turn around maybe they'll turn it up right for the right before the playoffs And when you think about, you know, John Morant reportedly not being in love with the offense and seeing how they've fallen off the last couple of weeks or a few weeks, especially defensively, which is the place where you look at mostly where guys are getting coached up.

Speaker 4 When you look at it, it kind of doesn't seem so crazy.

Speaker 4 Like you're going to an assistant coach that might have a different version of the offense you're already running, and maybe it'll be the best, maybe it'll be the honeymoon period during the playoffs.

Speaker 4 And you, you know, you get the best of this team because it didn't seem like they were going to go much further than they'd already gone with Taylor Jenkins.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like

Speaker 3 is the case with a lot of these firings, you just gave a very compelling argument as to why he got let go. And I'm saying, cool.
Yeah, all that makes sense. My big takeaway is like, why now?

Speaker 3 Why so late in the season? It's funny. We got

Speaker 3 a statement from Zach Kleinman, who's the head of basketball decision making over there. And his statement was something along the lines of like, yeah, we're all about urgency around here.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, where was this urgency at the all-star break? Urgency is a core principle of ours. Where was urgency at the all-star break?

Speaker 3 Where was urgency the first couple of weeks after the all-star break? Where was urgency pretty much any time to give your new head coach time to figure things out?

Speaker 3 Because to do it now, to drop a bomb in the middle of a heated race as we're going to a Western Conference playoffs, let's face it, it's not going to be easy regardless of what seed you're in.

Speaker 3 Like, I just don't understand why I didn't just let him play the season out. If you had drothers that, oh man, we could win a championship with the right coach, then where were those brothers earlier?

Speaker 3 Here's another urgency slash timing question for you, Izzy. They fired their assistant coaches last offseason.

Speaker 3 They brought in a whole new assistant coaching staff, which by the way, they did not consult Taylor Jenkins on. You know what we call that? The old setting the table special.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'm going to get you about it here. First things first, let me get rid of all your confidants.
Let me hire a bunch of dudes that you don't know.

Speaker 4 but that also helps out with the timeline though uh i mean right

Speaker 4 sort of explaining it right because it's like hey here's your chance we need to know what this is going to look like and as they got further into the season looked worse and worse like i don't know from the outside looking and i don't know necessarily who was a taylor jenkins guy and who wasn't but just based on the quotes seemed like jaron jackson jr was definitely one but john morant certainly was not seemed like he got out of bed he said he was in bed saw the quote, huh?

Speaker 4 Surprised me. That's pretty much was the extent of his quote.
Not, hey, I really love that guy.

Speaker 3 So this is the part where it gets really complicated, right?

Speaker 3 Because part of what they did to him, Taylor Jenkins, in giving him this new staff, they also told the new staff, hey, you guys are going to come up with the offense.

Speaker 3 Wait, what? Like, okay, so your head coach isn't even going to get to call what offense we're running? To me, this is NBA cowardice at its best. Just fire the guy.

Speaker 3 You don't like him. You don't like the offense he runs.
You think you could do fire him. Why are you going to wait? Why are you going to wait this long?

Speaker 3 It happens so many times where I see these teams hem and haul. It's like when

Speaker 3 another firing Hall of Famer, when the Suns fired Earl Watson two weeks into the season, I said, you had all offseason where you had the draft, you had free agency, you had the offseason.

Speaker 3 You had, before we went to camp and foremost, we had all a camp. At no point were you like, I don't think this is the guy.
Yeah, you figured that out two weeks in. Same thing here.

Speaker 3 You had whatever inkling you had when you fired his assistants. Then you let him go this whole time.
You're like, I don't know, maybe he could turn it around.

Speaker 3 But now you figured out he can't turn it around in time. In time for what? For y'all to have the same result anyway.
If it's the same result, anyway.

Speaker 3 Let him have the dignity of finishing what he started. And like I said, I'll go back to if you think he's good enough to be your coach, let him pick his assistants.

Speaker 3 And if the result isn't right, then you fire a man. You fire all of them.

Speaker 4 Let me say this, though. Whoever came up with the offense, I believe it was one of the coaches he was fired with just now.

Speaker 4 It came up, he came up with it as a model after a Division III school. Listen, man, if you're telling me, if I'm an NBA front office decision maker, and you are telling me you're going to devise

Speaker 4 an offense based on something that you saw with Division III something or other, no, thank you, man. I don't want any of that.

Speaker 4 Not only do I not think it's going to work, but you're going to tell your players that and they're going to be like, why, why do we need some Division III gimmicky offense?

Speaker 4 And just to answer your last question there, in terms of like, what does it mean?

Speaker 4 Like, if they get the best out of their team with this new assistant code or with this new coach, what's that going to mean? Is that going to mean title contention?

Speaker 4 Not necessarily, but if they make a Western Conference finals, if they, you know, go to a game seven in a second round, as opposed to flaming out in the first round, which a lot of people assume they might have done under Taylor Jenkins, that's enough confirmation for them that they made the right move.

Speaker 4 I'm not saying that that's what's going to happen, but this isn't one of those championship or bust type of scenarios.

Speaker 4 It's let's just see in these playoffs because we know what it looked like under Taylor. Let's see what it looks like with this guy.

Speaker 3 So, okay, so let's talk a little bit about this guy, right? This guy being the new head coach, Tuomas Isalo. He's finished.

Speaker 3 This was his first year in the NBA on an NBA bench in any capacity, right? This year here.

Speaker 3 He's been a successful coach in Europe, albeit tempered success. And what I mean by that is he's never coached in like one of the elite leagues like Spain or Turkey, and he's never won one of those.

Speaker 3 Or in the Euro League. He's been a Euro Cup champion, which is the second division behind Euro League as far as pass the continent.

Speaker 3 He's been a Champions League champion, which is very different from Euro League. But my point is, the guy comes with very limited,

Speaker 3 with zero NBA history beyond this season, and very limited high-level international experience.

Speaker 3 And what I mean by that is when players see a coach or with a coach for the first time, and this guy hasn't been around the league, right? So guys will do a lot of, yo, you know, this guy?

Speaker 3 Oh, let's see, he coached in France. Did you, were you playing in France with him?

Speaker 3 And so that's a lot, a lot of word of mouth goes there. Again, I'm not knocking the guy as a coach.
I really don't know much other than looking at his resume.

Speaker 3 but what i'm telling you is historically nba players don't trust outsiders they don't if you are an outsider you better have a like a laundry list of connects and people who know you who can vouch for you where they'd be like oh no man i he was my assistant down in san antonio that dude's great he knows his stuff he's always whatever oh man that was my guy in milwaukee man he used to work out anytime of night i would call him he'd come out work out and this guy was always coming with film and stuff like that like or yeah i played against him in such and such or such and such.

Speaker 3 When you are someone who doesn't have any of those things, and then you come in and you say, guys,

Speaker 3 I've got this new offense for you. It's based on a Division III school.

Speaker 3 Oh, by the way, all those pick and rolls you love to run, John Morant, we're not running them no more, which is, again, an ongoing storyline. This is a quote from Isalo after he got the job.

Speaker 3 It was a big surprise. And the last 24 hours has been quite a scramble here trying to to get myself and everybody organized.

Speaker 3 Izzy, if it's one thing I know about the NBA,

Speaker 3 they never fire a coach without having an idea who the next guy is going to be. And the next guy, it's going to be rarely, I won't say never,

Speaker 3 rarely has zero clue what's about to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, might I introduce you to?

Speaker 3 The dagger.

Speaker 3 Well, I'm trying to run this. I'm giving him the offense because he just don't like it or you don't know how to run it the way I draw it up.

Speaker 3 I mean, if I drew it up, I was calling the shots, I would have called this. The different lineups I would have done like, and then it's like, hey, we fired head coach, we want you to be

Speaker 3 me? I was just tinkling in hypotheticals. I didn't know anything.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 I got to get organized. Well, what is this? My handy-dandy book of plays that I've already all thought out of.

Speaker 4 Well, and the other thing is, is like the idea, you're right. The idea of that offense was they weren't running as many pick and rolls.

Speaker 4 Even though like somebody like Zach Eady drafted number nine, he says out loud, hey, I love pick and roll offense. And then they do less of it, right?

Speaker 4 And, you know, the idea is that they draft him so they can punish small ball teams. Instead, they had to just take them out and do the traditional thing.

Speaker 4 It doesn't seem like they were aligned on a lot of things. And so I wonder if it was something of, you know, they were just waiting for this opportunity, right?

Speaker 4 Because they've been, you know, they've been up and down all season long. They've been dancing around the two seat for a a while.
Maybe it's now they're just like, all right, we've seen enough.

Speaker 4 It was never going to work. You're not doing what we asked you to do anyway.
Let's, let's use this assistant coach. He might put a couple new wrinkles in the offense.

Speaker 4 And so people won't complain as much.

Speaker 3 But yeah, you weren't doing what we asked anyway. Wait about the new wrinkles.
It's his offense.

Speaker 3 He's the mastermind. Him and the other dude who got, by the way, there's an assistant who got fired.
That's the funny thing. He's like, I just got here.
How's this my fault?

Speaker 3 Again, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not arguing for or against any any of these individuals.

Speaker 3 I'm just saying when you are an NBA organization, there is a way, there is a protocol you follow when you make these kinds of changes in power.

Speaker 3 And when you don't follow them, you might think like you're doing people

Speaker 3 a solid, but it's the opposite. You're putting them in quite the awkward predicament where they got to answer a bunch of questions that they may not necessarily have answers to.

Speaker 3 Quick question before we move on off of this, Izzy, what do you think this means for Ja long term? Remember, Howard Beck wrote this thing about Ja might be the next superstar on the move.

Speaker 3 And the Gruisers came out with a very flowery statement about, oh my God, everyone hates us because we're Memphis, but that's not going to happen. And nothing's going to da, da, da.

Speaker 3 And here they are showing their ass in the most.

Speaker 3 small market country bumpkin ass kind of way. So what does all this mean for Ja, Izzy?

Speaker 4 I don't think this puts him in like the coach killer category because again, he's had six years with Taylor.

Speaker 4 I think if anything was going to sort of force him out of Memphis, it was last year and it was everything around that. And so I don't know if this in itself is that telling.

Speaker 4 I do, I will say that in the games that he missed, they were basically hovering above 500.

Speaker 4 And so I don't think that is very encouraging if you're the Grizzlies and say, hey, we can move on from Jaw whenever we want. I still think they consider him and Triple J as franchise cornerstones.

Speaker 3 All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, are the bad boys

Speaker 3 coming back to play?

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Speaker 3 Welcome back to Oddball. All right, Sunday night, we had a matchup between Minnesota and Detroit that ended in fisticuffs.
That's right. We don't see that too often.

Speaker 3 Guys, old-fashioned manhandling each other, grabbing each other, shoving each other, getting each other's faces uh it was nas reed followed by ron holland and then dante di vincenzo jumped in and and it all became turned into a

Speaker 4 a scuffle a brouhaha a skirmish or as izzy heard from someone a squirmish yeah let's get this out of the way real quick because somebody uh on the reels today i saw called it a squirmish and i said to myself oh wait a second it's always called a skirmish but is it spelled squirmish s-q-u-i and so i did all the looking up and it was like no, people just sometimes people do spell it squirmish, but pronounce it skirmish.

Speaker 4 And apparently that's allowed because it's like a nonce word or something. I don't know, but just know it's pronounced skirmish no matter how you spell it.

Speaker 3 And Izzy, these are the same people who brought you loser, L-O-O-S-E-R.

Speaker 4 Loser, yes.

Speaker 3 Seven people got ejected, five players and two coaches.

Speaker 3 Let's get to the nitty-gritty of all of this, the real stuff which is does this signify anything for the pistons that they're not gonna take from anybody

Speaker 4 they already were this team and i'll tell you it's just because of isaiah stewart in my opinion beef stew as they call him uh because if you remember back when they played the warriors recently he actually got steph curry to do like a double take like and stare down call him

Speaker 3 Right. Right.

Speaker 4 There's not that many people that can do that and say the right things to Steph Curry or even want to, you know, poke the bear, if you will. And this one, it wasn't even his fight, really.

Speaker 4 He just came in. And if you show that image of him, like he left the floor, like pointing at his Detroit jersey, like saying, this is us, like do not mess with us.

Speaker 4 And I do think that this whole idea that they are this, you know, young, lovable team, that's great.

Speaker 3 But this Isaiah Stewart tells me.

Speaker 4 that they're tough and maybe the bad boys are back.

Speaker 3 No, no. I know you're in.

Speaker 3 Yeah, why are you stopping short of what you said earlier off camera?

Speaker 3 Same thing.

Speaker 4 They could be a contender in the Eastern Conference. Like they

Speaker 4 could be young, the combination of young and dumb enough and tough enough to surprise somebody. Because let's think about it for a second.
You're the Boston Celtics, right?

Speaker 4 Who did the Boston Celtics really beat in the Eastern Conference last year?

Speaker 3 I'll help you out. Nobody, okay?

Speaker 4 Nobody. So if they run into a tough opponent in the second round that's pushing back on them and can score the way this Pistons teams can score, I don't know.
I think they got shot.

Speaker 3 No. Yeah, I can't believe you're.
Yeah, you think they're young and dumb enough to believe it. I can't believe you're dumb enough to believe this.

Speaker 3 Izzy, a couple of things going on. So number one, we all, the generally accepted definition for contender is, can you make it to the conference finals, right? Can you be in the NBA's final four?

Speaker 3 In the East, you got to beat one of two teams to get to the conference finals. Either the Cavs or the Celtics.

Speaker 3 There's no way you can avoid it, barring everybody getting like, you know, malaria or something and missing time. And as a result, you waltz through kind of like the Celtics did last year.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 this team is nowhere near able to compete with either of those teams. What's missing? And what's missing? How about being to the playoffs before?

Speaker 3 Just a little thing called experience. Just experience.
Okay. Yeah, like, you got to trust Tim Hardaway Jr.
and Malik Beasley, Tobias Harris to be like the leaders of this thing.

Speaker 3 Come with me, guys that have never been anywhere near meaningful basketball before. I'll show you the way.
That's not.

Speaker 4 It reminds me of the team of the Dwayne Wade's rookie year, where he was the star, even though I didn't really know it as much.

Speaker 4 Akade is leading the way, and it's just a quality group around him that can, you know, play today's basketball.

Speaker 3 Didn't they lose that heat team lose in the first round? Second round.

Speaker 4 Second round to the Indiana Pacers in six games. And that was a Pacers team team that was supposed to go far in those playoffs.
I'm not saying that that team was a contender necessarily.

Speaker 4 I'm just saying it reminds me of that team. And if they would have beat the Pacers, wouldn't have been that crazy.

Speaker 3 Oh, and they would have beat the Pacers. Okay, woulda, coulda, shoulda is what we're doing over here.

Speaker 3 Okay, so if I gave you which team in the East has the best chance of knocking off one of the top two?

Speaker 4 I mean, if they're completely healthy, I'm going to say the Knicks, because as you're, as you said, they've been there. We've seen it happen.

Speaker 4 But Pistons are right there, if not overtaking them, if you just look at the last half of the season, Knicks, Pacers, Bucs, I have them all better than the Pistons in terms of playoffs.

Speaker 3 But the Pistons are getting there. They're getting there.
Okay. All right.
Let's do this. Let's play a little game called Centel or Central.
Let's start with a sound bite and I'll explain.

Speaker 3 I was brushing my teeth and all my friends called me. It was like, yo, is this real? Is this real?

Speaker 3 It was like, Coach Jenkins got fired. And my first half was like, they probably saw like NBA Centel or something.

Speaker 3 All right, so that was GG Jackson of the Memphis Grizzlies. Izzy, he's explaining to the people who don't know that there's a parody site.

Speaker 3 There's a, hold on, there's an aggregator site called NBA Central. All they do is follow all the newsbreakers and then they repurpose their stuff into their own tweets.

Speaker 3 Well, in the last year or so, there's this web, this thread called NBA Centel. So it's a misspelling of central.
And they do parodies of these kind of missives.

Speaker 3 And for some reason, people fall for it every single time, even though

Speaker 4 they do a great job with it.

Speaker 3 Cause I've gotten it several times. Well, twice.
Okay. All right, whatever.
All right. So we played this before.

Speaker 3 So what we'll do is we show a real tweet that's been posted by either Central or Centel.

Speaker 3 Let's play. All right.
First one up. What do we got? Says, report Draymond Green called Isaiah Stewart and advisor to try and direct his energy toward the wolves center next time.

Speaker 3 Izzy, is this central or centel?

Speaker 4 I mean, anything that involves Draymond Green is a possibility.

Speaker 4 It feels like Centel next time, because I don't think he is purposely this time, because I don't think he is purposely going after Rudy Gobert by proxy at this point.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, I'm going to go Centel on this one.

Speaker 3 The moment I said he called Isaiah Stewart, I knew it was Centel. Give it to me.
What is it? Yeah, it's Centaur. Come on, guys.

Speaker 3 Come on. People are falling for stuff like this.
It's the incredible part. All right.
Second one

Speaker 3 we got here. Doc Rivers says he doesn't get enough credit for winning three games in the playoff series where he blew 3-1 leads, saying, Quote, no one tells a real story, and I'm fine with that.

Speaker 3 It's unfair in some ways. I don't get enough credit for getting the three wins.
I get credit for losing. I always say, what if we had lost to Houston in six? No one cares.

Speaker 3 One of the things I'm proud of is we've never been swept. All the coaches have been swept in the playoffs.
My team's achieve. A lot of them overachieve, and I'm very proud of that.

Speaker 3 Izzy, is this a real quote or is it Centel?

Speaker 4 It feels like it should be fake, but I've heard Doc Rivers say this or seen him say this now, not once, but twice, which is, I mean, it's odd that he's going to hang up a banner that says never been swept.

Speaker 4 I think that was, that's something that Brock probably should look into when he retires.

Speaker 3 But man, like the, I guess,

Speaker 4 just inability, the lack of awareness here to say this again, not just once, but twice, because he's been, he's talked about this before.

Speaker 4 It's a little embarrassing. And yeah, I think if you go into Doc Rivers' impression, it's probably the best way to answer this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's crazy because, yeah, I did say this years ago when I was in Philly when we blew a 3-1 lead there. I said, hey, in order to pull a 3-1 lead, you got to be good enough to get a 3-1 lead.

Speaker 3 And I agree with him. But yes, this is a real quote.
Said it multiple times. And here's another tell.
If you're wondering whether it's Centel or Central, Centel never has that much text.

Speaker 1 That's way too much text. True.

Speaker 3 Way too much text.

Speaker 4 Did I tell you which one? You know, the first one I got got with, right? Which is the quote from Anthony Edwards. It said, feels like Julius Randers, Julius Randle's playing in jeans.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 That one seemed pretty real.

Speaker 3 I got got on that one. All right.
Let's get another one up here. It says, Bronnie James on why LeBron James should win MVP.
I grew up in an era where the MVP always goes to the best player in the NBA.

Speaker 3 Now, this, ladies and gentlemen, this is a tough one because

Speaker 3 everything in me, Izzy, says. There's no chance Bronny would even chime in on this.
But if he were to chime in, I think that's what he would say. What do you think, Izzy? Well, I mean,

Speaker 4 he's, if he were to chime in and he did say that, he would be probably lying, right?

Speaker 4 Because he grew up when his dad was winning MVPs and there's a couple of them that people think, uh, a couple more that people think should have gone to him and shouldn't have gone to somebody else like Derek Rose.

Speaker 4 And so, yeah, he didn't grow up in an era where the best pert player got the MVP. So I'm going to say this is Centel.
I think Bronny would have been all over the place if he said this.

Speaker 3 yeah if it's not going crazy viral you probably didn't have it when it's this is i'm trying this is me doing the will farrell meme where he's super pumped but not doing it very well i need to get a rope it's time to play hot streak hot streak is presented by draft kings draft kings the crown is yours this is the game where me and izzy pick which game and the line off of the draft kings sportsbook and we try to figure out how many in a row we can get now we had a nice little streak and then it got broken off but last week we picked the clippers plus three and a half versus the Knicks.

Speaker 3 Well, the Clippers won by 13 points. That was a great pick by us.
That means we're back on 1-0. We got to start somewhere with a streak.
So let's stay hot.

Speaker 3 Here are some of the games we could choose from. We've got Rockets at Lakers.
The Rockets are three games ahead of the Lakers in the standings. The Lakers are 5-5 in their last 10.

Speaker 3 Rockets are coming off of a collacking of the Suns. Yeah.

Speaker 3 We've got Celtics minus five at Grizzlies. The Grizzlies are fresh off of firing their coach, and they lost on Saturday against the Lakers.

Speaker 3 The Grizz also need every win they can to stay out of the play. And

Speaker 3 didn't think that was an issue, but now it is. And we've got Bulls at Thunder.
Thunder, our 15-point favorites. Bulls have been red hot for the month of March, which is nine and five.

Speaker 3 Not really red hot, but red hot for them. Thunder have already clinched the number one seed out West Izzy.
I give you all of those games. Which one intrigues you the most?

Speaker 4 I like two teams. I like the Bulls, and I think I like the Rockets.

Speaker 4 But both shocking. The Bulls, I think, just staying close within 15, even if they're getting blown out, might be able to score some points and just kind of keep it close.

Speaker 4 I think Rockets, Lakers, I know the Rockets are on a back-to-back here and the Lakers are desperate, but the Rockets have just been cleaning up and the defense has been spectacular.

Speaker 4 I don't see the Lakers doing much with that defense.

Speaker 3 I'm looking at Thunder Bulls. The Bulls have been a lot better.
The Thunder.

Speaker 3 have had some close ones. Now, I know Jalen Williams and Chet Holgram missed a couple of those games, but the combination of they have it locked in and the Bulls playing well.
And plus 15 is so big.

Speaker 3 I feel like you got to go Bulls here, right?

Speaker 4 All right. Let's put our money on the Chicago Bulls.

Speaker 3 All right. Bulls plus 15.
Yeah. Well, it's a new day ever since the banners got damaged.
That's going to do it for us here at Oddball.

Speaker 3 Izzy. Michael Jordan called.

Speaker 1 He said, I'm still the greatest player of all time.

Speaker 3 Lies.