The Results Have To Matter At Some Point

Why Taylor Jenkins caught a career-deadly stray for other mistakes

Back before Joel Embiid’s knee issues, before Embiid was even drafted, before the days of not having a point guard on the roster, before Sam Hinkie even, “Trust The Process” was a good philosophy at its core, used in sports and business and all manner of work-related endeavors.

I connect very strongly with this idea because if you do everything you can and things don’t work out, that doesn’t mean you chose the wrong path, and if you do everything wrong and succeed, that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you. ¹

As time wore on, we saw fewer bad front offices. Fans will think now we have bad front offices and kids, let me tell you about the halcyon days of the truly terrible general managers in the mid-2000s, gambling top-10 picks on has-been vets. Today is nothing like that. ²

More front offices now assess things the right way. They’re committed to a “process” to build “the program” while installing “a culture.” And all of that is very real and has tangible benefits when it goes right. ³

But we’ve officially reached a point where "process over results” has gone too far.

Taylor Jenkins was fired Friday with the Grizzlies at 44-30, seven wins above .500⁴, 4th place in the Western Conference. They had a top-10 offense and defense, schedule-adjusted per DunksAndThrees.com.

“Ah!”, Grizzlies fans who wanted Jenkins gone would say, “the team had spiraled for months, and they were 11-20 vs. teams over .500. They couldn’t beat anyone!”

I have specific arguments with both of these ideas, but I want to start broader.

WINS HAVE TO MATTER

I was at Nuggets-Jazz Friday after Jenkins was fired, and both Michael Malone and Will Hardy did what you would expect from fellow coaches: they expressed frustration and flabbergast at Jenkins's firing.

But Will Hardy asked a question that is worth considering. He said, “I don’t know what the bar is anymore.”

There have been coaches who pulled teams over .500 who were clearly not good coaches. Vinny DelNegro is a really easy one to go back to.⁵

But to go seven games over .500 with the good numbers underlying it is something else. The circumstances of the situation in Memphis particularly bother me because, effectively, Jenkins was fired after meddling from the front office with the coaching staff did not result in the changes it wanted. He caught a stray.

On some level, even if you don’t like how Zach Edey wasn’t utilized enough,⁶ even if you think the players have tuned out Jenkins and the sideline altercation between Santi Aldama and Bane was indicative of that, even if you blame Jenkins somehow for the defensive slide⁷, you’re still left with this problem: you still won at an elite level.

The Grizzlies were not a dead-even team in net rating that was skating by on clutch wins. They were good. This was a good team.

“It wasn’t good enough!”

So the bar is considered to be title-contention. I get it, they loaded up after last year’s injury and suspension disaster. They put resources into this team to compete for a title and they are short.

The Grizzlies aren’t the only teams dealing with this feeling. Denver (3rd in the West), Knicks (3rd in the East), the Lakers before The Trade (who were still 2nd in the West), and Milwaukee (6th in the East) all fit this category of teams who have had good years, not bad years, and feel frustrated by how far they are from the top.

Most of that is because the top is so much better than everyone else. The top two teams in each conference are a combined 46-24 against teams that have a 60% winning percentage or better at the time of the matchup. The rest of the league is 197-360 (35%). Even teams over .500 that aren’t in that top four group are 84-119 (41%).

The Thunder, Cavaliers, Rockets, and Celtics have just been elite vs. those teams this season.⁸

If you look back through NBA history, you’re going to notice two things about performance vs. “good” teams (teams over .500): very few teams are above .500 against those good teams, and those teams are usually the title contenders.

So no, the Grizzlies were not title contenders, and that was the hope.

The reaction to that should be, “Man, that’s a shame. We definitely have to shake up the roster and our approach as we continue to find the best set of circumstances to compete at the level we believe we should. We’re still obviously a very good team.”

The reaction should not be, “We suck. Let’s have our very good coach, who was very responsible for much of our success in this era, take the bullet.”⁹

Failure at the highest level just can’t mean change is necessary, in part because you run the risk of compromising a good element of what you’re trying to put together. For seven years, I’ve been defending Michael Malone in Denver, not based on his considerable and wide-ranging levels of success and acumen, but instead on a simple premise: Who can you get that you know is going to be better?

Jenkins contributed to success and did so at a high level. It wasn’t just the development of the young guys or the overall performance through the metrics.

They won games! That’s incredibly hard to do in the NBA!

There is no amount of process-oriented scrutiny that can lead you to the conclusion that this needed to occur. Teams have tuned out coaches and gone back in. It’s not rare. It’s not a “once it happens there’s no coming back.” We see teams wax and wane over and over.

There was a dropoff in Memphis’ defense starting in January. The ratings along with their league-ranking by month:

October: 113.3 (16th)
November: 106.5 (4th)
December: 108.1 (6th)
January: 116.7 (26th)
February: 115.0 (16th)
March: 116.9 (17th)

The Grizzlies’ fans talking point had been that they were 28th in defense over a stretch of time late in the season. They weren’t a top-10 defense after January 1.

But with the injury situations and where the schedule was, compounded by how completely useless and wonky the two weeks before All-Star and the entire month of March is, I’m just unmoved. Yes, the effort waned. Was that, maybe, because of the all-gas-no-brakes high-pace offensive structure that the front office signed off on?

Ultimately, coaches get fired because you can’t fire the roster. But we also know this roster's core is good.

Jaren Jackson Jr. is having a career, phenomenal year. Desmond Bane has underperformed and has better basketball ahead of him. Ja’s been out and hasn’t looked like himself but still has stretched and nights.

Brandon Clarke was holding up the second unit until his injury. Santi Aldama has gone from a player I never understood the value of to a guy I think should win 6th man. Jaylen Wells is terrific and should win Rookie of the Year.

What bothers me just as much as the idea that this level of success wasn’t good enough, though is the whys of why it happened.

IDEAS AT WAR

This is from DaMichael Cole at the Commercial Appeal and is worth reading:

The Grizzlies identified Ja Morant, Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. as the next group of leaders, but it was clear the team would have to rely more on even younger players. Center Zach Edey, in particular, was drafted in the first round in 2024 to be a difference-maker with his screening, rim protection and offensive skill set. While Edey has stated that the pick-and-roll is his "favorite type of offense," the Grizzlies have decreased their pick-and-roll usage from previous seasons.

When Edey was drafted, general manager Zach Kleiman pointed out how Memphis wanted to be enforcers by punishing teams that played small against the Grizzlies, instead of just subbing out Edey to go small. However, Jenkins' usage of the 7-foot-4 rookie suggests different. Edey has started in 47 of his 58 games played. He has come off the bench in the past three games.

"Zach (Kleiman) blamed Taylor. Taylor blamed Zach. No one takes accountability for absolutely anything," a league source told The Commercial Appeal.

Lost in the conversation about Jenkins was that the Grizzlies also parted ways with Noah LaRoche. LaRoche was brought in as part of the overhaul of the coaching staff by the front office. Jenkins was consulted on the hires but this was a purposeful decision to bring in new blood to try and fix the halfcourt offense.¹⁰

Several scouts I talked to throughout the year were skeptical of the Grizzlies’ offense. One simply thought that you can’t play this fast and expect to win in the playoffs. The other wondered if they would burn out physically because they were so much faster than everyone else. Both look to have been correct.

But the front office signed off on this. This was part of why the entire decision tree of the offseason baffled me.

You have a super-athletic roster. So why draft a plodding seven-footer to be your difference maker?

You want to improve your halfcourt offense. So why play a hyper-fast style?

Defense will still be your strength. So why gas them out with this style?

And now we’ve come to my biggest issue from a details perspective. Jenkins and LaRoche were fired, and Tuomas Iisalo was promoted. Sources have said that Iisalo’s style favored a more pick-and-roll-heavy approach, although still fast tempo. LaRoche opted for the low-screen rate offense.

I think pick and roll is vital for Ja Morant. You need him to get separation. You just need a steady diet of screens in the NBA to leverage the defense, unless you’re the Celtics, and you’re just going to math everyone to death.

Everyone scoffed when Ja was upgraded to questionable on Friday. League sources said that Morant was always planning on returning for that game. It was Murray State Night at FedEx. He had been ramping up for return to play. And the team needed him. Sources said Ja’s people had shared that Morant understood how it would look, but he was not behind the firing.

I believe him. He and Jenkins had a good relationship. Some star players are behind firings, but in this case, while I don’t think Ja loved the offense and wanted a shift back to more pick and roll, I don’t think he felt Jenkins needed to be fired for that to happen.

Edey, to me, is the bigger part of this, or rather, how much the front office is invested in Edey is.

The numbers have been transparent this season: Edey is fine. He’s going to play 12-15 years in the league. He’s going to rebound at a great rate. He might have an All-Star season or two if a team really decides to lean on him offensively for a lower-efficiency output.

This Grizzlies team is better without him. That top unit there includes him because it features the four best Grizzlies this season. The worst lineup includes him because it removes Wells as a perimeter defender. Since January 1st, the Grizzlies are -1.6 with Edey on the floor and +3.6 with him on the bench.

Since March 1, when everyone feels the wheels came off, the Grizzlies have a 124 defensive rating with Edey on the floor and a 110 with him on the bench. That’s the highest on-court mark on the team and the worst on/off differential.

This isn’t Edey’s fault. He’s a rookie. He’s now played more games than he ever has in a year. He’s playing a fast-paced system that doesn’t play to his strengths. Ja’s been out, which limits his offensive potential. It’s not like Zach Edey, 9th-overall pick, is in the front office demanding Jenkins be fired. That’s not fair to him at all.

But also… maybe don’t rearrange your entire team structure for a 9th overall reach of a plodding center in a still-very-space-oriented-despite-Jokic NBA? Maybe don’t fire a successful head coach because the team’s identity in a win-now year isn’t best served by playing said center? Maybe recognize that if the defensive dropoff is your concern, you shouldn’t have traded multi-positional-if-often-injured Marcus Smart?

THE WRONG PROCESS WON OUT

I thought Chris Vernon and the Grind City Media crew were really fair in their reaction.

“This team was not good” is the basic idea. The team wasn’t good, and you had to do something, and this was the thing to do. I can’t sit here and really argue that the team tuning out Jenkins wasn’t real, or a concern.

But if we’re going to ignore the success Jenkins had, from the record to the development of so many young players to the high points through the years in favor of process, then the process of firing him has to be examined, too.

What coach is going to come in and take this team to a next level? Is there an assistant that’s going to do it? Will just “play Zach Edey more” get it done? The results in Game 1 were poor. I’m not going to go in on Iisalo, it’s a tough spot vs. a good team.¹¹ But I’m also not all of a sudden encouraged just because they ran more pick-and-rolls.

It felt like a late-season dropoff from a team with a long track record of being elite defensively provided an excuse for initiatives that weren’t tied to, you know, how the team actually played.

You want a different voice? Here’s a section from another DaMichael Cole story on the aftermath:

Iisalo's voice isn't necessarily new, but he's sitting in a different seat. Usually he's a little more reserved, but now he's more demanding.

With his new position, players will get to know him even better.

"He's not a man of many words if you not talking about basketball," Bane said. "Once you start talking about hoops, you'll see a different side of him."

…

I am… concerned.

I could be wrong. Maybe Edey becomes the difference maker they drafted him to be. Maybe the defense gets back in order, and the team finds a groove in the next seven games. Maybe this unlocks Ja to get back to his old self. Maybe the results will justify the process.

But then again, if the results are the point, then why the hell is Taylor Jenkins out of a job?

1. A counter-argument to this concept is the Lakers principle, which says it literally doesn’t matter what the fuck you do; just be the Lakers, and you will succeed.

2. Except for Nico Harrison. He would have fit right in.

3. Instead of Philly, OKC is the absolute perfect example of this because their dedication to doing things the right way goes through the front office and analytics department, through player development, through coaching, assistant coaching, trainers, ball boys, the arena staff, concessions. The whole shebang.

4. Semantic thing that bugs only me: the Grizzlies were not 14 games over .500. Every win is a half-win, every loss is a half-win. So with 14 wins over being .500, it’s 14/2, so seven games over .500. It puts some of the numbers in better perspective. I’m a weirdo nerd, I know.

5. DelNegro pushed the Bulls with a very compromised roster into the playoffs and into a hyper-competitive series with the Celtics, then helped develop the Clippers. He was “the guy before the guy.”

6. As a plodding center in a hyper-fast-paced structure, you advocated for. Maybe don’t draft the plodding mega-center to a team comprised of elite athleticism that you want to play fast and then be baffled when it’s hard to find a fit for him? Maybe?

7. Which was very clearly effort-

based and, I don’t know, maybe the players need to hold each other accountable? It’s not like the scheme got worse.

8. Along with the Lakers (9-7 against teams with a win percentage above 60%) and Knicks (8-7, tied with Boston, actually.

9. Zach Kleiman in his press conference did not assert that Taylor was the whole problem, he was honest about the broader failures, but the end result is the same.

10. Memphis is 14th in halfcourt offense, greatly improved from their 25th ranking in 2023.

11. But also, using both your challenges in the first quarter on bad challenges which meant you were out to challenge Jaren’s third was B-A-D.