{"id":12572,"date":"2025-05-06T05:59:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T05:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/12572\/"},"modified":"2025-05-06T05:59:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T05:59:16","slug":"grizzlies-retain-tuomas-iisalo-as-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/12572\/","title":{"rendered":"Grizzlies Retain Tuomas Iisalo As Head Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tuomas Iisalo, who took over as interim head coach of the Grizzlies when Taylor Jenkins was <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/03\/grizzlies-fire-taylor-jenkins.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">fired<\/a> in late March, will keep the job on a permanent basis, the team <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nba.com\/grizzlies\/news\/memphis-grizzlies-name-tuomas-iisalo-head-coach\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">announced in a press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-425544 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Tuomas-Iisalo-Grizzlies-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\"  \/>\u201cI have full confidence in Tuomas serving as head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies going forward,\u201d team president and general manager of basketball operations Zach Kleiman said in a statement. \u201cTuomas\u2019 teams at every level have been disciplined, tenacious and connected on both ends of the floor, consistently exceeding expectations. We look forward to the same in Memphis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Iisalo compiled a 4-5 regular season record followed Jenkins\u2019 surprising dismissal. After finishing as the eighth seed, the Grizzlies lost to Golden State in the first round of the play-in tournament, but advanced to the playoffs with a win over Dallas. They were swept by Oklahoma City in the first round.<\/p>\n<p>Iisalo was in his first season with Memphis after a successful coaching career in Europe and was one of four new assistants hired last summer in a shakeup of Jenkins\u2019 staff.<\/p>\n<p>He led Paris Basketball to the 2023\/24 EuroCup championship and was named EuroCup Coach of the year.\u00a0He also earned 2024 LNB Pro A Coach of the Year honors after taking Paris to the French Leaders Cup title and the French LNB Pro A Finals, and was the 2023 Champions League Coach of the Year with Baskets Bonn in Germany.<\/p>\n<p>Iisalo is the first-ever Finnish-born coach in the NBA. He spent 14 years as a player in Finland and appeared in 57 games for the Finnish national team.<\/p>\n<p>Iisalo is the third interim coach to be hired to a permanent job in the past two days, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/05\/kings-head-coach-doug-christie-finalizing-multiyear-deal.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">joining<\/a> Doug Christie in Sacramento and Mitch Johnson <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/05\/spurs-to-name-mitch-johnson-as-head-coach.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">earlier today<\/a> in San Antonio. Phoenix is currently the only team without a head coach, while David Adelman is on interim status while leading Denver in the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuomas Iisalo, who took over as interim head coach of the Grizzlies when Taylor Jenkins was fired in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,294,293,177,4070,6,1139],"class_list":{"0":"post-12572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-memphis-grizzlies","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-grizzlies","10":"tag-memphis","11":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","12":"tag-memphisgrizzlies","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-tuomas-iisalo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114459362165046974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}