Grizzlies general manager Zach Kleiman didn\u2019t mince words during his end-of-season press conference when he discussed his team\u2019s season.<\/p>\n
\u201cDisappointing season,\u201d Kleiman said, per Damichael Cole of the Memphis Commercial Appeal<\/a>. \u201cA lot to sort through here. Forty-eight wins, good for an eight seed, but who cares? It\u2019s not good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n The Grizzlies were swept by the top-seeded Thunder in the first round of the playoffs after earning the No. 8 seed via the play-in tournament. An injury to Ja Morant<\/a> didn\u2019t help the cause, but Kleiman vowed to improve the roster in order to make the team a high-level contender.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we can look back at this series and this season and say, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re close,’\u201d Kleiman said. \u201cNo, we\u2019re not close. There\u2019s a lot of work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s more on the Grizzlies:<\/p>\n Head coach\u00a0Tuomas Iisalo has publicly expressed a desire<\/a> to have his interim tag removed. However, Kleiman is still pondering his options regarding Taylor Jenkins\u2019 full-time replacement.\u00a0\u201cI have not made any decisions on the coaching front at this point,\u201d Kleiman said.
\nSigning Jaren Jackson Jr.<\/a> to an extension remains a priority in Memphis. Kleiman believes Morant, Jackson and Desmond Bane<\/a> can be key pieces to a championship team. \u201cAt the peak times of what this group has done, it\u2019s right there and there is so much to hold on to,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s been so much growth. They\u2019re beginning to enter their prime. I think for each of them, there are significant steps that have been taken in a really positive direction.\u201d
\nKleiman should at least consider moving Morant, who has three years on his contract, and Jackson, Will Guillory of The Athletic<\/a> opines. Morant has only appeared in 59 regular-season games over the last two seasons and his actions continued to be a problem this season, Guillory writes, noting that the guard\u2019s \u201cfinger gun\u201d celebrations became a talking point around the league. There were also rumblings about Morant\u2019s role in Jenkins\u2019 firing. As for Jackson, if he makes an All-NBA team this year, he\u2019ll be eligible for a five-year, $345MM super-max extension. That may be too much for a small-market team to swallow.
\nESPN\u2019s Bobby Marks provides insights and opinions regarding the Grizzlies in his video offseason preview (Youtube link<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grizzlies general manager Zach Kleiman didn\u2019t mince words during his end-of-season press conference when he discussed his team\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,497,294,178,496,293,177,4070,6,1139,4079],"class_list":{"0":"post-38431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-memphis-grizzlies","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-desmond-bane","10":"tag-grizzlies","11":"tag-ja-morant","12":"tag-jaren-jackson-jr","13":"tag-memphis","14":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","15":"tag-memphisgrizzlies","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-tuomas-iisalo","18":"tag-zach-kleiman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114520912605199272","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38431","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=38431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}