{"id":708865,"date":"2026-04-12T09:48:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T09:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/708865\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T09:48:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T09:48:44","slug":"as-memphis-grizzlies-begin-again-should-zach-kleiman-lead-memphis-local-sports-business-food-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/708865\/","title":{"rendered":"As Memphis Grizzlies begin again, should Zach Kleiman lead? &#8211; Memphis Local, Sports, Business &#038; Food News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"AuthorCallout__image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769794838_179_54_orig.jpeg\" alt=\"Chris Herrington\" onerror=\"this.style.display='none'\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Daily Memphian<\/p>\n<p>Chris Herrington<\/p>\n<p class=\"sans text-small text-light\">Chris Herrington has covered the Memphis Grizzlies, in one way or another, since the franchise\u2019s second season in Memphis, while also writing about music, movies, food and civic life. As far as he knows, he\u2019s the only member of the Professional Basketball Writers Association who is also a member of a film critics group and has also voted in national music critic polls for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice (RIP). He now splits his time between Minneapolis-St. Paul, where his wife works, and Memphis.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The Memphis Grizzlies are moving from one era to another. They are \u201cpivoting to a younger build,\u201d as lead basketball executive Zach Kleiman said after the Feb. 5 trade deadline. They are \u201cmoving forward,\u201d as the team wrote in a subsequent letter to season-ticket holders.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>In this series of five columns, Chris Herrington looks at the Grizzlies\u2019 basketball-management track record in the seven seasons under Kleiman\u2019s direction. How have they operated and how well? And what can we \u2014 or, perhaps more importantly, they \u2014 learn from past performance as a team rebuild moves forward?<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailymemphian.com\/subscriber\/section\/sportsmemphis-grizzlies\/article\/60843\/herrington-evaluating-zach-kleimans-memphis-grizzlies-draft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Part 1 looked at his draft record<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailymemphian.com\/subscriber\/section\/sportsmemphis-grizzlies\/article\/61053\/herrington-evaluating-zach-kleimans-memphis-grizzlies-trades\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> Part 2 looked at his trade record.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailymemphian.com\/subscriber\/section\/sportsmemphis-grizzlies\/article\/61099\/herrington-evaluating-zach-kleimans-memphis-grizzlies-free-agency-contracts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> Part 3 looked at his\u00a0free agency\/contract negotiation record.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailymemphian.com\/subscriber\/section\/sportsmemphis-grizzlies\/article\/61374\/herrington-evaluating-zach-kleiman-memphis-grizzlies-coach-player-management\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Part 4 looked at his\u00a0history of coach and player management.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p> Today is the fifth and final part.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The first time around, it happened quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>When Zach Kleiman took over the Memphis Grizzlies\u2019 front office in 2019, he inherited one recent top-five pick (Jaren Jackson Jr.) and was soon gifted another (Ja Morant). With the team too good to garner another high pick, Kleiman\u2019s front office plucked a third foundational player (Desmond Bane) from the draft anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Kleiman\u00a0inherited two good supporting players (Dillon Brooks, Kyle Anderson) but, in short order, added four more via draft (Brandon Clarke), trade (Steven Adams, De\u2019Anthony Melton) and free agency (Tyus Jones). He made an effective coaching hire (Taylor Jenkins) on the front end, and within three seasons, those nine players led by that coach won 56 games, finished second in the Western Conference and put the basketball world on national TV notice with a two-word declaration: \u201cWe here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>This is an excerpt of this story. To read more, <a href=\"https:\/\/dailymemphian.com\/subscribe\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">please click here and subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;&#13;&#13;&#13;&#13;&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daily Memphian Chris Herrington Chris Herrington has covered the Memphis Grizzlies, in one way or another, since the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,294,293,177,4070,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-708865","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"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116391110616504631","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708865","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=708865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}