The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
ODDBALL - Ja Morant and the Grizzlies Lose Their Head (Coach)
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
Taylor Jenkins is no longer the head coach in Memphis! What's up with this timing, how much did Ja Morant have to do with the move, and who is the new guy? Get all your answers on Oddball, along with Izzy and Amin's takes on the Pistons and Timberwolves' brawl and a brand new edition of Hot Streak! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why was Taylor Jenkins fired as the Grizzlies' head coach?
Taylor Jenkins, head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies, got let go on Friday. There'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. And they kicked him out. They told him to hit the pavement. Izzy, how surprised were you by the timing?
I think him getting fired, not as surprising as the timing.
Definitely not. I think I was sort of still getting over the Lakers and Bulls, just taking all the madness from Marcher themselves with the finish of that game. And then I'm sort of getting the Taylor Jenkins news. And it's just... 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? Like, they're not 100% healthy. Obviously, Ja has missed like 30 games. They have been significantly worse since the All-Star break.
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 winning team again, to be at their peak.
And if you look at their top six guys, really their top seven guys these days, if you include Scottie 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 J.B. Bickerstaff. Everybody else, only Taylor Jenkins. So you kind of get the feeling of when, hey, this might turn around.
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Chapter 2: What role did Ja Morant play in Taylor Jenkins' firing?
Maybe they'll turn it up 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. It's when you look at it, it kind of doesn't seem so crazy.
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. And, 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.
Yeah. Like, like 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? Why so late in the season? It's funny. We got 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. 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? Where was urgency the first couple weeks after the all-star break? Where was urgency pretty much any time to give your new head coach time to figure things out?
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. Like, I just don't understand why they didn't just let him play the season out. If you had druthers that, oh, man, we could win a championship with the right coach, then where were those druthers earlier?
Here's another urgency slash timing question for you, Izzy. They fired their assistant coaches last offseason. 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. Okay, I'm going to get you up out of here. First things first, let me get rid of all your confidants.
Let me hire a bunch of dudes that you don't know.
But that also helps out with the timeline, though. I mean, right? 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 in, 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 Moran certainly was not. Seemed like he got out of bed. He said he was in bed. Saw the quote. Huh. Surprised me. That's pretty much what the extent of his quote. Not, hey, I really love that guy.
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Chapter 3: Who is the Grizzlies' new head coach, Tuomas Isalo?
And what I mean by that is he's never coached in one of the elite leagues like Spain or Turkey, and he's never won one of those or in the EuroLeague. He's been a EuroCup champion, which is the second division behind EuroLeague as far as past the continent. He's been a Champions League champion, which is very different from EuroLeague.
But my point is the guy comes with very limited with zero NBA history on this season and very limited high level international experience. And what I mean by that is what 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, you know, you know, this guy. Oh, I see coach in France.
Did you were you playing in France with him? And so that's 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. 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, 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 any time of night. I would call him. He'd come out and work out.
And this guy was always coming with film and stuff like that. Or, yeah, I played against him in such and such or such and such. When you are someone who doesn't have any of those things, And then you come in and you say, guys, I've got this new offense for you. It's based on a Division III school.
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. It was a big surprise in the last 24 hours. Has been quite a scramble here trying to get myself and everybody organized. Izzy, if it's one thing I know about the NBA.
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. He rarely has zero clue what's about to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, might I introduce you to the dagger. Well, I'm trying to run this off. I'm giving him the offense because he just don't like it or he don't know how to run it the way I draw it.
I mean, if I drew it up, I was calling the shots. I would have called this the different lineups I would have done. And then it's like, hey, we fired head coach. We want you to be good. Me? I was just ticking in hypotheticals. I didn't know anything. Oh, my gosh. I've got to get organized. Well, what is this? My handy dandy book of plays that I've already all thought out of.
Well, and the other thing is, is like the the idea. You're right. The idea of that offense was they weren't running as many pick and rolls, even though like somebody like Zach Eady drafted number nine. He says out loud, hey, I love pick and roll offense and they do less of it. Right.
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Chapter 4: How do NBA teams handle coaching changes?
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. And when you don't follow them, you might think like you're doing people are a solid, but it's the opposite. You put them in quite the awkward predicament where they got to answer a bunch of questions that they may not necessarily have answers to.
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. And the Grizzlies 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.
And here they are showing their ass in the most small market country bumpkin ass kind of way. So what does all this mean for Ja, Izzy?
I don't think this puts him in the coach killer category because, again, you've had six years with Taylor. 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. I will say that In the games that he missed, they were basically hovering above 500.
And so I don't think that is very encouraging if you're the Grizzlies and say, hey, we can move on from Ja whenever we want. I still think they consider him and Triple J as franchise cornerstones.
All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, are the bad boys coming back to play it?
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Chapter 5: What are the implications for Ja Morant's future with the Grizzlies?
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. Guys, old-fashioned manhandling each other, grabbing each other, shoving each other, getting each other's faces. It was Nas Reed fouled by Ron Holland, and then Dante DiVincenzo jumped in, and it all turned into a...
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 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. Skirmish, but pronounce it skirmish.
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.
And Izzy, these are the same people who brought you loser, L-O-O-S-E-R.
Ah, loser, yes. It's just a description.
Seven people got ejected, five players and two coaches. 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 going to take from anybody?
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. 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.
And there's.
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