Grizzlies aiming to keep rising in improving Western Conference

As the start of the 2022-23 NBA season grows nearer, I’m taking a closer look at some of the most interesting teams in the NBA (to me, if not necessarily to anyone else). After stops in. , and , we’re putting in Memphis, where the team behind last season’s best story must now start writing a new chapter.

The Grizzlies entered last season having begun to perform the stations of the NBA cross: bottoming out at the end of a proud era, then finding fresh top-of-the-lottery talent around whom to rebuild; starting to build a new winning culture, but of the playoffs; , but getting by a better, more experienced opponent. This was the inflection point — the moment where, if things don’t quite go according to plan, a still-buffering franchise can seize up.

It looked like things might break that way. Even with Ja Morant in the midst of a to his third season, Memphis opened 9-10, thanks largely to a dismal defense that ranked ; the situation seemed dire when Morant picked up a that promised to put him on the shelf for several weeks. Instead of seizing up, though, the Grizzlies soared, leaning on the that personnel chief Zach Kleiman had built up and a to win 10 of their next 12 with Morant out of the lineup and 21 of their next 25 overall, vaulting into the race for the West’s no. 1 seed.

Few things in sports are as intoxicating as watching a young team not only find itself, but start to feel itself … and man, oh man, were these Grizzlies feeling themselves.

There was Morant, providing an endless supply of , drives, and passes. There was Jackson, destroying shots at the rim to pace a and fuel one of the NBA’s . There was Desmond Bane, calmly drilling threes, and Dillon Brooks, very-not-calmly spoiling for fights. There was everyone, and earnestly believing that nobody could check them…