In the immediate aftermath of the Grizzlies firing head coach Taylor Jenkins on Friday, outsiders and national pundits wondered loudly why Memphis’ brain trust would move on from a coach who’s not only the winningest regular-season bench boss in franchise history, but who’d also led one of the league’s most injury-stricken teams to a 44-29 record, a top-five net rating and fourth place in the West — and why they’d do it just nine games before the start of the playoffs.
Plugged-in beatreporters, though, noted that the writing had been on the wall for a while, dating back to a dramatic overhaul of Jenkins’ coaching staff over the summer, and that the Grizzlies had seemed to be barreling toward an inflection point for months.
“Fairly or not,” Chris Herrington of the Daily Memphian wrote Friday, “the sense [that] Jenkins’ voice had lost its impact was becoming widespread.”
Pop the hood on that record and net rating, and you’d see a team that struggled mightily against opponents with winning records and top-10 point differentials; that had gone 9-13 since the Feb. 6 trade deadline, ranking 16th in points scored per possession outside of garbage time in that span and — crucially — 22nd in points allowed per possession, according to Cleaning the Glass; and that had gone without a win over a top-tier team in nearly two months.