Ja Morant Revealed to Be “Primary Motivator” in Getting Taylor Jenkins Sacked

The Memphis Grizzlies fired head coach Taylor Jenkins a few days ago, but it’s still unclear what factors led them to make this decision. Over the weekend, general manager Zach Kleiman did spoke to reporters, but he didn’t provide many specifics.

ESPN NBA expert Tim MacMahon revealed one “primary motivator” for the Grizzlies’ choice on Monday’s episode of the Hoop Collective podcast: making the most of star point guard Ja Morant.

Morant didn’t like Memphis’ new approach this season, which featured very little pick-and-rolls, according to MacMahon and The Athletic over the weekend. The premier player has missed 30 games this season because of injury, and when he did play, he wasn’t the game-changing force he once was.

Ja Morant and his season ruined Taylor Jenkins

This season, Morant is scoring fewer points per game than he has since 2020–21, and his 3.8 turnovers per game would be the lowest total in his career.

According to MacMahon, the Grizzlies thought that a change was therefore necessary. MacMahon said: “This decision, to do it now and to move on from (assistant coach Noah LaRoche) and to lean back into all the pick-and-roll stuff, this was a decision that was about optimizing Ja Morant,”

“That was a primary motivator for this decision. There has been noise about Ja being unhappy all season long.”

NBA teams frequently use this perspective while making choices. In today’s league, star players are essential to winning a championship and, more crucially for many decision-makers, to drawing spectators to the stadium.

If the Grizzlies wanted to avoid wasting time and fired Jenkins in the last weeks of the season in the hopes that Morant would gel with interim head coach Tuomas Iisalo, that would make sense. That’s all in line.

The intriguing and perplexing part of the decision is that it was made at the expense of having Jenkins on the team for a postseason push. The choice will be initially judged during the postseason.

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