For the simple fact that, after Wednesday’s 133-109 bludgeoning by the Utah Jazz, they are the only team in the NBA without a win.
For the sake of the numbers that will soon catch up to them if this continues.
There have been 65 teams to start an NBA season with an 0-5 record, like the Grizzlies have this season, and just 10 of them went on to make the playoffs since the league expanded its postseason to 16 teams in 1984. Only two of those 10 made it past the first round of the playoffs. Only five of those 10 made the playoffs starting 0-7 or worse, a mark Memphis will try to avoid when it closes out this first road trip with consecutive games at Portland on Friday and Sunday.
The good news is two of the past three teams to start a season with five straight losses have made the playoffs. Last year’s Los Angeles Lakers, the team that humiliated the Grizzlies in the first round, did it. So did the 2020-21 Washington Wizards. The bad news is the Grizzlies have never made the playoffs after losing their first five games. This wouldn’t be unprecedented in the NBA. It would just be unprecedented here.
So maybe it’s not yet time to panic, despite the mounting toll playing without Ja Morant, Steven Adams, Brandon Clarke, Santi Aldama and now Derrick Rose is taking on the organization. But it sure seems appropriate to take stock of how the Grizzlies arrived at this increasingly precarious spot.
This starts, first and foremost, with Morant – and specifically Morant’s absence due to suspension. The circumstances have become penance for the self-inflicted mistakes Morant committed almost entirely through his own immaturity.
Maybe the Grizzlies wouldn’t be rolling quite yet if he were available, but it’s hard to believe they would be 0-5. Indeed, Memphis hasn’t lost five in a row with Morant in the lineup since his rookie season. Maybe this will be good in the long run – for Morant to see in these losses what consequences his actions have wrought. It could also potentially set the stage for him to save the season when he returns in December – so long as the Grizzlies haven’t completely played their way out of contention.
But much as Morant is paying the price for his decisions, so too are the Grizzlies for some of their front office misses the past couple years.
General Manager Zach Kleiman already admitted after last season the decision to add more rookies to the roster during the 2022 NBA draft was a mistake. The minutes currently being consumed by David Roddy and Jake LaRavia – the team’s two first-round picks that year – have laid bare that the Grizzlies are a long ways off from those selections working out.
They gave up Utah’s Walker Kessler, the type of center they badly need right now, in order to draft LaRavia. They gave up guard De’Anthony Melton, who would still be under contract this year, for Roddy. The moves were calculated, in response to the escalating contracts the organization had to give Morant, Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr., but they’ve backfired and hurt the franchise’s overall depth.
This offseason, the decision to not get another big man this offseason has also proven shortsighted now that it’s clear there was a chance Adams’ knee injury would linger into this year. Perhaps Bismack Biyombo, who the Grizzlies officially signed just as soon as they were allowed to after the Utah loss, can be the reinforcement that shores things in the paint. But Kleiman could have gotten more than a rental from the NBA’s scrap heap had he prioritized an Adams contingency plan in July.
The hope, once Adams went down, was Memphis could stay afloat enough without Morant in order to wait until closer to the trade deadline in February to make a move. That should still be the goal. Getting a good deal done now will be harder. Everybody knows the Grizzlies are desperate. That’s what happens when you’re the only team in the league without a win.
Based on history, there’s no particular reason the teams that make the playoffs survive these starts
Last year’s Lakers, who started 0-5 and won just two of their first 13 games, completed a bunch of trades to remake the roster. The 2001-02 Philadelphia 76ers might be the most similar recent example for the Grizzlies because they began the season 0-5 with Allen Iverson, Aaron McKie and Eric Snow all out with injuries. They came back, and soon the Sixers’ record improved. The 1996-97 Phoenix Suns, the only team to begin an NBA season 0-13 and still make the playoffs, needed their coach at the time – Cotton Fitzsimmons – to resign to pull it off.
So let’s not kid ourselves anymore. The Grizzlies just need to win a game soon. Preferably the next one, Friday in Portland. Before the hole they’re digging gets too deep.
