Ja Morant remained supportive of Taylor Jenkins until his dismissal as head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday, sources tell The Athletic.
Morant has complained about the Grizzlies' new offensive scheme installed this season, which took the ball out of his hands and also used less frequent on-ball screens.
?Some days he looks like he?s ready to play, and some days he looks like he doesn?t want to be there ? because he hates the offense,? said one source.
That does not surprise me. He has looked unhappy in that offense whenever I have seen Memphis play. He doesn't have the same control of the ball, amount of time on the ball. The lack of PnR opportunities in favour of the dribble drive one-on-one basketball.
You would think Morant would succeed in a spaced out offense built around one-on-one basketball but he has struggled all year. He looked much more comfortable in their previous offense.
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A NY Times article
But when it came to Taylor Jenkins and his future in ?Grind City,? the writing was on the wall last summer. And it was written in tears.
In early July, three months after a disastrous, injury-riddled 27-55 season had come to an end, the Grizzlies front office, led by executive vice president of basketball operations Zach Kleiman, made the unilateral choice to swap out five members of Jenkins? coaching staff.
For Jenkins, who was hired by Memphis as a first-time head coach in the summer of 2019 and went on to record more wins than any coach in the franchise?s 30-year history (250-214), that meant saying goodbye to Blake Ahearn, Brad Jones, Scoonie Penn, Sonia Raman and Vitaly Potapenko. Per league and team sources, Jenkins became emotional in those final exchanges with his jettisoned coaching colleagues.
While Jenkins consulted with the front-office on the hires for six replacements to his staff, those final interactions between Jenkins and the assistants he was forced to fire, league sources say, would set an uneasy tone for the season to come. As some close to the Grizzlies saw the situation, it was only a matter of time before Jenkins would be gone, too.
The Grizzlies can?t seem to beat top-notch competition. They have lost nine consecutive games to teams at or above .500 by an average of 12.8 points.
The defense has dipped during this 22-game falloff, over which Memphis is allowing 116.7 points per 100 possessions, 19th in the NBA. The return of Defensive Player of the Year candidate Jaren Jackson Jr., who missed five games after spraining his left ankle on March 3 and returned two weeks ago, hasn?t solved the issues. The team had vaulted to the top five in defense for most of the season?s first half. But over the preceding weeks, league sources said, the Grizzlies worried greatly about buy-in.
Now it?s Iisalo?s job to persuade these Grizzlies to get back to winning. Memphis enticed him to come over from Europe this season with an above-market deal for an assistant worth millions, and also paid a buyout to Paris Basketball, according to league sources.
League sources say Morant, in particular, was upset that last summer the team let go of one assistant with whom he was particularly close, Ahearn, who worked with the two-time All-Star more than anyone on staff. This season, Morant worked most commonly with LaRoche, a former trainer with individual players who was in his first season as an NBA assistant and, like Iisalo, played a pivotal part in implementing the new offensive system.
They fired this LaRoche guy as well as Jenkins.
Jenkins had begun to reinstall some of the plays Morant likes, a league source said, reimplementing the pick-and-roll and other plays involving screens Morant could use to break free. If doing so angered Kleiman and played a role in Jenkins? firing, one could understand, but LaRoche was the driving force behind the Grizzlies going away from ball screens to begin with ? and he?s gone too.
And firing Morant?s only coach, while the Grizzlies are headed for the playoffs with just two weeks left in the regular season, isn?t going to quell questions about where, exactly, the franchise is headed. Or, more importantly in league circles, whether Morant will want to remain there for the long term.
So they fired Morant's main development coach Ahearn last summer. Which upset Morant. Then Morant worked with this new guy LaRoche. Now they have fired him too.
The article says Jenkins was installing some old Grizzlies plays to try and appease Morant. They said this angered the front office who wanted to maintain the new-offense 100%. So they have doubled down on this offense by firing Jenkins.
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Is LaRoche that St Joseph's coach that had a lot of success with the dribble drive offense?
I know that coach was on their staff too. Not sure if it is the same guy. Youtube bball coaching vids were raving about his offense 3-4 years ago. Same offense as this new head coach. If so, surprising that they let him go as well as Jenkins. Not sure what is going on there.
Also some of these pieces call him Nate LaRoche and other listings have him as Noah LaRoche. Not sure which one is right.
