The NBA's Western Conference is being weird right now. The two teams that made last year's conference finals—both younger teams thought to be on the rise—have now made themselves sharply worse with trades: The Timberwolves, by swapping Karl-Anthony Towns for a couple of grumpy and ill-fitting Knicks role-players; and now the Mavericks, by dumping the future of their franchise for a few post-prime* years of the broadly unreliable Anthony Davis. The Kings, Suns, and Warriors are in various states of crisis; the Nuggets are being hunted down by math; and the two Los Angeles teams are stalled out in also-ran-hood, pending unlikely runs of good health. Even the Spurs, who seemed a month ago to have arrived at feistiness ahead of schedule, are lately sagging back into lottery territory.
*Here's a wild statistic, from Dan Devine of Yahoo Sports: Since Davis's arrival in Los Angeles in 2019, the Lakers have outscored opponents by just four total points in the nearly 4,600 minutes that Davis has played without LeBron James on the court beside him.
The missteps and stalls that have fattened up the West's play-in pack have also left a couple of vacancies up near the top of the conference standings, and into those vacancies have swooped the Houston Rockets and the Memphis Grizzlies. The Rockets are a genuine upstart. Two seasons ago they were filth, a tanked roster led by absolute knuckleheads and driving an overmatched head coach out of his mind. Last season they got a better head coach and began to figure out which of their young guys could be trusted to, you know, touch a basketball. This season they've fortified a core of terrifyingly athletic youths (plus Alperin Sengun) with reliable veterans, developed a bulldog identity, and made The Leap. The Grizzlies, meanwhile, haven't been authentically bad in the Ja Morant era, but this surge up the standings is still mighty impressive. After a little bit of a slow start, since Nov. 19 Memphis has gone 26–9, joining Oklahoma City and Boston as the NBA's only teams over that stretch in the top six in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Notwithstanding a couple of ugly losses in there—including a nightmarish 37-point destruction at Madison Square Garden—the Grizzlies have been one of the two or three best teams in basketball for going on three months.
Obviously the difference between last season's 22-win campaign and this season's rebound to title contention comes down largely to the return of Morant. Morant isn't having an All-NBA type of season, and he's already missed 21 games due to various ailments, but almost any version of Morant is dramatically better than what the Grizzlies got from the various Gilyards and Goodwins and Derrick freaking Roses who filled his role so incapably last season. When Morant's out there zipping around, breaking down just about any conceivable concept of point-of-attack defense, and summiting Mount Wembanyama, naturally the Grizzlies are going to be hell on opponents. But Memphis is a very proud and very unexpected 14–7 so far this season when Ja is not in the rotation, and the reason for that is Jaren Jackson Jr.
Sunday the Grizzlies went to Milwaukee and beat the healthy Milwaukee Bucks, with Morant in street clothes. For every moment that Jackson was on the court, he was very clearly the game's best player. It's easy—visually, at the very least—to picture Victor Wembanyama eventually making Giannis Antetokounmpo somewhat obsolete, but it's interesting how Jackson can make Antetokounmpo look like an unfinished beta* just by having a more diverse skills package. Both guys can anchor a defense both by protecting the rim and by switching around the perimeter, and both guys can warp an opposing defense by setting screens and rolling through the paint, or can salvage a busted possession by ripping down an offensive rebound and smashing home a put-back. You tend to think of Giannis as the one who can face up with a live dribble, throw a move at a defender, and get to the rim, and of Jackson as the one who can pop to the perimeter and shoot threes. But Jackson is steadily closing the floor-game gap, while the book is all but shut on 30-year-old Antetokounmpo making any serious headway as a shooter.
*Here's are some more interesting stats: Jackson is 6–3 all-time against Giannis; the Grizzlies have now won seven in a row against the Bucks; Jackson has averaged more than 34 points in the last four games he's played in Milwaukee. He owns those guys!
Jackson hit seven threes against Milwaukee, several of them on the move in semi-transition, but a couple of the biggest buckets during Memphis's fourth-quarter surge came when Jackson put the ball on the floor against his counterpart and drove him into the paint. Spoiler alert: Jackson's going to go to his left hand pretty much every time, but his quickness and handles have now advanced to the point that even a defender of Antetokounmpo's ability will struggle to cut him off. Last season, as the Grizzlies bombed down the standings, Jackson's usage surged to over 30 percent of his team's possessions, a career high, and against defenses that had one fewer Memphis teammate to worry about. This season, he's put that experience of creating his own offense to use in a right-sized role: Morant is back to using up the superstar's portion of the offense, and Jackson is now a guy with a superstar's skills and experience, operating largely against defenses tilted the other way. As a result, his scoring is up to a career high despite finishing fewer possessions than a season ago.
The win in Milwaukee on Sunday was the first game of a tough back-to-back. Monday the Grizzlies hosted Wembanyama and the Spurs, this time with Morant but without Desmond Bane. It's a compliment to Jackson to say that if Wembanyama tops out developmentally with Jackson's general skill level but in a 7-foot-3 frame he will probably win nine zillion NBA titles. At any rate, facing Giannis and Wemby on consecutive nights is a hellish challenge, especially for a two-way big man charged with supplying a large part of his team's offense. Jackson was extremely up for it. He pick-and-popped for a couple of early threes, and then, when Wembanyama rushed out to him with appropriate urgency, he drove him baseline, spun back to the middle, up-faked the young puppy into the rafters, and dropped in a cool layup. When Wembanyama met him at the rim on a subsequent drive, Jackson leapt sideways and used his length and shoulders to drop in a lefty scoop layup beyond the Frenchman's ridiculous reach. When the Spurs rested Wembanyama or switched smaller defenders onto Jackson, he bashed his way to the paint for buckets and free throws.
This wasn't Jackson's most efficient 31 points—Wembanyama really is a defensive terror, and a couple of times he just made finishing impossible with his Gumby arms—but his shot diet is so incredibly healthy that I can feel myself becoming fit just by watching him.
The Grizzlies are managing this with improvised lineups, and with Jackson's co-star in and out of the rotation. They're relying on certain guys more than will be advisable in eventual playoff matchups—rookie Jaylen Wells is second on the team in minutes played, and Luke Kennard has already been pressed into starting duties five times this season—and it wouldn't be very shocking if they decided to swing a deal for another perimeter guy before Thursday afternoon. Jackson's excellence and his reliability have allowed head coach Taylor Jenkins to try out lots of different lineup combinations and assortments of responsibility. The Grizzlies have already used 12 different starters this season, and Jackson and Morant are the only guys on the roster who have yet to come off the bench for at least one game.
The Grizzlies are sort of hiding in plain sight, leveling up just when the conference around them is showing signs of minor crumbling. Jackson keeps Memphis afloat amid roster upheaval, and he allows his head coach to experiment, an incredible luxury for a team with a decent outside shot at the West's top seed. Under other circumstances Jackson would be considered a serious MVP candidate; as is, he might have to settle for being the best player on a team with increasingly credible title aspirations.
