Yeah, I guess the Ja stuff may have screwed things up for him. None of that was his fault.
I can't really remember, how many years was Ja in the playoffs and healthy for a whole playoff run/series during Taylor Jenkins' tenure there?
Last edited by Ice009; 03-28-2025 at 07:24 PM.
Its referring to the GM Zach Kleiman, not Zach Edey.firing him over Zach Edey
Edey has been about as expected. effective scorer when on the court. cant stay on the court as much as they'd like because he's just too slow. and you arent paying Ja/Bane/JJJ et al to run your offense through Edey
nah if you read the article they spend a lot of time focusing on Edey as well
I read the article, yes Edey is mentioned as an example of an issue coach and gm disagreed on among others. Just saying that those 2 clearly had friction going back way before Edey was in the picture as coaches and gm's often do. The narrative that is forming at least makes it sound like it was a difference of opinions/philosophies that caused the firing and not some egregious act that would make Jenkins un-hireable.
Hopefully the Spurs conduct their due diligence and are in play for him as their next head coach. I worry they will let Pop continue to drag out his situation when the writing on the wall is clear that a 76 year old stroke victim has no business enduring the stress/travel & media requirements of an NBA head coach. Clearly Pop must be physically compromised to an obvious degree or they would have had him make some kind of appearance publicly.
Makes a lot of sense that Grizz GM Kleiman wants Iisalo instead of Jenkins because Iisalo's system probably plays to Kleiman's drafting strengths. Grizz aren't an attractive free agency destination and their players are too good to tank to get a star. But their scouting department is best in the league at finding rotation players late in the draft. So if your stars are only second tier, but your front office can find a ton of really good rotation players, how best to leverage that to beat teams with better stars? By running them into the ground with Iisalo's system. Pure speculation, but I wonder if Jenkins was too "old school" and wasn't fully bought into the way they wanted to play, or more likely as has been mentioned Iisalo was a threat to getting poached from somewhere else. Kleiman just identified the horse he wanted to ride, Jenkins was the odd man out.
If that's true, then just go ahead and hire Jenkins now and give him the upgraded version of past Grizzlies teams:
Quick point guard who can't be stopped getting into the paint (Fox - Ja)
3 point shooting versatile big who's your defensive anchor (Wemby - JJJ)
Physical shooting guard with short arms (Kon Knueppel - Desmond Bane)
Undersized big who can't shoot and puts up ridiculous college numbers (CMB - Brandon Clarke)
I mean, , just sign Santi Aldama and I doubt Jenkins can even tell the difference
That Grizzlies team finished second in the west 2022-23, add young Jimmy Butler (Castle) to that team and you're really cooking
I'm sold, this just sounds like the Grizzlies wanting to run a different offense because they don't have the personnel to play a traditional offense with lots of screening. So go out and get Jenkins because the Spurs do with Victor and De'Aaron.
I wonder if the grizz FO is that good at finding late round talent or it's Jenkins who was good at making marginal talent look great. My feeling is the second.
Fox fell into the Spurs laps, and now it looks like Jenkins might too.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
Spurs better be on the phone right now. And let him bring those 2 assistants with him.
If the Spurs don't at least try to jump on this situation I'm going to kick a toddler. The stars can't line up any better
Pop needs to pull an Aldridge and go out and have dinner with him and talk to him about legacies and how much he could accomplish ushering in the new era
Perfect match with Ja, tbh.
Maybe they could bring in Javaris Crittenton as lead assistant.
Would he be better than Bud?
His resume is a bit cleaner and has less baggage at this juncture, being quite a bit younger helps with that. I prefer Jenkins over the Bud and Vogel possibilities. I think Jenkins in his short-ish head coaching tenure has shown he can do more with less. Look at his teams records each season and then look at the roster/games played and he seems to overachieve. He hasn't had playoff success, but I also wouldn't really expect it given the rosters he had (admittedly I am not a big Ja fan).
A stroke of luck
I think he’ll get the Pelicans job. I sadly think these last couple of games has cemented Glitch as our next coach.
So a proven developer of talent with six years’ worth of head coaching experience will be passed over so the Spurs can risk Wemby’s next few years and ultimately the billion-dollar franchise on a coach with no head coaching experience to speak of - except this embarrassment of a season, where we’re near dead last in the NBA in fundamentals like rebounding.
If that happens (or Pop tries to ‘come back,’ which will inevitably lead to the same ‘head coach Mitch’ result) the Spurs deserve to lose this team to Vegas.
There is no way Mitch is the next HC.
If Wemby really likes Mitch then he'll be given a chance.
A head coach's tenure depends mostly on their relationship with the team's superstar.
Yea, this is a concerning factor. Everything we've learned of Vic these past couple years has indicated that when push comes to shove, he wants to win more than anything. Vic is closer than any of us in terms of seeing Mitch Johnson on the job. That being said, he is still a 21 year old kid and having him dictate the coaching roster seems a bit much.
Also worth mentioning that if Jenkins were to get the job that doesn't mean Mitch wouldn't or couldn't stay on as an assistant. I'm more worried about Pop waffling about on what he wants to do until September and then announcing he is retiring and Mitch gets the job by default because all the coaches worth a damn have been snatched up. Or even worse, Pop decides to give it a go. I would be terrified watching every game just hoping we don't see Pop collapse on the sideline.
Well while it's true that in theory players, even superstars, shouldn't be dictating front office decisions we've seen it so many times that historically this has been the norm and Pop's/RC's/Timmy's Spurs have been the outlier, with perhaps Steph's Warriors being the closest. We have witnessed a million other cases of the opposite, with very few proving to yield positive results.
We have no reason to believe Wemby would be more like Duncan/Steph in this regard, and not like LeBron/Durant, especially after this weird comment he gave earlier about having to look at the roster building. Ultimately he'd have to find the right balance between his ambition, his patience, his trust in the organization and mostly his own self awareness. He has shown to be very mature and intelligent, so hopefully he and his team will make the right decision. There's also the fact that a bit of positive pressure on the FO can be a good thing in certain situations.
So this entire wasted season where Mitch sucked even with DPOY Wemby didn’t count as ‘a chance?’ I hope Wemby’s not that stupid.
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