The eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies will face a series of questions upon returning to play in the restart of the 2019-20 season at Walt Disney World in Orlando. These are the three most prominent questions that will be answered once the NBA season resumes on July 30.
Health
The Grizzlies were left without one of their key players in Jaren Jackson Jr. when he went down to a knee injury on Feb. 21 against Los Angeles Lakers.
Rookie big man Brandon Clarke, another shining star in the Grizzlies' Cinderella season, was also sidelined with a quad when the season came to a halt on March 11.
Both players are expected to be healthy and able to take part in the restart, but they will be more than five months removed from the action, which will likely lead to rust upon their return.
The Grizzlies are in a favorable position to lock down the eighth spot, but they must tread carefully and manage their healthy bodies to avoid the rails coming loose as they finish out 2019-20 and punch their ticket to the postseason.
A Rookie of the Year Ja Morant
The Grizzlies will need Morant to keep playing at a high level, as the rookie point guard has been largely the reason why this rebuilding project has greatly accelerated so soon into its inception.
Less than a year after parting ways with Marc Gasol and Mike Conley, Memphis has managed to get back in the playoff mix thanks to some sound contributions from the likely Rookie of the Year winner.
Morant is averaging 17.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 6.9 assists in his first year in the league, but that's not the most impressive thing about his play. The rookie floor general is also shooting a beefy 49.1% from the floor and a respectable 36.7% from deep — efficiency levels he must maintain to keep his team afloat during the last eight games of the regular season.
Matchups, matchups, matchups
Unfortunately for the Grizzlies, their season will resume by playing the next eight games on their schedule. That means they're slated to face the Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz, San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, Milwaukee Bucks, New Orleans Pelicans (twice), and Boston Celtics.
Five of their seven opponents are Western Conference teams and three of them are trailing the Grizzlies for the eighth seed.
The Grizzlies have a combined 5-8 record against those seven teams this season, playing all of them at least once. The team lost one game each against the Bucks and Celtics, lost both games to the Pelicans, is 1-2 against the Jazz, 1-1 against the Thunder, 2-1 against the Spurs, and 1-0 against the Blazers.
Those three games against Portland and New Orleans (both 3.5 games behind Memphis) will be must-watch TV, as that could determine whether the Grizzlies will trigger a play-in tournament scenario if either of those teams gets within four games of the eighth seed.
The Spurs still have an outside chance to crack that play-in scenario, but they have a slimmer margin for error standing a full four games behind the Grizzlies.
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