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Monday had to be a tough day for Memphis Grizzlies guard Marcus Smart, who was forced to watch his former team, the Boston Celtics, hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy without him after trading him this past offseason in a deal that ultimately landed them former Washington Wizards big man Kristaps Porzingis. Smart was a member this season of a Grizzlies team that dealt with a nearly unprecedented amount of injuries and thus was unable to make much noise in a vaunted Western Conference playoff landscape that figures to only get more and more competitive as time goes on.
Still, the good news for the Grizzlies is that they are expected to have star point guard Ja Morant back and healthy for the upcoming 2024-25 season, with Smart and a host of other veterans ready to help lift Memphis back into the spotlight they partly occupied between 2021 and 2023.
One of the biggest weak points on the Grizzlies' roster currently is at the center position, as the team traded Steven Adams this year and doesn't have a ton of depth in that spot on the roster at the present moment. Thus, it figures that the team would look into potentially trading for some reinforcements in that regard this offseason.
“Clint Capela is a popular trade target with the Grizzlies, Wizards, Pelicans and Bulls having expressed interest,” reported NBA insider Matt Moore of The Action Network.
Moore also noted that “the Grizzlies are expected to try and add multiple centers this summer, which is one reason they've been linked to trade-up rumors in the draft. Another name to watch as a potential reserve option is Day'Ron Sharpe from the Nets with one of their bench wings and a second rounder being part of a potential deal.”
Can the Grizzlies bounce back?
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There were certain points during the 2023-24 season that the Grizzlies' active roster consisted almost exclusively of players that were not familiar to the average fan due to the sheer volume of injuries that the team had sustained over the course of the year.
Morant missed the first 25 games of the year due to a suspension and looked ready to take the league by storm upon his return in December, but unfortunately wasn't able to stay in the lineup for long before suffering a season ending injury, which coincided with several other brutal injuries for Taylor Jenkins and company throughout the year.
When they're healthy, the Grizzlies would figure to be a tier below teams like the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference pecking order, but that still doesn't mean that they can't be a competitive team and perhaps go on a deep playoff run if things break their way. After all, a healthy Morant is still one of the ten to fifteen best players in the league, and Marcus Smart brings a degree of defense and veteran stability to the team that wasn't there the last time they made the postseason back in 2023.
In any case, next season is set to get underway in October.
