The Grizzlies’ Unconventional New Coach Used to Get Buckets on Me
He’s the NBA’s second-youngest coach and the only one not to play in college, but Memphis believes my former high school teammate is the man to revitalize its franchiseThe Grizzlies’ Unconventional New Coach Used to Get Buckets on Me
He’s the NBA’s second-youngest coach and the only one not to play in college, but Memphis believes my former high school teammate is the man to revitalize its franchise
I remember watching Taylor Jenkins and his high school teammates boarding a bus to Houston, convinced they would win a conference championship. I was two years behind the future Memphis Grizzlies coach at St. Mark’s, a private school in Dallas, where he was one of the captains of the basketball team. I was on the JV team during his senior season, and we would scrimmage the varsity almost every day in practice. They were loaded with athletes, featuring two brothers who would play Division I football and two other kids who went on to play pro baseball.
Taylor, despite his future in the NBA, wasn’t one of those guys. He was not a star. He did the dirty work—setting screens, moving the ball, and calling out coverages. We were both power forwards, which meant we often guarded each other in practice. Our coach didn’t believe in big men stretching the floor, so we spent a lot of time fighting on the block. I could barely post Taylor up. While I was taller than him, he was stronger and knew all the tricks when it came to establishing position.
“I just had a sense of confidence that Taylor was always going to be in the right place,” said Scott Jolly, who coached us at St. Mark’s. “He was going to make the right play with the ball. He was going to rotate defensively. He was going to block out and rebound. He was one of those guys where I was surprised when he made a mistake. He was a three-year starter on really good teams.”
Jenkins’s senior-season team was his best squad. They were favored to win the conference title, but suffered a crushing loss in double overtime in the championship game, with Taylor watching from the bench after fouling out for the first time in his career.
“We had about 10 things that happened in the last three minutes of the game, or in one of the overtimes. If any one of those goes our way, we win,” said Jolly.
“I wanted to win the championship so bad, especially in my senior year,” Jenkins told me in his new office in the Grizzlies’ practice facility, located below the FedExForum, in October. “I won two in baseball, but basketball was the one I wanted most.”
I knew Taylor mostly by reputation. He was everywhere on campus. You wondered whether he ever slept: He was a two-sport captain, an honor-roll student, the co-chair of a schoolwide community service project, and a participant in the school newspaper, concert band, and student council. St. Mark’s specialized in churning out kids with sparkling résumés and sending them to the Ivy League. I figured Taylor would wind up like most of my high school classmates: working on Wall Street, getting into consulting, or going to law school.
“I knew how much he loved basketball at St. Mark’s, but I didn’t know that he would think of it as a career path,” said Jolly.
I was stunned when I heard about Taylor interning with the San Antonio Spurs while in college. From there, he landed a job in the team’s front office, before becoming an assistant coach for the Spurs’ then–D League team and eventually their head coach. His steady climb would continue, moving up to become an NBA assistant with the Hawks and Bucks. At every step of the way, Jenkins told me that R.C. Buford, the longtime Spurs GM who is now their CEO, would always ask the same questions: “Do you still love it? Are you sure you want to keep doing this?”
Those questions were never issues for Taylor. He fell in love with coaching as an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, even though he had no connection with the Quakers basketball team. He spent most of his time in college working with a youth league that he helped start in West Philadelphia. Once he got his foot in the door in San Antonio, he began methodically climbing the coaching ladder and never looked back. Twelve years later, at 35, he’s the second-youngest head coach in the NBA, behind only Ryan Saunders of the Timberwolves, and the only one who didn’t play college basketball.
Jenkins is on the ground floor of a new era in Memphis, which traded cornerstones Marc Gasol and Mike Conley in the past nine months. But the cupboard isn’t completely bare. The Grizzlies have one of the most exciting young duos in the NBA—Ja Morant, the no. 2 pick in this year’s draft, and Jaren Jackson Jr., the no. 4 pick in last year’s draft—both of whom are still only 20. Memphis is hoping that a young coach with an unconventional background is the best choice to guide them into the future.
Brad Jones still laughs about a frantic late-night call that Jenkins made almost a decade ago, when Jenkins was an assistant coach under Jones at the Spurs’ affiliate in Austin. There’s not a lot of money to go around in the G League, so Jenkins was typing up a scouting report on an older laptop. A little after midnight, he felt a burning sensation—the laptop had sparked and caught on fire, and now the flames were creeping down his legs. After scrambling across the room to douse both himself and the laptop with a fire extinguisher, he called Jones to give him the NBA’s version of my dog ate my homework.
“I’ve very, very rarely seen him unhinged. But it wasn’t about the fire,” said Jones, now an assistant on Jenkins’s staff in Memphis. “He was losing all his records for the next month, and it was going to take him a long time to get it back.”
Two things came up repeatedly when I talked to people who have worked with Jenkins: his ability to build relationships and his organizational skills. Few coaches excel at both; the one who makes sure the trains are running on time is rarely the one who also knows the family situations of everyone in the organization.
I just had a sense of confidence that Taylor was always going to be in the right place.Scott Jolly
“His organizational skills are off the charts. I don’t know that there’s anybody on Wall Street, or in the judicial system, or in the medical world that I would compare him to,” said Mike Budenholzer, who took Jenkins under his wing in San Antonio and then brought him to Atlanta and Milwaukee. “NBA players are very similar to people in general. They like things to be efficient in practices and travel and games. If you as an assistant coach are helping make practices more organized, making travel more organized, making games more organized, players see it. Players appreciate it. Players feel it. … If they want to work after practice, or if they want to go home and be with their families, or whatever it is. And Taylor has a huge impact on that.”
For Jenkins, being organized is about more than his job. It’s a way to maintain a life outside of his job. He’s married with four kids, so he has to be hyperefficient with his time. One of his formative moments as a coach came in Atlanta, when the Hawks returned late after a road trip and had a film session early the next morning. Seeing no point in driving home and immediately turning around, he slept in the office. He woke up feeling guilty and vowed to always make it back to see his family, even if it meant just getting a glimpse of them while they were sleeping and leaving before they woke up.
“I like to think there’s a thought process behind everything that I do. Details matter. I want to exhaust every element of preparation,” he said. “In this business, there’s so much chaos, so much randomness. I want to be as prepared as I can be to handle situations that arise, whether I’m at work or I’m at home. That’s always been my mentality.”
Jenkins credits his family with a lot of his ability to relate to players. His wife has two college-age sons from a previous relationship, and he says they “keep him in touch” with the younger generation. He thinks it’s easier for him to connect with people because he doesn’t just live, sleep, and breathe basketball.
“I talked about my nephew. He talked about his kids. We bonded off that at first,” said second-year Bucks guard Donte DiVincenzo, who worked with Jenkins last season in Milwaukee. “He was the go-to guy that I went to if I had any issues struggling with not playing and trying to stay involved. … He could see if something was off. He could see my demeanor was a certain way one day. He would come over and pick me up.”
DiVincenzo and Jenkins spent countless hours together, poring over film and working out before games and after practices. What impressed DiVincenzo the most was Jenkins’s positivity. He said Jenkins always had a smile on his face and was always excited to go to work, even if meant going through shooting drills with a rookie who was buried on the end of the bench.
“The best thing about Coach Taylor is when anything happened on the court. You can see the videos. He would hold the bench back. But it was the energy he did it with,” he said. “We all cracked up. Because nobody got off the bench. But he still got up and made sure nobody moved. He hopped up right away. He was low to the ground.”
Look at the Milwaukee sideline as Sterling Brown and Andre Drummond shove each other during the Bucks’ first-round playoff series against the Pistons last season. Jenkins is the guy in a suit immediately sliding into a textbook defensive stance to cover up almost the entire bench:
The NBA season is a seven-month grind. It’s hard to survive if you can’t find some humor in it.
“Everyone talks about culture. We try to take another step and talk about atmosphere,” Jones said about Jenkins’s Grizzlies. “Culture is the type of people you have in your organization. Atmosphere is your daily work environment and do guys enjoy coming. I think [Jenkins] is doing a great job of laying it out. Hopefully at the end of the year, no matter what our record is, our guys will say, ‘You know what, it has been a pretty good year.’”
The first time Grayson Allen was open at the 3-point line at a Grizzlies practice before this year’s Las Vegas summer league, he heard his new head coach yelling from the sideline: “Let the motherfucker fly!”
“I don’t think there’s a guy on the team who hasn’t heard it at least once,” Allen told me.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” said Budenholzer with a laugh.
Budenholzer, with Jenkins at his side, has been at the forefront of the 3-point revolution. Both the Hawks and Bucks were no. 2 in the NBA in 3-point attempts per game in their first seasons under Budenholzer. The difference was that Atlanta took 25.8 3s in 2013-14, while Milwaukee fired up 38.2 in 2018-19.
But letting it fly is about more than shooting 3s. (In their first 11 games under Jenkins, the Grizzlies are attempting 1.3 more 3s per game than last season.) The underlying point is to instill confidence in his players and tailor his system to fit what they do well.
Morant, the team’s young focal point, is taking only 1.8 3s per game. What Jenkins has done is speed up the tempo to take advantage of the quickness and playmaking ability of his rookie point guard and allow him to play in space. The days of Grit and Grind are over: The Grizzlies have gone from dead last in the NBA in pace last season to no. 6.
“It’s brother-brother, son-father, player-coach,” Morant said about his relationship with Jenkins. “He’s very open with all the players, especially me. It’s just an honor to get the freedom to go out and play. Coach Jenkins allows me to play freely and trusts me enough to make plays. And that’s what every point guard wants.”
Jenkins is really young for a head coach, but he’s still one of the older people in the Memphis organization. They have the second-least-experienced roster in the NBA; they don’t have a single player older than 30. The youth movement extends to the top: GM Zach Kleiman is a 31-year-old who started as their in-house lawyer.
Memphis has struggled out of the gate, with a 4-7 record and a net rating of minus-7.9. Far more important, though, is Jenkins’s ability to develop Morant and Jackson, and find some young pieces who can complement them.
His organizational skills are off the charts. I don’t know that there’s anybody on Wall Street, or in the judicial system, or in the medical world that I would compare him to.Mike Budenholzer
“I think it’s different as a coach to come into a situation and try to create something that has already been established with older guys and stuff like that,” said Solomon Hill, a seven-year veteran playing on his third team. “But it’s definitely a blessing to come into your rookie campaign of head coaching with such a young group of guys where you can grow with them.”
Morant has emerged as the early front-runner for Rookie of the Year—at least until Zion Williamson returns from his knee injury—partly because Jenkins’s system caters to his strengths. Not only is he leading all rookies in points (18.3 per game) and assists (5.8), but he has also been more efficient than his peers. Morant is one of three players taken in this year’s draft, along with Coby White and RJ Barrett, with a usage rate higher than 21. But his true shooting percentage (54.9) is significantly higher than either White’s (46.7) or Barrett’s (46.2).
Jackson, who is a month younger than Morant, has been more of a challenge, even though his combination of length, athleticism, and shooting ability would seem to make him a perfect fit as a center in the modern NBA. Jackson’s biggest issue has been staying on the floor. He is tied for 10th in the league in fouls (3.8 per game) despite playing only 26.7 minutes per game. Not only is he still growing into his body, making it difficult to match up with some of the bigger and more physical interior players, he’s still learning how to play under control and better position himself to not pick up cheap fouls. But when he stays out of foul trouble, he’s proved to be an offensive force at center, going against bigger and slower defenders while playing next to four perimeter players in a completely spread floor.
“He is starting to really elevate his game in being aggressive with his drive, his shot, with his early rim runs and setting a tone. And part of that is him being a little more active defensively. … Him being on the floor making more of an impact defensively has kind of opened his mind and given him more confidence to be super aggressive on offense as well,” Jenkins said. “He has the ability to not just score on the low block, or be a pick-and-roll roller, but also be on the perimeter and facilitate with the ball in his hands. … That’s going to make our offense so much more multidimensional.”
The pieces could eventually fit together perfectly, with Jackson opening up the floor for Morant to attack the rim and Morant creating easy shots for the big man off his drives. Brandon Clarke, this year’s no. 21 pick, could also play a key part in their future. The hyperathletic combo forward makes a lot of sense next to Jackson up front and has quickly earned the trust of the coaching staff with his ability to score efficiently and make plays on defense all over the floor.
But it will take time for them to mesh. Morant, a spindly guard listed at 6-foot-3 and 174 pounds, and Jackson are still developing physically. Jackson has been far more effective at center this season, but the Grizzlies still start him at power forward next to Jonas Valanciunas, in large part to protect him from some of the physical punishment that comes with the position. They don’t want to ask too much of their young stars at this very early stage in their careers.
“From the organizational perspective, we want to make very clear that we’re taking a long view. We’re not going to get there overnight. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, and a lot of obstacles and failure along the way,” Kleiman said at the press conference introducing Jenkins. “To get there over time, in establishing Taylor as our partner to work with on this, this organization has made a significant long-term commitment to Taylor, and we’re collectively vested in and making sure that we get to the sustainable, special place that we’re building toward.”
Midway through the fourth quarter of a game against the Suns in early November, Jenkins took out Morant for a two-minute breather before putting him in for the last four minutes. The rookie finished the game with 28 minutes of playing time. The only time that Morant has played more than 30 minutes this season was in an overtime win against the Nets.
After the Suns game, Jenkins told reporters that he wanted to “put some money in the bank” with Morant to keep him fresh throughout the season. Jenkins told me this week he was “being smart” with his playing time decisions for all of his young players. Morant and Clarke sat out the second night of a back-to-back against the Mavs on Saturday, which the Grizzlies lost handily.
It’s brother-brother, son-father, player-coach. He’s very open with all the players.Ja Morant
While sitting players is not particularly unusual in the load management era, not every coach is on board. In New York, embattled second-year coach David Fizdale is playing RJ Barrett 35 minutes a night. Barrett is a muscular wing who came into the league with a far more NBA-ready body than Morant, but it’s hard to believe that Fizdale’s reportedly shaky job security doesn’t play into his decision to ride his star rookie as much as possible.
The new buzzword around NBA front offices is “alignment,” meaning everyone in the organization, from ownership to the front office, medical department, analytical staff, and the head coach, is on the same page. When I asked new Wolves president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas about why he took the job in Minnesota, he mentioned the opportunity for organizational alignment in the same breath as the ability to chart the path for Karl-Anthony Towns. In other words, Rosas wanted a coach who would be willing to work with him in putting Towns in the type of offense that he envisioned.
“[Jenkins] has the overall knowledge of everything that it takes to be a head coach. It always starts with a high basketball acumen [...] but you also need an understanding of what’s happening in the [NBA] landscape,” Budenholzer said. “How are you building culture, how are you building your team, can you work with a front office, can you collaborate—things like that. [That’s the] next step of being a head coach. There’s just a lot more that comes with it.”
In Jenkins’s introductory press conference, Kleiman mentioned the importance of finding a head coach willing to be his “partner.” That has been an issue in Memphis, where owner Robert Pera is now on his fifth coach since buying the franchise in 2012. Lionel Hollins, the coach he inherited, was forced out as part of a dispute with the front office, and Dave Joerger, his successor, went out of his way to criticize some of the Grizzlies’ draft choices in the media. Fizdale, before coming to New York, had a messy exit of his own in Memphis after a power struggle with Gasol.
The Grizzlies’ new regime is taking on a more collaborative approach, at least so far, with Jenkins and his coaches conferring daily with the analytics staff about their lineup decisions.
“The rotation is still kind of unfolding. We don’t want to be short-sighted and look at small sample sizes,” Jenkins said. “We are experimenting with playing two point guards, our wing depth is something we always focus on, and we want to see how our smalls and bigs interact. It’s fun. … We try to put ourselves in the best possible position going into every single game to see where our guys’ strengths lie with their teammates.”
Trust is essential in a rebuilding process. The Grizzlies’ front office needs to trust Jenkins to make decisions in the long-term interests of their young cornerstones. Conversely, Jenkins has to trust them to not hold the short-term consequences of those decisions against him.
Even with Jackson and Morant in place, there is a lot of work to be done. Memphis doesn’t have many long-term answers on the wing, and their path to acquiring those types of players is limited. Hanging over the franchise like the sword of Damocles is a future first-round pick that they owe Boston as part of a 2015 trade for Jeff Green. The pick is top-six protected in 2020 and completely unprotected in 2021.
It’s easy to look five years into the future, when Morant and Jackson are in their mid-20s, and see the outlines of a contender. But that future is a long way off and a million things could go wrong along the way. Given how much the NBA has changed over the past five years, there’s no way to even know where the league will be in 2024. The only thing they know in Memphis is that they think they have the guy to get them there.
“What are the NBA rules going to dictate? Is there going to be a 4-point line? Will that trend the game even farther into more 3s and space?” said Jenkins. “That’s the fun challenge for us coaches. We are studying what our current game is and asking the appropriate questions. … I think all major sports are trying to figure out what is the next trend.”
