The Memphis Grizzlies are in for an interesting start to the season. A team which, all going well, will be hoping to compete for a championship, they'll need to manage for the first nearly-third of the regular season without their best player, with Ja Morant set to miss 25 games due to suspension.
But while caution is always advised when analyzing the NBA preseason, they've looked pretty good in their opening two games. A win over the Bucks – albeit one without Giannis Antetokounmpo or the recently acquired Damian Lillard – was followed by a victory over the Pacers.
Victorious though they might have been in those games, however, there was one glaring deficiency which popped up on the box score which was also an issue throughout last season.
Will the Grizzlies' three-point shooting prove to be a fatal flaw?
The Grizzlies were one of the best team in the 2022-23 regular season, one of just six to win 50 games as they went on to claim the number two seed in the Western Conference – and didn't they let us know about it. Those 51 wins, however, certainly didn't come as a result of their lights out shooting. They took a decent amount – their 34.2 attempts per game was good for 11th in the league – but they didn't hit them at nearly the clip they would like. Just 12 of those 34.2 attempts went down per game, and that rate of 35.1% put them in the bottom eight in the league for three-point percentage.
Heading into this season not a whole lot has changed from a personnel standpoint, but what has won't exactly fill fans with confidence that they can turn around their shooting. Marcus Smart will fill in for Morant in his absence and play plenty even once he's back, but he's a very average shooter who fancies himself as a good one – a lot like Dillon Brooks, who his minutes will largely cover for. Steven Adams, too, will return after missing a large portion of last season, and he certainly won't be helping from a shooting perspective.
And though they haven't been playing exactly the lineup – and certainly not the minutes distribution – during the preseason that they will in the season proper, those shooting woes have not gone anywhere. In fact, they've got a lot worse. Obviously it's a small sample size, but they hit just 21 of their 83 three-point attempts through their first two preseason games, good for 25.3%. Again, it's only the NBA preseason, but nonetheless it's the continuation of a trend which persisted throughout the course of last season and may very well cause them some problems this season, too.
There are, of course, good shooters on the team, none better than the guy in the image above. Desmond Bane has proven himself to be lights out from beyond the arc in his three-season career to date, hitting 42.5% in that time and over 40% every season, while Luke Kennard is as lethal as just about anyone in the league having shot at over 44% (!!) for each of the past three seasons.
But the depth of quality shooters just isn't there. Morant, for all his great qualities, isn't a great shooter, and neither are numerous other back court candidates like Smart and Derrick Rose. Jaren Jackson Jr showed improvement last season but still hit just 35.5% after being sub-32 the two seasons prior, while Adams, as mentioned earlier, won't help at all in the shooting department.
The Grizzlies have plenty going for them and are poised to again compete for a spot up the top of the Western Conference, but shooting is one area in which they're a little lacking. In their opening preseason games, that has perhaps predictably been a major issue, and looms as one of their biggest concerns heading into the regular season.
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