The Memphis Grizzlies did something strange when they traded Desmond Bane on Sunday. Obviously, the deal itself was unusual. Rarely do teams ostensibly planning to contend trade away 27-year-old core players. But a little quirk in its structure stands out as confounding in the context of our expectations for this Memphis offseason.
Before the trade, the Grizzlies were projected to have around $6 million in cap space. After it, they’re down to around $4.5 million. That might seem like a pretty minor difference, but the Grizzlies gave away their 2025 first-round pick at the deadline just to dump Marcus Smart so they could get below the cap. Every dollar matters here because cap space is the key to keeping arguably their best player.
Jaren Jackson Jr. is set to become a free agent in 2026. The Grizzlies would like to avoid that outcome because Luka Dončić and the Los Angeles Lakers are looming as a suitor next summer. In a perfect world, Memphis would just extend him. The problem is that his existing contract is far below market value and standard veteran extension rules only allow a player to get a 40% raise in the first year of a new deal. Hence, the cap space. If Memphis can clear out enough of it, they can renegotiate Jackson’s salary for the 2025-26 season and then give him a bigger extension based on that number. To give Jackson his max in the 2026-27 season and beyond, the Grizzlies need to get to around $14 million in space.
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Now, the Grizzlies have other avenues of clearing space if they need to. Trading John Konchar and his $6.2 million cap figure is an obvious start. But still, it seems a bit strange that Memphis would make any move this offseason that would lower its cap space considering the price it paid to start the process of creating it back in February.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that their organizational priorities have changed since February. After all, on deadline day, Memphis was a 35-16 No. 2 seed. The team finished the regular season on a 13-18 run, fell all the way to No. 8 in the West and fired head coach Taylor Jenkins. In February, clearing cap space to pay Jackson and keep the team together seemed like the proper goal. But if the Grizzlies are closer to the team we saw in the final two months of the season, it might make sense for them to explore other options.
They did so by trading Bane to the Magic. They may have simply been overwhelmed by the offer: four first-round picks and a swap, with the caveat that they had to eat some negative salary. They may be planning to turn around and use those picks they got in the Bane deal to trade for different win-now players. But given how poorly last season ended, they might also see a golden opportunity here. This might just be the perfect chance for them to tank.
Jackson is a max-level player when he’s healthy, but he has a lengthy history of injuries that makes any long-term extension risky. He is also uniquely tradable at this exact moment. While his low cap figure of $23.6 million makes him hard to extend, it makes him easy to fit onto the balance sheet of almost any contender. His shooting makes him a viable fit in almost any sort of front court, and he is among the very best defensive players in basketball. It wouldn’t be hard to envision Memphis flipping him for another handful of unprotected first-round picks from a team of its choosing.
Ja Morant’s value is tougher to peg. He carries similar health risks and comes with a handful of off-court concerns as well. He’s making max money, and trading primary ball-handlers who don’t defend or shoot 3s is challenging. He probably doesn’t get back nearly as much as his talent suggests he should, and general manager Zach Kleiman shut down Morant trade rumors in February. As we’ve covered, though, a lot has changed since then. If the Grizzlies can get meaningful positive value, even if it isn’t quite the haul Morant would have garnered a few years ago, the Grizzlies would still be positioned extraordinarily well.
Memphis controls all of its own future first-round picks. It has a potentially interesting Phoenix pick next year and two Orlando picks plus a swap after that. Add picks from several other teams thanks to Jackson and Morant and the Grizzlies could kick off a rebuild with an absolute mountain of assets.
In some ways, it would be reminiscent of the starting point of Oklahoma City’s rebuild. Like the Grizzlies, the 2018-19 Thunder were a middling Western Conference playoff team. Like the Grizzlies, their process began when they dealt a core player, in their case Paul George, from a position of strength rather than weakness.
Now, the obvious difference here would be that Memphis would not get to start its rebuild with a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander-level prospect, but remember, Houston didn’t start its post-James Harden rebuild with one either. The Rockets are in pretty good shape right now, and the Grizzlies, just through the sheer diversity of picks they would own as opposed to the Rockets who were heavily invested in the Nets, specifically, might be starting out in an even better place.
Houston got where it is today through a combination of cap space, smart drafting and tanking. Cap space is a given in a rebuild if you want it. The Grizzlies are about as smart at drafting as any team in the NBA. They got Bane at No. 30, after all, to say nothing of all of the role players they’ve landed in the second round or after the draft entirely. If their version of Alperen Sengun at No. 16 is out there, you can trust Kleiman to find that player. Conveniently enough, the Grizzlies now literally hold the No. 16 pick in the 2025 Draft.
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That leaves tanking. There has never been a better time to tank in the Western Conference than right now. Nobody wants to be bad. The Jazz don’t want to be bad. The Suns probably should trade Devin Booker and blow it all up, but they seemingly have no intention of doing so. San Antonio traded for De’Aaron Fox and may never land in the lottery again with Victor Wembanyama in place. All of last season’s good teams figure to be good moving forward. Winning in the West has never been harder, and Bane’s absence will make it even harder to do so in the next few years. The opposite is true too: losing in the West has never been easier, and Bane’s absence will make it even easier. The Grizzlies could get to the top of a loaded 2026 draft class pretty easily if they wanted to.
That’s the missing piece here. We don’t know what the Grizzlies want to do yet, and we don’t know if the Bane trade has changed that calculus. It’s entirely possible that they entered this offseason planning to retool around Bane, Morant and Jackson only to get floored by a massive offer that they didn’t expect and couldn’t resist. Such a move could easily change their plan. Remember, the Thunder didn’t plan to rebuild either. They saw an opportunity to extort a haul from the Clippers for George and they took it. The Bane trade might represent a similar opportunity, and Jackson and Morant would figure to get back more than Russell Westbrook did in Oklahoma City’s follow-up move.
Opportunities like this are unpredictable, and they can go in both directions. Maybe the Grizzlies see a chance to flip all of these picks for the right player or players in the next month and actually get better for next season. Or maybe they just trust their ability to draft enough that they hold onto Morant and Jackson, use these picks, and hope that they can build a contender organically before age or injuries end their primes. These are all plausible paths. Executives typically prefer the path of least resistance. The moment you trade away your stars is the moment you put a target on your back as a general manager.
But Kleiman, by virtue of building the successful Morant-Jackson-Bane-era teams, has probably bought himself enough job security to take such a plunge. The fact that he was able to fire Taylor Jenkins in the middle of March in a season in which the Grizzlies had playoff ambitions says a fair bit about the latitude that he’s given. He’s not Sam Presti because nobody is Sam Presti, but he fits the profile of a general manager who would think this way: young, coming off of a successful era that did not result in a championship and generally forward-thinking in the way he constructs his teams.
In a few weeks, any notions of such an overhaul might be dispelled. Memphis might just do what it takes to clear cap space, re-sign Jackson and move forward with this core. And hey, maybe it works. Maybe Morant stays healthy, Jackson builds on his recent offensive growth and the younger role players grow enough to fill in for Bane in the aggregate. Or maybe the injuries overwhelm Morant and Jackson’s extension proves cumbersome. Either is on the board. The risk of the latter, in my mind, outweighs the reward of the former in a Western Conference in which even the best-case Grizzlies outcome probably can’t sniff the Thunder team that just beat them. The Bane trade created an opportunity for Memphis to avoid the best years of Oklahoma City’s impending run and set themselves up to emulate the Thunder afterward. It’s in their best interest to take it.
