Grizzlies: What's up with all the turnovers?
The Grizzlies are among the league's worst in turning the ball over this season. What's the culprit of it? Will it hinder them from making a deep playoff run?
The Memphis Grizzlies offense is awesome, first and foremost.
Stylistically, the motion is mesmerizing. The pace adds fluidity to it. When players are making moves downhill, its surrounding pieces are collectively moving and opening up more opportunities within the offense — cutting towards the basket, or chasing space beyond the 3-point line. In a league that comes across as monotonous, their offense is a different flavor, and it’s tantalizing.
From a results standpoint, the Grizzlies are getting desired outcomes. They’re first in points per game (123.3), 3rd in total possessions (5,651), 4th in assists per game (29.1), 5th in field goal percentage (48.6), 5th in effective field goal percentage (56.1), and 6th in 3-point percentage (37.5). More intriguingly, they’re cleaning up a defect in its offensive system: halfcourt offense. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Grizzlies are 13th in half-court offense, generating 97.9 points per 100 half-court plays.
While the Grizzlies’ offensive operating system has been a free-flowing buzzsaw, there’s one bug that’s hard to overlook: turnovers.
What is the cause of these turnovers? How can they clean it up? Will it be their Achilles heel come playoffs time?
The data
This season, the Grizzlies are 29th in turnovers per game (16.6) and 26th in turnover percentage (15.9%).
It’s glared against other playoff teams. Against teams in the top-10 in point differential, their turnover percentage jumps to 17.1% — 29th in the league, per Cleaning the Glass. Good teams are going to devour the opportunity to generate turnovers into easy transition offense.
The Grizzlies’ primary ball-handlers have been turning the ball over rather frequently.
There’s quite a bit of ball-handlers in that bucket below the 50th percentile in turnover percentage — including its starting backcourt, Ja Morant and Desmond Bane, as well as its backup guards in Scotty Pippen Jr. and Luke Kennard. Let’s throw a caveat here: the majority of these players have been great playmakers respective to their positions. They deserve tons of credit for the system flowing at this rate through the first 54 games, especially considering it’s truly enabled all 5 guys on the floor to be playmakers. However, it’s not the best tone-setter when the primary ball-handlers are struggling with turnovers.
The Grizzlies have the third-most games with 20 or more turnovers this season (12), possessing a 3-9 record in these situations.
Finally, the Grizzlies are 29th in points allowed off turnovers at 20.9 — equating to 1.259 points per turnover. Coughing up the ball quite a bit and allowing easier transition offense make for a bad formula, especially in games where the margin for error grows slimmer.
These factors have cultivated into turnovers becoming a bug in the Grizzlies’ system.
The film
When looking at the film, I only looked at games where the Grizzlies finished with 20 or more turnovers, while focusing on opponents that either:
have as good, or better, records as/than the Grizzlies
could be potential playoff opponents
Let’s start with the turnovers that really belong out of the bucket.
These are “50-50 ball” turnovers — battling for rebounds, saving the ball from out of bounds, or diving on the floor for loose ball. These are almost commendable, as it’s a sign of hustle.
The other ones in the bucket are offensive fouls, which involves a turnover that doesn’t result in live-ball offense. Roughly 22 of Jaren Jackson’s 120 turnovers this season have come from offensive fouls, per Synergy Sports.
So now, let’s get into the systematic turnovers.
The first group here are more of “bad pass” turnovers. With the amount of motion and speed in the offense, these type of turnovers are bound to happen. You expect a teammate to be at a different spot when driving downhill, or swinging the ball. When looking for cutters, a window might appear more open than reality. As the Grizzlies are building continuity with each other, hopefully this trend dwindles down after the All-Star break.
This next group is interesting. It’s ideal to get downhill, generate paint touches, and cause rotations in the backline of the defense. And when those happen, you want to be opportunistic:
no help > bucket
rotation from the rim protector > dump-off to big
dig from low-man > kick to shooter.
With these turnovers though, when the finishing window closes quickly, the time to make a decision is beyond compare — sometimes can’t even be quantified in a single second. It goes to the point above about expecting a player to be at a spot, but other notable trends here are passing velocity and jump-passing. With the velocity, the ball has a zip on it that may make the pass a bit more wild and harder to catch. With jump-passing — which is cool, by the way — if the original look isn’t there, you have to make a decision before landing. That leaves drivers in a bind.
Exploring looks at the last possible second is fine. Opportunistic offense to find a better look at the last possible moment is a good thing — a sign of great playmaking and processing. However, these turnovers are the drawbacks of it.
The Grizzlies have a certain speed they want to play at. Sometimes that’s going to lead to losing the ball downhill, especially when faced with defensive pressure.
When pick-and-roll isn’t run as often, physical defenses — aka, the great teams — will exploit it.
Physical defenders at the point of attack will stonewall drives, a common theme in these turnovers is the quality of defender generating these turnovers. Their length and strength can serve as road blocks at the point of attack. When that happens, it forces the driver until a suboptimal situation that may force a haste decision, then a turnover. It glares more when there isn’t a screen to potentially free up a possible advantage — even then, great defenses (Knicks and Clippers, specifically) will have help to alleviate it.
Physical defense can also take place in the gaps. If the initial action can’t crack the shell of the defense, help defenders can create chaos in the gaps by jump passing lanes, or digging to force a double.
Finally, the points off turnovers are the biggest crutch. It’s a form of advantage creation for the opposing team, as it can generate 2-v-1, or even solo, fastbreak opportunities. Off these turnovers, teams soar up the court to create easy scoring chances. It may not even be a traditional fastbreak finish at the rim, as they can also seek rhythm 3’s — typically trailing — against a scrambled defense.
There isn’t one particular element of their turnovers that’s easy to pinpoint and say, eliminate this. Turnovers will be a part of the game, and when player and ball movement is this frequent at this speed, it may happen at a higher rate. However, they must identify which turnovers are most frequent and detrimental, and how they can shore up transition defense in live turnover situations.
Will it be their achilles heel come playoff time?
To truly answer this question, let’s look at recent history.
First, the recent conference finalists compared to this year’s Grizzlies team.
Each season, with the exception of 2020-21, featured a conference finalist that finished in the bottom-10 in turnovers per game. Three of them won a championship, including the 2021-22 Warriors finishing 29th — just like Memphis.
Let’s expand upon it. I ran a query to show the 10 worst teams in turnovers per game and turnover percentage, among squads that had winning percentages 55% or better since 2014-15 season.
Of these 13 teams, two won a championship, one went to the Finals (won 73 games!), and two went to the conference finals. Yeah, first and second- round exits are sprinkled in there.
These charts are to show that high turnover numbers is not totally an achilles heel to contending for a championship. It’s possible, but not definite.
How can the Grizzlies make sure turnovers don’t hinder their chances of contending and winning a championship?
Focusing on the teams that won championships while turning the ball over frequently, they have outlier talents with all-time greats like Nikola Jokic, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis.
From a numbers standpoint, these teams identified competitive advantages. The Nuggets were 1st in effective field goal percentage. The Warriors were 1st in assist percentage, while boasting the 2nd-best defense. The Lakers also had the 3rd-best defense.
At this juncture, the Grizzlies are in the midst of creating a competitive advantage with their possessions game, scoring, and efficiency.
The main difference between the Grizzlies and these teams is the points off turnovers. Yeah, teams are taking more 3’s each year, so it may be a data point that reflects the willingness to let it fly in transition. Point remains, they give up way more points off turnovers than these examples. They have to find a way to quickly stifle the other team in the numbers game in transition.
The easiest way to do so is to simply cut down their turnovers. Let’s go back to the number of games they’ve turned the ball over 20 times. Four of their losses are by single digits. Hypothetically, let’s say the Grizzlies cut their turnovers down by 3 in those games:
3 times 1.259 equals 3.777. So let’s round it up to 4.
That right there can swing a game in the Grizzlies’ direction — not to mention, the four points saved could also mean the possessions ending with a basket rather than a turnover.
It’s a significant margin of error. It can be the difference between winning and losing a game.
In order to compete for a championship, not only do the Grizzlies have to clean up their turnovers, but they have to shore up their transition defense to prevent cycles while also honing in on their competitive advantages to offset this flaw.
So how can the Grizzlies clean up their turnovers?
Some people may say they don’t want this “new offense” anymore, but that’s not even close to the deal. The Grizzlies are a top-3 team in the West — scoring at a historic level, while addressing their woes in the halfcourt and beyond the arc.
Like in tech, you don’t overhaul an entire operating system just for one bug. That’d be like when the front camera came out on the iPhone, and Steve Jobs rolls back the entire operating system that enables FaceTime because the front camera doesn’t take the best selfie.
The Grizzlies can clean up their turnovers without overhauling the offense. For starters, game 55 is today. Maybe continued comfort level brings them down a bit — comfort not just with the system, but with a more complete roster. Managing speed could help too. While the pace is a clear advantage for them, can they sustain the speed advantage even if they dial it back a gear every now and then? Can the slight gear shift make passing lanes a bit more clear to avoid turnovers?
Maybe sprinkling in some diversity in the offense helps — something Taylor Jenkins has alluded to doing with the pick-and-roll. No, I don’t think they should revert to running 35-40 pick-and-roll’s per game, but maybe extra screening — on and off the ball — can crack the shell of good defenses.
Regardless, the Memphis Grizzlies are a great offensive team this year. Their changes are working, and it’s given them a better infrastructure towards contention — specifically with half-court offense. However, the turnovers are a bug in their cutting-edge operating system that needs to clean up before it jeopardizes the Grizzlies’ chances of a deep playoff run.
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