Remember when I said Dub Nation didn’t need to gloat back in February, that we could just quietly nod and smile as Memphis flew too close to the sun? Well, the wax just hit the ocean. Ja Morant is a Portland Trail Blazer now, traded for Jerami Grant and Kris Murray, and the last remaining pillar of that 2021-23 Grizzlies core is gone.
Memphis wasn’t some plucky upstart back then. This was the No. 2 seed in the West and a 56-win team. A franchise that genuinely believed it had stopped chasing Golden
State and started replacing them. Four years later, the final cornerstone of that era just got shipped out for a wing on the decline and a prospect who, per Blazer’s Edge’s own breakdown of the return, “seemed to run from the ball.” Call it what it actually is: an estate sale.
I wrote in June of 2018 that the Warriors’ dynasty operated as a “Path of Destruction,” a running tally of franchises that crumbled simply from existing in proximity to Golden State’s gravity. Memphis wasn’t on that list back then because they hadn’t earned it yet. But go back and look at what Draymond Green told GQ in 2017, the swagger, the certainty that the league knew it didn’t stand a chance. That’s the energy the 2021-22 Grizzlies tried to step to. Morant talked like someone who believed the future had already arrived. And after that 2021 play-in win, the “Whoop That Trick” celebrations from Memphis fans weren’t just noise. That was a fanbase genuinely convinced the torch had passed.
Golden State answered the old-fashioned way by beating Memphis in six games during the 2022 playoffs and winning the championship. Order restored. They then knocked them out of the play-in tournament in 2025. But here’s the part that should actually sting for Grizzlies fans: those losses weren’t the death blow. The franchise just gave up on their guys. Jaren Jackson Jr., a Defensive Player of the Year, shipped to Utah. Desmond Bane, gone to Orlando. Marcus Smart, gone. Taylor Jenkins, the coach who actually built something real in that locker room, fired with nine games left in a season. Nine games!
Twelve first-round picks over the next seven seasons sound impressive until you remember Memphis already hit on Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Desmond Bane. Draft picks aren’t the goal. They’re what you hope eventually becomes another Ja Morant. Memphis just traded the real thing for the hope of finding a copy.
Does this graduate Memphis to the Path of Destruction? The case is stronger than Cleveland’s or Oklahoma City’s ever was, and those teams only made my “Imminent Implosion” tier back in 2018. The Grizzlies get the full treatment now, the same shelf as the Spurs and the Clippers in my original Maximum Destruction tier. The difference is the Spurs and Clippers got there losing to Golden State on the floor. Memphis got there by trying to become the anti-Warriors and detonating themselves in the process.
The Warriors didn’t pull the trigger folks, they just kept raising the standard until other franchises started pulling it on themselves. Memphis wanted the dynasty before it had built one. Four years later, the dynasty is gone and the estate sale is complete. Dub Nation doesn’t need to clap; the auctioneer already did.
