Justise Winslow Will Not Play for the Grizzlies This Season
The NBA season gets underway with exhibition contests beginning with four games on Wednesday from the Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World in Orlando. Teams will have a few exhibition contests before the eight-game seeding schedule for each team kicks off beginning next Thursday, July 30. As we see some battles for the final playoff spots in each conference, it’s going to be a matter of who takes the floor that could decide who makes the eventual 16-team playoff field and who ends up on the outside looking in.
The Memphis Grizzlies have to forge on without one of the pieces that they hoped would provide a spark in the stretch run and help the team reach the postseason.
Justise Winslow suffered a hip injury during an intrasquad scrimmage Monday night that will take him out for the rest of the season. That means the debut of the talented but injury-prone forward with the team will have to wait until next season. Winslow posted on his Twitter about the injury and looks forward to making his recovery to be a potential cornerstone alongside Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. next season.
Winslow was part of a major three-team trade shortly before the trade deadline that involved the Heat and the Timberwolves. In that deal, Miami sent Winslow and Dion Waiters to Memphis along with James Johnson to Minnesota. The Timberwolves dealt Gorgui Dieng and his bloated salary to Memphis, while the Grizzlies shipped Jae Crowder, Solomon Hill and Andre Iguodala to Miami. Iguodala hadn’t played a game for Memphis after being acquired in the offseason from Golden State in a salary dump, choosing to bide his time until the Grizzlies could work out a deal to get him to a team that he wanted to play for.
It was a lost season for Winslow, who played just 11 games, starting five, with the Heat this year. His last action on the season came back on January 8. He averaged 11.3 points, six rebounds and four assists per game while playing an average of 32 minutes a night. Winslow shot only 38.8 percent from the field, including 22.2 percent from beyond the arc, and connected on 66.7 percent of his attempts at the charity stripe. In his career, he has played in 241 regular season games, starting 105, and has averaged nine points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.7 assists per contest. Winslow shoots 41.7 percent from the field, including 33.7 percent from three-point range, and 64.6 percent at the free throw line.
In the postseason during his career, he has played in 18 games, starting two, while averaging 25.3 minutes per game. He has shot 40.5 percent from the field, including 32.4 percent from three-point range, and knocked down 70.2 percent of his attempts at the charity stripe. Winslow has averaged 7.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game in those contests. The Grizzlies hoped that having an actual training camp of sorts down in Orlando could help him get up to speed with his new teammates and that he could contribute down the stretch. With that out the window, the Grizzlies are going to have to figure out a different solution for the rest of the year.
Granted, there is a lot of potential for Winslow to be a contributor. He’s only 24 and has plenty of gas in the tank. If he could stay healthy, he could step in and be a third cornerstone piece with Morant and Jackson Jr., giving the Grizzlies a solid backbone of their rotation for several years to come. Therein lies the problem though: he has to be able to stay on the floor. As it is, Winslow played 78 games as a rookie in 2015-16 but hasn’t played more than 68 in a season since. Twice, he’s played less than 20 games. That makes durability a legitimate concern.
In addition, Memphis needs him to play because they sacrificed short-term cap space to get Winslow in the deal. They took on Waiters’ $12.7 million salary that he’s owed for next season, even though they immediately cut him loose. Memphis also picked up Dieng’s bloated deal, that sees him making $17.3 million next year in the final year of his four-year, $64 million extension he signed back in 2016. Even if the team were to dump him, he’d be dead money against the cap, much as Waiters’ money for next year is. That means the Grizzlies are going to have to be creative, especially given the fact that the cap isn’t likely to move much thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic leading to major losses in revenue. As you can see, the cap situation isn’t a great one for Memphis next season.
The Grizzlies enter the restart holding the final playoff spot in the Western Conference by 3.5 games over the Trail Blazers, Pelicans and Kings. We’ll see if they’re capable of doing enough to hold on to their postseason berth and a probable first-round matchup with the Lakers. What we do know is that Winslow will have to play cheerleader.
