Grizzlies exercise options for Allen, Jackson Jr.
The Grizzlies opted to invest in Grayson Allen's future as an NBA player on Monday when they exercised the team's option on the guard for the 2020-21 season.
Allen will be owed $2.55 million next season in the third year of his rookiescale contract.
Memphis acquired the former Duke shooting guard in the offseason Mike Conley trade. He is projected to be the team's backup shooting guard when the Grizzlies open the season Wednesday (6:30 p.m., Fox Sports Southeast) at Miami.
Memphis also exercised its thirdyear option on Jaren Jackson Jr., setting him up for a $7.3 million salary next season after his All-rookie campaign.
The Grizzlies will decline a fourthyear option on shooting guard Josh Jackson. The former Phoenix Suns guard would have been owed $8.9 million in 2020-21 if the Grizzlies had exercised the option. Memphis has not ruled out re-signing him as a free agent. The former No. 4 overall pick is beginning his time with the franchise in the Gleague.
Injury updates
Jonas Valanciunas (sore foot) and Kyle Anderson (shoulder) are expected to play Wednesday.
Second-year guard De'anthony Melton will be out as he continues recovering from a back injury.
Softball action
As the Grizzlies continued preparations for their 2019-20 season opener, first-year coach Taylor Jenkins decided to throw a changeup to his young team.
Instead of having the squad report to Fedexforum for practice Sunday, Jenkins set up an intrasquad softball game at Autozone Park.
"I'm a big believer that you've got to work hard and put in the time," Jenkins said. "But you've also got to enjoy the experience."
Jenkins better hope his team's lategame execution on Sunday is not a predictor of what's to come for the 2019-20 Grizzlies.
After putting two runners on base in the bottom of the ninth with just one out, Jenkins' team left both runners stranded and dropped a close game.
“It was fun," said Jaren Jackson Jr., who was on the winning team. "It was a nice little treat from Coach just for all our hard work we've been doing and over the summer."
Jackson admitted to striking out twice, but he did have an RBI.
"That was big," Jackson said. Multiple participants said point guards Ja Morant and Tyus Jones stood
easy to root for, and why his brother and the backs before him are part of this, too.
“I saw an opportunity,” Gainwell explained matter-of-factly when asked this question earlier this month.
Peel back the layers of this, though, and it offers a peek inside Norvell's operation. Because Memphis was the first FBS school to offer Gainwell a scholarship and consistently pursue him through some academic issues heading into his senior year, Dobbs and Gainwell Sr. said.
Gainwell was a dual-threat quarterback in high school who led Yazoo County to the best season in school history – a 14-1 record and a berth in the Mississippi 3A state championship game. He was then named CO-MVP of the 2017 Mississippi/alabama High School All-star Classic.
Around this time, Ole Miss stepped up its recruiting efforts. On Dec. 20, 2017, Gainwell nonetheless signed with Memphis during the early signing period.
But then former Memphis inside linebackers coach Dan Lanning, Gainwell's primary recruiter, announced he was leaving for a job at Georgia in February. Gainwell found out on Twitter.
Here's the most remarkable part: “It ain't bother me at all,” Gainwell said. “I knew I had a home.”
Even though his father told him more scholarship offers would come, perhaps from bigger schools, if he were to re-open his recruitment. Even though Dobbs reminded him Memphis already had a bunch of good running backs on campus. Even though Gainwell had a bond with Lanning, a bond so strong that the two still talk often today. Choosing Memphis over a Power 5 school went beyond simply relationships. It was about Norvell's offensive scheme. It was, more than anything, about the football, and what Memphis football is right now.
"Coach, this is a no brainer,” Gainwell finally told Dobbs at one point. “Memphis is the place I need to be.”
'They missed out on a good one'
Memphis is where he was Saturday night, running roughshod over another defense through the air and on the ground like no Tigers football player before him.
After five straight games (and counting) in which he rushed for more than 100 yards, the question is no longer how Gainwell fits into the offensive plan when Taylor returns. It's how Taylor will fit in when he returns. That's how good Gainwell has been.
“I know that Ole Miss and Mississippi State hate that they didn't pick him up,” Curtis Gainwell Sr. said with a laugh. “I want them to know that. They missed out on a good one.”
The Gainwells, meanwhile, haven't missed a home game at the Liberty Bowl, and so they were there for the show against Tulane.
Including Curtis Jr.
He graduated from a junior college last year and hopes to become a sports journalist. Right now, though, he supports his brothers while they do what he can't anymore.
So once Kenneth Gainwell got back to the sideline in the fourth quarter, once the Liberty Bowl public address announcer acknowledged that he had just become the first Memphis player to have more than 100 rushing yards and 100 receiving yards in the same game, the emotions he felt in the end zone were a lot like the emotions in the stands.
"When I heard them call his name and said that he had made a new record, and then to see the people stand up and to give him some praise for what he had done,” Curtis Gainwell Sr. said, “I was like, ‘Golly, God, I thank you.'”