JERAMI Grant

Grant played 57 games for Portland last season and averaged 29.7 minutes. He put up 18.6 points, 3.5 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game, with 0.7 steals and 0.6 blocks. He turned it over 2.1 times a night. The shooting line is the part Memphis should care about most. He hit 45.3 percent from the field, 38.9 percent from three and 81.4 percent from the line. That worked out to a 60.8 true shooting percentage on a 22.8 usage rate. Those are efficient numbers for a scorer carrying a real share of the offense. His plus-minus was minus 0.1, which is a wash. Taken together, last season painted him as a reliable scoring forward who could space the floor and get to the line, even on a Portland team that lost its last several games of the year.

Grant has four October games on his log with Memphis. On October 5 against Atlanta he scored 10 points with 4 rebounds and 2 assists in 14.0 minutes, and the Grizzlies won. He was a plus 14.0 in that one. On October 7 against Orlando he had 3 points, 3 rebounds and 1 assist in 19.7 minutes in a loss, though his plus-minus was a positive 6.0. On October 9 against Chicago he scored 9 points with 1 rebound in 11.9 minutes in a win, finishing minus 10.0. Then came October 16 against Charlotte, a Memphis win in which he logged zero minutes while on the injury report for rest. The minutes have been modest. None of the three appearances reached 20 minutes, which is well under the 29.7 he averaged last season in Portland.

The last stretch of Grant's Portland tenure was a run of five straight games against San Antonio in late April. He scored 5 points in 19.3 minutes on April 19 in a loss, then 5 points in 20.3 minutes on April 21 in a win. He followed with 13 points in 22.6 minutes on April 24, 17 points and 5 rebounds in 32.9 minutes on April 26, and 12 points in 16.7 minutes on April 28. Portland lost four of those five. Before that series, on March 27, he scored 19 points with 4 rebounds in 29.0 minutes against Dallas in a loss. The scoring came in bursts and the minutes bounced around, from 16.7 to 32.9 in the span of a few days. Memphis is getting a player whose role was already shifting at the end of his Portland run.

The case for Grant on this roster is simple. He shot 38.9 percent from three and 81.4 percent from the line last season, and a 60.8 true shooting percentage is the kind of efficiency that holds up in any lineup. At 6-7 and 213 pounds he can play either forward spot. The question is minutes. His three October appearances topped out at 19.7, and his scoring in those games was 10, 3 and 9 points. If Memphis gives him something closer to the 29.7 minutes he played in Portland, the 18.6 points per game he averaged last season becomes a reasonable target. If the rotation keeps him in the teens for minutes, his value is as a spot shooter and defender off the bench. Either way, the rest day on October 16 and the clearance on October 20 suggest the team is managing him carefully.

There is nothing on the rumor front involving Grant. No reported trade talk, no contract chatter, no speculation about his standing in Memphis. For a 32-year-old in his 12th season who changed teams since last spring, that is a quiet situation. The injury history is short and recent. It consists of three entries, all from the past week, and ends with him cleared. The only thing worth watching is how the Grizzlies handle his workload. The rest designation on October 16 came during a stretch of four games in twelve days, and the team sat him for the Charlotte win. With the calendar turning toward the regular season, the next few box scores will show whether Memphis plans to lean on him as a starter-level scorer or hold him to a reserve role.