Can the Grizzlies shock the world and win the title in 2025?

Out of their last season's struggles and the intensifying competition around the stacked Western Conference, the Memphis Grizzlies are frequently overlooked in the looming 2024-25 campaign.

Amid huge anticipation on how they'll attempt to deliver a bounce-back rally, the majority remains unsure if they can replicate their back-to-back seasons of success prior to the past year's nightmarish outing. Albeit their main core remains intact, headlined by Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Desmond Bane, this new-look Memphis team still has a lot of things to prove to convince everyone that they belong in the conversation amongst the best of all the best.

One of the wild cards for a title

Despite mostly being forgotten in the discussion amongst the league's legit title heavyweights, don't count out the Grizzlies yet in shocking the world by pulling an unprecedented run.

Bleacher Report identified the Grizzlies as one of the wild-card NBA title contenders heading to the upcoming season, in which Grant Hughes expressed his optimism on their chances to compete coming off a rough 2023-24. With a fully recovered and rejuvenated roster in which each has shown promising signs to contribute, he argued that Memphis will always have a shot to contend at the highest level.

“Memphis was on a contending trajectory before coming completely undone last season. Still young, still talented, and now featuring key players who upgraded their games last season, expect it to pick up where it left off,” Hughes argued .

Ready to compete

There might be plenty of doubts around them, but it shouldn't surprise everyone if the Grizzlies make such noise and ultimately redeem their contention status. This group already demonstrated it could go head-to-head with 29 other teams before the previous season, and they have the caliber to do it again this 2024-25, led by Morant, JJJ, and Bane. With a robust supporting cast behind, such as Marcus Smart, Brandon Clarke, Luke Kennard, Zach Edey, GG Jackson, and Santi Aldama, Memphis is truly locked and loaded to go all in.

Yet, at the end of the day, the ball is in the hands of the Grizzlies if they'll only allow themselves to settle for being a wild-card contending team.

Related: Everything you need to know about the Grizzlies preseason schedule is here