Memphis Grizzlies Fall One Win Short in Vegas, but Cam Boozer Looks Like the Real Thing

The Memphis Grizzlies came within one possession of a Las Vegas Summer League title this week, and somehow that near-miss was the most encouraging Memphis Grizzlies news in months. A franchise that spent the past year and a half dismantling its core — Desmond Bane, then Jaren Jackson Jr., then finally Ja Morant — took a roster full of rookies, two-way players and reclamation projects to Sunday's championship game before falling 94-90 to Golden State on July 19. Along the way, No. 3 overall pick Cameron Boozer looked every bit the franchise cornerstone Memphis drafted him to be, Cedric Coward played like the best young wing in the desert, and a fan base that watched a 25-57 season now has actual, tangible reasons to care again. Nobody hangs a banner for July. But rebuilds have to start somewhere, and this one apparently starts with a team that refused to treat summer league like an obligation.

Six games, one gut-punch finish

Memphis went all-in on Vegas in a way most franchises don't, playing its key young pieces every night rather than resting them, with the stated goal of building chemistry ahead of the season. The week's run looked like this:

• July 14: Grizzlies 106, Warriors 85 — a 21-point rout of the team they'd meet again with a trophy on the line.
• July 18 (semifinal): Grizzlies 101, Rockets 90 — Coward poured in 28, and two-way guard Javon Small added 17 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists.
• July 19 (championship): Warriors 94, Grizzlies 90 — Memphis led by 10 entering the fourth before Golden State, behind eventual Summer League MVP Yaxel Lendeborg's 21 and 10, closed the show.

The title-game collapse stung — up double digits after three quarters, outscored down the stretch by a Warriors group that simply executed better late. Coward scored 21 in the final, Boozer went for 19 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists, and Small chipped in 16 off the bench. If you're hunting for a silver lining beyond the obvious, it's that the two teams split their meetings and the rematch came down to the last minute against the club that also ended the Lakers' summer run in the semis.

Cam Boozer looks like the real thing

The headline act delivered. Boozer, the Duke forward Memphis grabbed third overall in June, played all eight available summer games — back-to-backs included — and averaged 18.0 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists on 49 percent shooting and a frankly absurd 40.6 percent from three. On July 21 the league named him to the All-Summer League First Team alongside Lendeborg, Milwaukee's Brayden Burries, Cleveland's Meleek Thomas and Chicago's Caleb Wilson. The efficiency is the story: top-three picks usually spend July jacking tough shots at volume, and Boozer instead looked polished, unhurried and genuinely happy to make the extra pass. The fact that a 19-year-old lottery pick didn't ask out of a single game of exhibition basketball tells you something about the temperament, too. Memphis has been burned before by betting the franchise on singular talent; Boozer's early returns suggest a different, steadier kind of star.

Coward, Small and the depth behind the headliner

The most valuable development of the week might have been everything around Boozer. Cedric Coward, the second-year wing out of Washington State who came aboard in the 2025 draft, earned All-Summer League Second Team honors and closed the run with back-to-back games of 28 and 21 points, looking too good for this level. If he and Boozer are both real, Memphis suddenly has the forward pairing every rebuilding team spends years hunting for. Javon Small forced his way into the rotation conversation with poised lead-guard play that was a leap from his rookie summer. There were bumps: first-round pick Karim Lopez, the 21st overall selection out of the New Zealand Breakers, missed the semifinal and was day-to-day with a hamstring injury after also sitting out Salt Lake City games alongside Walter Clayton Jr. — nothing reported as serious, but worth tracking as camp approaches. For a front office trying to figure out which of its young pieces are keepers, two weeks in Vegas produced more useful evidence than most of last season did.

The teardown that got them here

All of this optimism sits on top of a genuinely brutal 12 months of Memphis Grizzlies news. The 2025-26 team finished 25-57, 13th in the West, in Tuomas Iisalo's first year on the bench — a 23-win faceplant from the season before, dragged down by injuries and locker-room friction. Jaren Jackson Jr. went to Utah at the February deadline for Walter Clayton Jr., Kyle Anderson and Taylor Hendricks. Then came the June-July flurry: Isaiah Stewart arrived from Detroit on June 24 for three second-round picks; Morant was traded to Portland on June 29 for Jerami Grant, Kris Murray and cash, ending a seven-year era defined equally by brilliance and turbulence — last season he averaged 19.5 points and 8.1 assists but shot just 41 percent from the field and 23.5 percent from three, and clashed with Iisalo enough to draw a team suspension. Two days later Santi Aldama went to Dallas for AJ Johnson, a protected 2030 first-rounder and two seconds. Add draft night, where Memphis took Boozer at No. 3, slid down twice to nab Lopez at 21 while collecting five extra second-rounders, and added BYU's Richie Saunders at 32, and you have one of the most complete resets any franchise has attempted in a single calendar year.

Where the roster stands in the West

Nobody in Memphis is pretending this team contends in 2026-27. Sportsbooks have hung a win total around 23.5; one Sports Illustrated projection this week argued for something closer to 27 or 28, banking on better health and the young core's growth. The pieces, though, are more interesting than a typical year-one rebuild: Boozer and Coward as the developmental centerpiece, Jaylen Wells and GG Jackson II on the wing, Zach Edey and Stewart bringing genuine muscle up front, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — who exercised his $21.6 million player option — and Jerami Grant as the stabilizing vets who double as obvious future trade chips. The war chest of draft capital assembled through the Morant, Jackson, Aldama and draft-night deals gives the front office room to be opportunistic whenever the next disgruntled star hits the market. In a Western Conference where Oklahoma City sits on top and everyone else is scrambling, the Grizzlies are playing a different game entirely: accumulate picks, develop the kids, and let the standings be what they are.

What's next on the calendar

Summer league is a wrap, which makes this the quiet stretch. The NBA's full 2026-27 schedule is expected around mid-August, with marquee dates typically announced a few days earlier. Training camp opens in late September, and the questions between now and then are pleasantly small: Lopez's hamstring, whether Small's play earns him a converted deal, and how Iisalo stitches a real rotation out of a roster that suddenly has more intriguing young players than minutes to hand them.

For the first time in a while, the Memphis Grizzlies enter an offseason lull with momentum instead of dread. A summer league final is a small trophy case to be shopping for, sure — but watch Boozer's poise, Coward's scoring bursts and a locker room that clearly wanted to win meaningless July games, and the rebuild stops feeling theoretical. The record will be ugly in 2026-27. The direction, finally, isn't.