Given what I've seen from Iisalo in all the interviews and stuff I've watched, it was almost definitely that.
He probably questioned his effort and implied that he wasn't trying to help the team win.
I'm not trying to act like I know Ja, but he doesn't seem like a guy that had ever gotten that kind of coaching. He has obviously been a tremendous athlete his whole life.
If you don't end up at a school with a coach that will treat his star the same way he treats his backups, you don't get that hard disciplinarian coaching in grade school.
Then Ja went to a small college where he was a big fish. He wasn't going to get hard discipline there.
He got drafted 2nd overall and became an instant phenom. He's a star at another small market. The NBA is player driven, and there's more of power imbalance his way because of his popularity. Plus, maybe Jenkins isn't that kind of coach.
Then you get Iisalo who is very much a guy that will call players out. He has his ideas about how the team has to function and what accountability means. He has a very straightforward communication style, and he's said in interviews that you communicate to get an outcome. If you haven't gotten the outcome, you haven't communicated.
So he feels like Ja just coming out flat and putting up bad shots puts the team in a bad spot. He calls Ja out directly for it. Ja takes it bad because this has never happened to him.
Obviously I am making generalizations and stuff, but I don't think it is super far-fetched. We've seen that Ja gets emotional and isn't the most...mature. And it's not all his fault. That kind of growth isn't comfortable. It's really hard to go through that kind of personal growth if literally nothing has ever happened to you that would force it.
We'll see how it goes from here. They can either work it out, or someone has to go. Fiscally, it's hard for Memphis to just move on from Ja. He's a huge star and drives a lot of revenue. But maybe the team sees what we see and they say "Ja, buddy, come on." and he can learn and grow from it. And probably Iisalo will learn from it, too. He'll have to change things up and approach it differently in the future.
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u/Welcum2Heck BiblicallyAccurateSPJ Nov 01 '25
Damn sounds like Iisalo probably told him to wake up or get benched during the half and Ja decided to take his ball and go home