This Memphis Grizzlies season has become a complete mess.

There’s no need to avoid it, or write around it, or disingenuously try to convince you the accelerated development of Vince Williams Jr. and GG Jackson will eventually make this season’s agonizing start and the absurd state of the team at the moment worth it whenever the Grizzlies are whole again in the future. Not anymore, now that the losses are really piling up.

This is just a mess, the likes of which this franchise may have never been through before – and that's actually why this might end well.

Memphis has had bad teams, and teams that didn’t or couldn’t live up to expectations. It has had injury-mangled teams featuring a revolving door of players, and teams that could legitimately claim to be a year away from contention. We’ve never really had all of that wrapped up in one team – bad record and horrific injury luck mixed with an unthinkable influx of basketball journeymen and an incredible amount of hope for the next season.

It’s what makes Thursday's NBA trade deadline compelling, but also confusing, cathartic and potentially inconsequential for the current version of the Grizzlies, who got this season's proceedings started a week early by trading Steven Adams to the Houston Rockets for Victor Oladipo’s expiring contract and a few second-round picks.

More than a new starting center, or future financial flexibility, or a particular player, Memphis just needs the ability to press fast forward to next season, when it can actually play Ja Morant, Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Marcus Smart together for more than just a few games. That's the best solution for most of its problems.

Unfortunately, no amount of draft picks or trade assets can make the eight months between now and the next meaningful Grizzlies game go any faster. We are stuck in a holding pattern, one that could help spruce up the back half of the roster even as this season devolves into a graceful tank job that’s only bearable because of what’s presumably on the horizon.

Maybe there will be clarity on the wing, where Memphis still has a glut of mostly underwhelming options under contract for next year that it doesn’t appear to need anymore now that Williams and GG Jackson seem to have the most promise. Can General Manager Zach Kleiman free up some valuable space under the NBA’s luxury tax next season by dealing John Konchar, Ziaire Williams, Jake LaRavia and David Roddy at the deadline? Perhaps Luke Kennard is attractive to one of this season’s contenders. Xavier Tillman Sr. was to Boston. If that happens, would that change the team’s thinking on bringing back Bane and Smart from their injuries?

PREVIEW: Top trade candidates for Memphis Grizzlies at the 2024 NBA deadline deadline

Nothing that happens is likely to send shockwaves through the league, especially now that the Grizzlies are irrelevant to the outcome of this NBA season. None of it, frankly, would determine whether the team can maximize the next couple years with this core more than simply getting that core back healthy again.

But it could offer more clues into how Kleiman is digesting the trauma this franchise has been through over the past year, when all the momentum of the Morant era came to a screeching halt – initially for self-inflicted reasons and recently because of this unthinkable run of injuries to impact players. It could offer a pathway into the next two pressure-packed years, when Morant, Bane and Jackson will all be under big-money contracts for the first time and anything less than being a Western Conference contender again will feel like a disappointment.

That’s what makes analyzing these Grizzlies especially complicated at the trade deadline. They are not sellers, nor are they buyers. They’ve got some tweaks to make, sure. But they’re mainly just beat up beyond recognition, with a daily injury report that has gone from calamitous while Memphis stumbled to a 6-19 record during Morant’s suspension to downright comical over the past week or so.

The Grizzlies have had 35 different injury designations in all this season and 16 different players listed on the injury report in some capacity. There have been 10 different kinds of “soreness” mentioned on injury reports and four players listed with a left ankle sprain – five if you include Smart’s left foot sprain from earlier this season.

The one constant has been Brandon Clarke’s “left achilles tendon repair.” Santi Aldama has surprisingly had a team-high six ailments, including his most recent tailbone contusion. He’s likely soon to be joined by Derrick Rose, who appears to have gotten injured again almost as soon as he returned from injury in recent days. LaRavia has perhaps the most diverse profile of issues, with both a left great toe contusion and eye surgery to his credit this season.

And then, as if the Grizzlies are in on this joke, they dealt one player (Adams) listed on their injury list with “right knee PCL surgery” for a player (Oladipo) who was immediately placed on the injury report with “left patellar tendon repair.”

Even at the trade deadline, there's no easy way to salvage this mess of a season the Grizzlies are finishing out.

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on X: @mgiannotto

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: NBA trade deadline: What do the Memphis Grizzlies, Ja Morant need?