Before Ja Morant suffered a season-ending injury, the Memphis Grizzlies were building momentum for a potential playoff push. But Paul Pierce doesn't think it would have mattered.

"They wasn't going to the playoffs," Pierce said on "The Ticket and the Truth" with Kevin Garnett, part of "All the Smoke Productions. "I don't care what Ja did. They wasn't going to the playoffs. They was too far back."

Garnett disagreed.

"They won three, four in a row, and they had some real momentum," he said.

"They got too much ground to cover," Pierce said. "When you five, six games from the Play-In, that's like being two laps behind. If Usain Bolt, and I'm two laps in front of him, and we've got two laps to go, he's not catching me."

Pierce and Garnett, who won an NBA championship together with the Boston Celtics, continue to go back and forth throughout the clip.

The Grizzlies have been dealing with an injury crisis for most of this season and played Monday's game against the Golden State Warriors without Morant, Desmond Bane, Marcus Smart, Steven Adams, Brandon Clarke, Jake LaRavia and Derrick Rose. Morant returned from his 25-game suspension on Dec. 19 and the Grizzlies went 6-3 with him in the lineup before he was ruled out for the season with a shoulder injury.

Still, Memphis beat the Warriors thanks to strong performances from GG Jackson, Vince Williams Jr. and Jacob Gilyard.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Paul Pierce says Grizzlies were 'two laps behind' in playoff race