Grizzlies schedule includes cruel March that could make or break season

The Memphis Grizzlies dropped their schedule for the 2022-23 season today and it’s filled with tons of intrigue.

They have a franchise-record 18 nationally televised games, as well as an additional 10 games on NBA TV during the 2022-23 season.

One month in particular, however, will be especially challenging for the young Grizzlies. Let’s take a look to see why March will be a make or break month for the Grizzlies.

Why March will be tough and will the Grizzlies be able to accept the challenge?

First of all, the Grizzlies play 17 games in March— the most in any month of the upcoming season. Nine of these 17 games will be played at home, while the other eight are on the road. The quantity of games alone make March a tough month. Out of these games, 12 are against teams that will more than likely have winning records next season, five are on national television, and three others will be on NBA TV.

The month starts with the Grizzlies beginning a four-game road trip, taking on Houston, Denver, the Clippers, and the Lakers. The latter three will all be nationally televised, as they feature some of the games’ top names in Nikola Jokic, Kawhi Leonard, and LeBron James.

The Grizzlies then get to come back home to play two games on March 9 and March 11, but have two tough opponents in the Warriors and the Mavericks. After these battles with two of the top teams in the West from a year prior, they have another three-game road trip starting in Dallas, then head to Miami and San Antonio.

Seven of the Grizzlies’ last eight games in March are at home, but the opponents do not get much easier. In this eight-game stretch, they play Golden State, Dallas, Atlanta, and the Clippers twice. March also includes two sets of back-to-backs, with only one set being a home series that starts March 28 against the Magic with the Clippers to follow.

The Western Conference is set up to be extremely competitive all year, so these games at the end of the season should be crucial for playoff seeding purposes. Playing the Clippers and the Mavericks three times and the Warriors twice in one month will be no easy task. The Grizzlies playing so many quality opponents in the last full month of the season will surely show what they are made of and solidify their status in a crowded conference.

The month of March has the potential to either give the Grizzlies all of the momentum in the world heading into April, or to drop them in the standings right before the playoffs. Either way, it is certain that a Ja Morant-led team will not back down in any way from the challenge, and that March will be a crucial month for the Memphis Grizzlies.