Ty Jerome has agreed to a three-year, $28 million contract with the Memphis Grizzlies, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, taking a sought-after scoring and playmaking guard off the market early in the NBA’s 2025 free agency period.
Jerome, who turns 28 on July 8, is coming off a breakout season in Cleveland, where he averaged 12.5 points on pristine 52/44/87 shooting splits in 19.9 minutes per game across 70 appearances for a Cavaliers team that lit up scoreboards all season long en route to 64 wins and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
All of those numbers represented a quantum leap for a player who bounced around from Phoenix to Oklahoma City to Golden State to Cleveland during his first five NBA seasons, rarely lingering long in the rotation before an ankle injury that required surgical repair cost him nearly all of the 2023-24 campaign.
“You’re climbing an uphill battle,” Jerome told Chris Fedor of cleveland.com. “You’re lost. You feel forgotten.”
Jerome issued one hell of a reminder last season, marking himself as one of the NBA’s top reserves and most improved players — and a free-agent-to-be in line for a significant payday.
The Virginia product’s combination of high-efficiency shooting and complementary playmaking fit perfectly in head coach Kenny Atkinson’s uptempo, ball- and player-movement-heavy offensive system, leading to one of the most productive seasons for any reserve in the NBA. Only six other players who logged at least 1,000 minutes posted a true shooting percentage north of .600 while dishing assists as frequently and committing turnovers as rarely as Jerome did: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Tyrese Haliburton, Jimmy Butler, Jalen Brunson and Tyler Herro.
That’s not to say that Jerome’s necessarily ready to start waltzing onto All-Star and All-NBA teams. It’s worth noting that he’d never logged 1,000 minutes himself before last season, owing to a combination of injuries, inability to crack rotations and the defensive shortcomings that became more pronounced in Cleveland’s second-round playoff loss to the Indiana Pacers — all of which are the sorts of things that might give a would-be suitor pause before making a significant offer in free agency.
Even after that pause, though, Jerome’s still a 6-foot-5 guard who’s a threat to knock down 3-pointers both off the catch and off the dribble; an excellent in-between player with an elite floater and a strong midrange pull-up game; a high-level pick-and-roll facilitator with a career assist-to-turnover ratio just south of 3-to-1; and a quick processor with good vision and anticipation who can contribute on and off the ball.
Those attributes make Jerome the kind of player who, when healthy, can energize and optimize any backcourt. Combine them with the kind of commitment and attitude that allowed him to persevere through inconsistency and injury and come out on the other side, and you’ve got someone worth betting on.
“He’s such a great dude,” former Warriors teammate and two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry said of Jerome. “He’s such a great teammate and locker room guy. He’s a competitor. He’s a dog. Doesn’t have any of the attributes that would jump off the page. But he’s a hooper with the ultimate confidence in himself.”
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