Although his French team’s season has yet to finish, reports out of Europe indicate that American/Macedonian point guard T.J. Shorts will leave his Paris Basket team this summer, spurn EuroLeague offers, and head to the NBA, where he will sign with the Memphis Grizzlies.
As first reported by BasketEurope, Shorts will leave the French capital to return to America, and try to make the NBA for the first time. Since graduating from UC Davis in 2019, he has been building himself a quality career in Europe, where he has risen up to the levels all the way to the very top.
Shorts’s Quick Rise
Shorts is currently completing his second season with Paris, a team founded as recently as 2018 and replete with NBA links in the forms of its President, ex-Minnesota Timberwolves General Manager David Kahn, and head coach, ex-San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia 76ers and Atlanta Hawks player Tiago Splitter. As Paris has risen, so as Shorts; after leading them to a EuroCup championship victory in 2023-24 season (the second-tier intra-continental club competition), he has now led his team to a (the first-tier one to which EuroCup winners automatically qualify),
On his way, Shorts has won myriad individual accolades. In the 2023-24 season, he was voted the Most Valuable Player of both the EuroCup and the French domestic league, the LNB. In 2022-23, while playing for Telekom Baskets Bonn, he was MVP of both the German domestic league, the Bundesliga, and the third-tier Europe-wide competition, the Champions League. And in 2021-22, playing for another German team in Craislheim, he led the Bundesliga in scoring while winning the MVP award at the fourth-tier competition, the Europe Cup.
For four consecutive seasons, then, Shorts has taken the next level up, and been arguably the best guard in the competition. When the EuroLeague postseason awards announced, Shorts – who has already finished the regular season as the competition’s assist leader, made the All-EuroLeague First Team, and won the MVP award in both the Play-In Round and the month of November – may well find himself picking up yet more MVP awards, both domestically and across the continent.
Already Has Ties To The Grizzlies
At this point, the NBA is the only remaining level for Shorts to get to. And luckily for him, one of his biggest fans just earned a position of some influence in it.
The most obvious link between Shorts and the NBA comes in the form of Tuomas Iisalo. The Grizzlies’ new head coach was Shorts’ coach at both Bonn and Paris, before he too made the leap to the NBA in the summer of 2024. In the summer of 2023, the deep-pocketed Paris team splashed out on Iisalo, and when he joined from Bonn, he brought much of the German team’s playing rotation with him.
There therefore exists no better advocate for Shorts’ ability to play in the NBA than the man who brought him to the nearest level. And if Shorts does make the Grizzlies roster for next season, he will be joining a team that needs multiple options to serve as cover for their oft-injured superstar point guard, Ja Morant.
On paper, then, the unison makes perfect logical sense. The question then becomes whether at his small stature, Shorts can hold his own every night in the NBA.
Chance Of Making The Grizzlies Rotation
Back when he was President of the New York Knicks, Isiah Thomas once said of the 5’8 firebrand Nate Robinson, “if he was 6-2, he probably would have been the second, or even the first, pick in this draft”. In a similar vein, it is entirely fair to say that were he not 5’9, Shorts would have played in the NBA already.
The entirety of the European basketball knows of Shorts’ dominance with the ball. Despite the aptness of his surname, Shorts can get to wherever he wants off of a live dribble, even against the high-calibre defences of the EuroLeague (which somewhat lack for the same level of athleticism that the NBA tries to monopolise, but which make up for it with added physicality). He scores from all three levels, and is an excellent playmaker for others off of that threat, an excellent floor general who can also create and make shots in isolation when the moment calls for it. Shorts is skilled, fearless, shifty and reliable. Just like a star point guard should be.
To be sure, the complicated multi-positional defensive schemes of the NBA will be a challenge for Shorts, who is a one-position defender disadvantaged even at that one position. Speed, hands, reads and gumption can only make up for so much.
However, Shorts’ skill level on the offensive end has already proven it can work anywhere. The EuroLeague is almost invariably stocked with players who either were, could be or will be in the NBA at some point, and in amongst this NBA pedigree, he proved he was ahead of most of the pack.
If BasketEurope’s reporting is correct, Shorts will join the Grizzlies for at least summer league, and likely for training camp. Whether the 27-year-old starlet at the height of his powers will be able to play his way into an NBA rotation is the only remaining unknown. And the answer to that question is very likely to be yes.
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