Ty Jerome scored 45 in the opener, and our projections moved him 44 places

Ty Jerome scored a career-high 45 points in Memphis' 123-103 win over Utah on Wednesday, the most by a Grizzlies player in a season opener, according to NBA.com. He made 17 of his 25 shots and five of his ten threes in 32 minutes, with seven rebounds and six assists, and the box score our projections read from ESPN overnight has the same line. It was his first regular-season game as the lead guard of a team that traded Ja Morant to Portland in June and Jaren Jackson Jr. to Utah in February, which we wrote about in Memphis traded Ja and Jaren.

A 45-point night is an outlier for almost anyone, and our projections are built not to chase one, by weighing each stat against the preseason line on a fixed number of pseudo-games. Even so, one game moved Jerome a long way, because it moved both halves of his projection at once: what he does with his minutes, and how many minutes he gets. This piece sets out how far, and why we would act on it.

Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.