Who The Memphis Grizzlies Draft Is Irrelevant
By D. Goodman
With the 2015 NBA Draft only days away, teams are busy finalizing their draft boards and trying to find a player that can help them win. For some teams, like the Minnesota Timberwolves and Philadelphia 76ers, who are rebuilding, they will simply take the best player available and figure out the rest from there.
For others, like the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, they will be looking to add someone who may be able to help them down the road and maybe deepen their bench.
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The Memphis Grizzlies find themselves squarely in the middle of those two extremes.
Memphis is scheduled to pick No. 25 on draft night and are in the fortunate position that they can draft for need instead of simply taking the best player available.
They can also take a chance on a project player that might need a few years to develop since the starters in Memphis are pretty much set in stone (this is assuming Marc Gasol does re-sign with the team, as he is expected to according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports).
Most mock drafts have the Grizzlies looking for someone who can help either improve the team’s long-range shooting or can address the upcoming depth issue at the center position, since even if they retain Gasol it is almost certain that backup Kosta Koufos will sign elsewhere.
Some analysts feel the Grizzlies really need to focus on bringing in a young center through the draft or free agency and start looking towards the future, but most see Memphis looking to three-point shooters and projects such as Justin Anderson from Virginia, Arizona’s Rondae Hollis-Jefferson or Christian Wood out of UNLV.
Either direction will probably work out fine for the Grizzlies, because for this team, who they draft and why really doesn’t matter right now.
The Grizzlies are a team that is firmly in “win now” mode and with good reason. They made it to the Western Conference Semifinals and lost to the Warriors in six games.
Think about that. Memphis took the Warriors, a team that rarely loses at home and pretty much ran the table until that point, to a Game 6. The same result as what happened in the NBA Finals when Golden State beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Memphis doesn’t have LeBron James on their team.
The Grizzlies are right on the edge of possibly doing something very special and they know it. It’s why they will do just about anything to bring Gasol back and keep the core they have intact. To solve the issue of their abysmal three-point shooting, they will in all likelihood look towards free agency to find a fix instead of hoping they can luck out in the draft.
Whomever the Grizzlies end up drafting will no doubt spend a lot of time either a) playing basketball with the Iowa Energy, the Grizzlies’ NBA D-League affiliate or b) riding the bench and getting few, if any minutes. Since 2007, general manager Chris Wallace has only kept two of the players he has picked in the first round and that doesn’t look to change this year.
Memphis already has a chemistry and they know what their weak points are. You can be sure they feel like they don’t have the time to groom someone to fit into what they have already built.
A perfect example is the tale of K.J. McDaniels. McDaniels was picked by the Sixers with the 32nd pick in the second-round of the 2014 draft and played monster minutes due to the team’s rebuilding. He was making a name for himself as a tenacious defender when he was traded to the Houston Rockets at the deadline, a team that was headed to the playoffs.
McDaniels quickly went from 20-plus minutes a night to barely three faster than you can say “tanking” and was forgotten.
It’s just the reality of life in the NBA. Rookies have almost no place on a team that is on the verge of getting to the next level and that includes the Memphis Grizzlies.
So make sure you write down the name of the player Memphis takes with the 25th pick. I’m sure he will either find fame and fortune with another team or it will come up as a trivia question at some point down the road.
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