Memphis Grizzlies: Best Move They Did, Didn’t Make
The Memphis Grizzlies attacked the offseason, coming away with draft picks and free agents that will help this team stay relevant. What was the best move they made? Was there a better move out there they could have made?
The best shooters in the NBA only hit half of their shots. Baseball’s best connect on a mere fraction of the balls pitched to them. Golf players do not take turns swapping hole-in-ones. In sports, it is not always as simple as successful.
The path to a title will have ups and downs on it.
The Grizzlies saw last season fall apart as injuries ravaged the roster, clinging to a playoff berth that saw them swept by the San Antonio Spurs. How did they look to stay relevant in a dominant Western Conference?
What was their best move — and the one they failed to make?
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Best Move: Signing Chandler Parsons
Two paths were before the Memphis Grizzlies this offseason: fight to stay relevant or break things down and start a rebuild.
With draft picks owed to Denver and Boston protected for only the very top of the draft, many outside observers expected the Grizzlies to hit the full reset button, letting free agent Mike Conley walk and trading away their remaining veterans.
Instead Memphis surprised the league and signed forward Chandler Parsons to a four-year, max contract to be the replacement for Rudy Gay that Jeff Green and Tayshaun Prince never were. Parsons is young, athletic, and versatile at both ends of the court.
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On offense Parsons can handle the ball as a secondary playmaker on the wing, providing underrated passing and a developing floor game. He can shoot from anywhere on the court, shooting 41 percent from beyond the arc in Dallas last year.
His shot attempts were down last season as he battled injuries, but his efficiency was at its peak, including a career-high .589 true shooting percentage, seventh among wings who played at least 1,000 minutes last year.
Parsons is more maligned for his defense, but he has proven to be an able team defender when put in the right scheme.
He has the size and strength to guard opposing power forwards, something Dallas used to great effect down the stretch last season in lineups where Dirk Nowitzki played the 5.
With Conley guarding the opposing team’s best guard, and Gasol protecting the rim, Parsons will be put in place to succeed.
With Parsons in the fold, Memphis then re-signed Mike Conley, giving the Grizzlies a solid core of veterans with a lot of talent. The problem hanging over the team is the same one that plagued them last season: injuries.
Conley missed 26 last season, and Marc Gasol is 31 and recovering from foot surgery after a fracture cut his season similarly short. Parsons brings an equally weighty hospital file with him, having missed 37 games the last two seasons.
Other rotation pieces, such as Tony Allen and Vince Carter, also come without a clean bill of health.
If everyone stays healthy, this team has a core as talented as anyone in the West outside of Golden State. On the court, the pieces Memphis has assembled seem like a great fit, and Parsons’ ability to play the 3 or 4 opens up options the Grizzlies have not had.
If the team sees poor injury luck again, everything will fall apart in a hurry. This team has young talent primed for success down the road, but little depth to shore up the team this season if things go south.
Memphis made a gamble with their roster, but in a small-market city where fan faithfulness is not guaranteed for a rebuild, signing Parsons was a great move that keeps this team relevant and dangerous.
Best Move They Didn’t Make: Finding a Viable Shooting Guard
Memphis could only play the hand they were dealt, and that hand was a limited amount of cap space with an aging and brittle roster. They played it well, adding Parsons and drafting young talent to help their roster down the line at point guard and power forward.
But the Grizzlies have a gaping hole at shooting guard that will limit the versatility that Parsons gives them. Playing small with Parsons at the 4 unlocks spacing and scoring for a team that has struggled for both, but that requires two additional wing players.
Memphis may not have even one.
Tony Allen hit the aging curve hard last season, dropping from a net positive while on the court – plus-3.3 Box Plus/Minus — to a slight negative at minus-0.1 BPM. Outside of one magical game against the Lakers, Allen was unable to make an impact scoring the ball.
As his athleticism wanes, his elite defense fades into simply good defense, and he can’t stay on the court.
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Vince Carter is 39, hasn’t been able to play defense in years, and won’t be able to contribute more than 20 minutes a game consistently.
Troy Daniels was signed for $10 million over three years and can shoot the basketball, but he’s similarly a turnstile on defense and hasn’t added more options to his offensive game.
James Ennis may be called upon to fill that role, but he has no history as a solid starter as he filled the bench in Miami and New Orleans .
The Grizzlies’ best option may be rookie Wade Baldwin IV, a point guard in college. At Vanderbilt Baldwin spent many a possession spotting up on the perimeter as the ball spent time in the post, a setup Memphis uses often with Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol.
In time Baldwin could become an elite shooter, something Memphis has needed for years.
The market didn’t provide a number of options, but Memphis needed to find something. Courtney Lee would have been a perfect fit, although having been traded away to Charlotte at last year’s trade deadline that wasn’t an option.
Players such as Eric Gordon and J.R. Smith were out of the Grizzlies’ price range.
Perhaps a reunion with Mario Chalmers could be in store; Chalmers is comfortable playing off-the-ball after his years in Miami, and could play either guard position. He is coming off an Achilles injury, but last season he showed a lot of ability free of the stars on the Heat.
The other option would be a trade; things are still settling down and newly signed free agents cannot be traded until December at the earliest, but Memphis has a few future assets remaining that it could flip into an option at the 2-guard.
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The Grizzlies can’t be graded harshly for not creating a shooting guard out of thin air, but their lack of depth at the position caps their upside.
If things break right this team could host a playoff series in April, but both the injury report and their paper-thin depth on the wing could pull them back into the middle of the Western Conference pack.