Draft Day Post-Mortem: Questions and Answers

Now that the rush and weariness of draft day has passed, time to pick through the aftermath and look ahead. Here's my mammoth breakdown of where things stand as the Grizzlies embark on the off-season:

Does this trade make the Grizzlies better in the short term?
Maybe not. The Grizzlies lose the only solid veteran on the roster in Mike Miller and the trade leaves the roster out of balance and potentially lacking a lot of important qualities that adding Kevin Love would have provided — toughness, rebounding, a great pick-and-roll/pick-and-pop partner for Mike Conley, someone to start the break, etc.

Despite going fifth in the draft and being traded to the team picking third, which coveted him, I tend to think Kevin Love was undervalued heading into the draft. He fits the superficial model of the classic college basketball star whose game doesn’t translate — fundamentally sound and personable media star who lacks great size or athleticism. (See: Adam Morrison, Danny Ferry, Mateen Cleaves, J.J. Reddick, and, next year, Tyler Hansborough.) But, over the course of the season, I came to believe that Love was the exception. I don’t think he was the best prospect in this draft, like Jeffrey Ma does, or the second-best, like John Hollinger. But I did have Love ranked 4th on my final draft board, just below O.J. Mayo. And Love was the better fit on the draft-day roster.

Oh, Love Train, we hardly knew ye. But we'll happily take Mayo instead.

I think the Grizzlies would have won more games this season without making the trade. But this year’s Grizzlies team wasn’t going to make the playoffs either way, so games won this season isn’t what’s important . . .

What about long term?
This is what really matters. Seen through that prism, the trade essentially comes down to who becomes the better player, Mayo or Love? The Grizzlies aren’t at the point where they’re trying to put the finishing touches on a team primed to contend. They are, instead, still putting together core pieces to build a contender around. Rudy Gay is one of those pieces. This week, the Grizzlies placed a bet that Mayo could rival or surpass Gay as the alpha dog on an eventual title contender.

That contention is probably three years away, so the loss of Miller (29 years old with two years left on his contract) and the addition of some short-term dead weight at the back end of the roster aren’t particularly important. All that matters is Mayo’s star potential, which is immense. I had Mayo rated third in the draft, as did the Grizzlies and most of the league, but he’s got a higher ceiling than Love, an upside that probably matches that of Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley.

Mayo was considered the best player in his class throughout high school, dropping a few spots when he struggled early on in his transition to college ball. The second half of the season, though, he was probably as productive as anyone else in college hoops. The “next Lebron” hype he had coming out of high school was a bit much, but he gives every indication he can become a dynamic combo guard at the next level. Among the current NBA players Mayo’s game resembles are Dwyane Wade, Chauncey Billups, Brandon Roy, and Jamal Crawford. The Grizzlies certainly hope Mayo becomes a better pro than Crawford, and Wade may be a little bit too wishful, but if Mayo develops into a player along the lines of Roy or Billups, this will end up being a great deal for the Grizzlies.

O.J. Mayo: The Next Brandon Roy or Chauncey Billups?

Is there any downside if Mayo does reach his potential?

There is one thing that nags at me. Mayo is such a high-level star personality that if his game evolves to match his Q Factor, I worry he could try to force his way to a bigger market after his rookie contract ends. This is what happened to Orlando with Shaquille O’Neal. It’s what Cleveland is petrified of now with Lebron James.

Teams that thrive in smaller markets have tended to do so, in recent years, with stars that are more modest off-court personalities; guys that seem to be content out of the limelight: Tim Duncan in San Antonio, Deron Williams in Utah, the up-and-coming Brandon Roy/Greg Oden duo in Portland. I think Kevin Love, who happily came to do a competitive workout in Memphis and seemed unfazed at the prospect of being drafted to Memphis (or Minnesota), fits this template pretty well. I’m not sure about Mayo.

What about the other players coming over from Minnesota?
In the words of the goofy dude who hosts my three-and-a-half year old’s kid-show fave Yo Gabba Gabba: Let’s do it. Break it down:

Antoine Walker: ’Toine is a compelling, entertaining personality, but not always a productive one, and his game has significantly diminished over the years. You have to wonder at this point if his on-court contribution would be offset by potential locker-room problems.

Don't be surprised if ’Toine dons Beale Street Blue

That said, don’t be surprised if Walker suits up for the Grizzlies next season. I was told on draft night that he would be bought out, but this weekend I’m hearing that may not be the case. The Grizzlies will bring in Walker next week for a physical and a meeting to help determine his future with the team.

Remember that Walker and Chris Wallace have a bit of a history, when Wallace was the general manager in Boston and Walker was Paul Pierce’s sidekick on a team that made the Eastern Conference finals. That relationship could factor here. An even more important factor is Walker’s $9.3 million expiring contract. (He has a team option for 2009-2010 that neither the Grizzlies nor any other team would pick up.) If the Grizzlies were to buy Walker out before the season, the savings would be minimal. If they keep him on the roster, not only is there the possibility of getting on-court value, but the team would retain his large expiring as a potential trade chip as well as his rights as a potential sign-and-trade commodity next summer. It may well be that using Walker’s contract in either of those ways is a long shot, but as long as you have to pay him anyway, why not keep your options open.

Now, if Walker does suit up, what kind of contributor could he be? Walker may not be as ancient as you think: He turns 32 this summer, though there is a lot of wear-and-tear and he doesn’t seem to have stayed in peak conditioning. Walker has long been a very skilled player — small forward skills in a power forward package. But he’s been an increasingly inefficient player over the past several seasons — turnover-prone and overly reliant on his inconsistent three-point shooting.

Walker was a part-time player last season and ended up shooting a dreadful 36% from the floor. Walker hasn’t been a serviceable contributor since the 2005-2006 season and I’d be surprised if that changes. At 32, however, it’s probably too early to completely write him off. He may get another shot with the Grizzlies this season.

Marko Jaric: Jaric is a versatile player whose combination of size (6’7”) and ball skills enable him to play all three perimeter positions. Owed $21.3 million over the next three seasons, he brings with him a contract slightly worse than Brian Cardinals, but he’s a significantly more useful basketball player.

Marko Jaric: Money better wasted than Brian Cardinal

Jaric rebounded from a particularly bad 07-08 campaign to average more than 29 minutes per game in 75 appearances for the Wolves last season, averaging 8 points, 3 boards, and 4 assists per game. He shot a solid 36% from three-point range, a couple of ticks over his 34% career shooting. Jaric is not a great defender, but with his size and decent athleticism, he’s far from a liability. He has good hands and tends to have very high steal rates. Essentially, Jaric performed like a pretty decent 7th-to- 9th man, which could be the role he plays for the Grizzlies next season.

On the downside, Jaric will turn 30 just before the start of the season and is moving from one losing/rebuilding team to another, which is probably not what he envisioned for this stage of his career, so you have to wonder how motivated he will be. Regardless, with his onerous contract, expect him to be in a Grizzlies uniform when the season starts.

Greg Buckner: Buckner will be 32 entering the season and has limited and diminishing skills. A 6’4” swingman, he’s probably one of the least productive offensive players in the league for that position. What he does bring is toughness and decent athleticism, which makes him a serviceable defender and rebounder. Those traits may garner him some spot minutes in Beale Street Blue next season, but don’t expect to see Buckner on the court much.

Greg Buckner will provide short-term toughness off the bench.

The good news with Buckner is that the three years remaining on his contract are not fully guaranteed. The Grizzlies will owe Buckner $3.8 million this season. But only $1 million of the $4 million on his deal for 2009-2010 is guaranteed. Look for the Grizzlies to eat the $1 million and set him free.

What are the cap implications?
This is really hard to determine because of the number of uncertain factors: The exact salary slots of O.J. Mayo and Darrell Arthur, the specific numbers of Marc Gasol’s likely contract (likely to be in the ballpark of the reported three-year, $10 million deal), and, most importantly, where the cap is going to be set for the coming season.

The general answer seems to be that the Mayo trade opened up an additional $1.5 million or so in cap room this season and perhaps more than $8 million more than expected next season, with the hit coming in 2010-2011, when the team is still on the hook for $7.6 million to Marko Jaric. Buckner’s partial guarantee seems to make this deal a financial benefit for the Grizzlies overall, though the third year on Jaric’s deal adds on some dead weight at the back end the team didn’t previously have. The deal seems to set up the summer of 2009 as a prime free-agent period for the team. More on that later.

What does this draft day say about he ownership/management/coaching situation?
A few things:

1. That rampant national reports that the team is more concerned about finances than building a winner simply isn’t true. Finances are certainly an issue with a team losing money (more on this in a later post), but the Grizzlies made a bold draft-day move that while essentially a push overall financially, added a longer-term “bad” contract than was given up.

2. That Michael Heisley’s more hands-on approach to running the team is a mixed blessing.

I got a kick out of the Commercial Appeal’s Ron Tillery’s lead to his Q-and-A with Heisley this morning:

Wow. I don’t know whom Tillery was getting his accounts from, but I heard from different sources that Heisley absolutely did lose his cool and was anything but a calming influence. I mean, Heisley himself all but admitted the contentious nature of the team’s deliberations at Friday’s press conference, using the words “tense” and “verbal” to describe the in-house mood.

On the other hand, “by most accounts,” Heisley also deserves some credit for what ended up being a very good draft. My understanding is that Heisley’s aggressive insistence on getting the best player out of the draft he could was a key in making things happen. So kudos for that.

The big guy's enhanced involvement: A mixed blessing.

Heisley remains a blunt force whose management skills don’t seem to be quite as well suited to running a professional sports franchise as they are to his other, less people- and P.R.-oriented businesses, but he continues to express a newfound astuteness about patient but aggressive team-building that was lacking during the Jerry West era.

3. That Chris Wallace isn’t gunshy in the wake of the immense and often unwarranted criticism he got for the Pau Gasol trade. He continues to rebuild this team aggressively. Wallace inherited a capped-out loser built around proven playoff underachievers Gasol and Mike Miller. In short order, he’s turned the team into a promising collection of young talent built around the exciting perimeter trio of Rudy Gay (a Jerry West parting gift), O.J. Mayo, and Mike Conley, with cap room available over the next two summers and other young assets rapidly accumulating. Know-nothing national scribes can continue taking lazy, gratuitous cheap shots at him, but there’s more hope among local Grizzlies fans right now than there’s been in the past couple of seasons.

You can call him Big Poppa: Chris Wallace shaking the haters off.

4. That Marc Iavaroni is increasingly and worryingly becoming a void in the middle of team operations. Iavaroni was left dangling this summer by Heisley and then seemingly had a new, defensive-oriented assistant in Kevin O’Neil foist on him (the real story behind the O’Neil hire still hasn’t come out — I don’t know for certain who pushed for it). I’d heard on draft night (er, morning) and again the next day, that Iavaroni was arguing against the Mayo deal, but then Heisley went on the record with Iavaroni’s discontent to Commercial Appeal columnist Geoff Calkins after the Friday morning press conference, contradicting Iavaroni’s good-soldier comments from the dais only minutes before.

Marc Iavaroni's charge: Make it Work

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Iavaroni’s resistance to the trade is much to be concerned about. The Grizzlies had focused on Love as the likely pick at #5 for a while and, as a coach, Iavaroni had no doubt thought a lot about how he planned to use his new frontcourt toy. To have that taken from him and a radically different kind of team laid at his feet — one without veteran security blanket Miller — had to throw him for a bit of a loop.

I’m rooting hard for Iavaroni to survive and thrive as the Grizzlies coach, but I’m worried about it. I fear a slow start could mean yet another in-season coaching change, a fourth in the team’s still-brief Memphis tenure.

How big of a steal was Darrell Arthur?
If the alleged kidney issue really is a non-factor, as it is by all accounts, he could be a huge steal. The Grizzlies had Arthur rated #11 on their draft board, and I think that’s about right. He worked out very well for the team, against LSU’s Anthony Randolph, and has proven his mettle in big games, as witnessed by his dominant performance against the University of Memphis in the NCAA title game.

Darrell Arthur: Steal of the Draft?

Arthur isn’t a physical monster, but should be more of a factor defensively and on the boards than incumbent power forward Hakim Warrick. He’s also an excellent open-court athlete with a well-rounded offensive game. I don’t think Arthur will ever play in an all-star game, but he has the ability to be a quality starter in the league and should play right away.

What’s the roster look like heading into the summer?
Assuming Antoine Walker isn’t bought out and Marc Gasol is signed, the Grizzlies head into the summer with 12 players under contract, neatly dispersed around the lineup:

PG – Mike Conley/Kyle Lowry
SG – O.J. Mayo/Marko Jaric/Javaris Crittenton
SF – Rudy Gay/Greg Buckner
PF – Hakim Warrick/Darrell Arthur/Antoine Walker
C – Darko Milicic/Marc Gasol

Can Conley/Mayo/Gay thrive together along the perimeter?
That’s the biggest question for the team going forward. Rudy Gay should be fine and isn’t going anywhere, but can Conley and Mayo — who both seemingly need to ball to be effective — play well together in the backcourt? Is Mayo ultimately a better fit at point guard?

There’s been some suggestion that Conley could be dealt before the season, but my own opinion is that the team should give this trio a chance to work together on the court first. Even if it’s decided that Mayo and Conley can’t coexist, Conley making a significant leap from his rookie to sophomore season, which is what I’m expecting, should only increase his trade value.

Can Mike Conley make the leap while sharing the ball?

There are some models for this extreme perimeter focus: The Tim Hardaway-Mitch Richmond-Chris Mullin Golden State teams (dubbed Run-TMC) of the ’80s were highly entertaining and moderately successful. More recently, the Milwaukee Bucks made it to the Eastern Conference finals lead by the perimeter trio of Sam Cassell-Ray Allen-Glenn Robinson. Then again, neither of those teams paired true playmaking guards in the backcourt the way the Grizzlies are proposing to do with Mayo and Conley. (There’s already a fan movement afoot to dub the Grizzlies’ trio “Run-GMC.”)

RU-DEE: Running the anchor leg for a basketball track squad

This issue is more pronounced, however, when the Grizzlies look to the bench, where all three backup guards — Lowry, Crittenton, and Jaric — are ball-handling guards. Essentially, all five guards on the Grizzlies roster are players with at least pretensions of playing point guard. The team would be advised to replace a couple of these ball-handing guards with players whose skills are focused in other areas, namely defending and shooting. If someone is dealt this summer, the bet here is Lowry is the most likely to go.

Does this team have enough toughness and scoring on the interior?
Probably not. Darko Milicic showed in spurts last season he can be a defensive and rebounding anchor, but he’s yet to show any consistency. Hakim Warrick is almost entirely an offensive player, but not a presence on the block. Marc Gasol and Darrell Arthur have yet to play an NBA game, but both project to be, primarily, secondary offensive threats. The thought here is that the Grizzlies would be better off replacing Warrick with more of a rebounder/enforcer type at power forward and letting Arthur develop behind this player.

Darko: Toughness and consistency desperately needed

What’s next?
There are three potential paths for the Grizzlies this off-season — major overhaul, minor tweaking, and minimal tweaking.

Major overall would entail trading Conley and/or pursuing a mammoth free agent (with Atlanta’s Josh Smith and Charlotte’s Emeka Okafor as likely targets).

Minor overall would entail dealing one or two of the team’s back-up guards, possibly along with Warrick, to balance out the roster, and then pursuing a young, low-cost free-agent or two to plug holes.

Minimal tweaking would entail maybe dealing one of the excess ball-handling guards to add a role player with different skills and restricting free-agent signings to one-year deals to preserve cap space for next summer.

As much as I liked the boldness of draft day, I think the major movement is both unlikely and probably unwise at this point. Instead, the decision will be made between minor and minimal tweaking. The Grizzlies could go into free agency looking to sign some very useful second-tier role players (a couple of possibilities: Minnesota’s Craig Smith and Golden State’s Kelenna Azubuike), but if it takes multi-year deals to do so, is it really worth it to take cap space away from next summer, which is the team’s best shot to use cap space to make significant additions?

Instead, look for the team to tweak the roster with a minor trade and to maybe overpay a useful free agent on a one-year deal (another idea: former Suns sniper James Jones). This year is more about development and evalution than about putting the final touches on the roster.

The final verdict?
The Grizzlies’ draft-day haul has generated much-needed excitement among the fan base and has provided the team with a core of young talent that’s the most promising in franchise history. The work to build the fan-base back up will still be arduous and this draft has, at best, probably merely stopped the bleeding. But I’m more optimistic about the team’s future now than I have been since early in the Jerry West tenure.

Submitted by Chris Herrington on Sun, 06/29/2008 - 11:12pm.
Chris Herrington's blog | 14 comments