With Tuesday’s draft lottery in the books, Grizzlies fans can officially start focusing on the team’s three picks: #12, #25, and #28. Chances are pretty good one of these later picks will get moved, if even just for cash, on draft night. But for now we have to assume the team could be drafting at all three spots.
- Nevada forward Luke Babbitt: One of many players the Grizzlies will studying in the coming weeks.
Here’s an early breakdown on how the team could be approaching the draft. This list will be fine-tuned in the coming weeks, starting with a ranked master list sometime next week after the information from the current Chicago draft combine has been considered. For now, I’m going to divide draft prospects into categories relative to the Grizzlies picks.
Off the board: At the moment there seem to be eight players fairly certain to taken before the Grizzlies make their first selection at #12, so we can take these names off the team’s draft list (barring an unforeseen trade up):
John Wall
Evan Turner
Derrick Favors
DeMarcus Cousins
Wesley Johnson
Al-Farouq Aminu
Cole Aldrich
Greg Monroe
Longshots: Beyond merely the prospects not good enough to be considered in the first round, there are a couple of types of players I think the Grizzlies are unlikely to select. One of these types is wing players who aren’t good three-point shooters. Currently the Grizzlies have three back-up wings (Sam Young, DeMarre Carroll, Ronnie Brewer), all of whom are poor outside shooters. I think it’s unlikely the team would draft another player like this, taking some prospects (Stanley Robinson, Quincy Pondexter) off the board. The other category I think you can scratch is a project center. The Grizzlies took one of those with the second overall pick last year in Hasheem Thabeet, and with Thabeet and Marc Gasol commanding all the center minutes, there doesn’t seem to be room for a developmental center (Daniel Orton, Solomon Alabi) on the roster.
