Picking at the back end of the NBA draft last night, the Grizzlies deployed a strategy that’s worked well with a couple of recent picks — take the highly rated prospect that unexpectedly slides.
It worked with Sam Young (an early second-rounder projected to go about 10 picks higher) and especially with Darrell Arthur (a late first-rounder projected to go in the late lottery), and now the Grizzlies hope it will work with young combo guard Josh Selby, whom they drafted at #49 last night.
A former top high school prospect who played one rough year at the University of Kansas, Selby — ranked 32nd on ESPN.com’s Chad Ford’s big board — was projected to go as high as #17 to the Knicks in this draft, but slipped further than anyone expected due to both questions about his maturity and college production and, apparently, some health concerns.
“I think most people feel like if he’d stayed in college for another year he would have been a certain first-rounder, with upside,” Grizzlies general manager Chris Wallace said this morning. “But he didn’t have the kind of year at Kansas that people expected.”
But Selby is only one year removed from being ranked the top player in his high school class by at least one prominent source, ahead of #1 pick Kyrie Irving and #3 pick Enes Kanter.
