Larry Kuzniewski
Now that the Jeff Green trade has happened, and Quincy Pondexter and Tayshaun Prince are both “former Grizzlies,” the Grizzlies find themselves in an interesting situation: they could ride out the rest of the season just like they are, or they could try to keep making deals to shore up the roster.
Chris Wallace almost never carries a full 15 players on a roster. There’s always room for somebody on a 10-day, or for some random last-minute veteran minimum signing (hey, remember the Gilbert Arenas Experiment?). But this year feels a little bit different. For one, we still don’t really know what the decision-making structure of the Grizzlies’ reconstituted front office looks like. It’s clear that Dave Joerger has a lot of input into the process. Chris Wallace has been doing Chris Wallace-y things since being put back in charge—taking a flyer on Michael Beasley and sitting in the lower bowl with Kenyon Martin among them—and it’s still not really certain how much pull VP of Basketball Operations John Hollinger has outside of drafting, which (as far as we can tell from the outside) is a major area of his focus. Beyond all of that, Robert Pera himself obviously has a voice in any personnel decisions being made, Ed Stefanski, Executive VP of Player Personnel, is in the mix, and who knows who else in the scouting and player development ranks is involved. Because it’s hard to tell who’s making the decisions, it’s hard to guess what decisions will be made.
The Grizzlies certainly have areas of need—I still think they’re going to need some kind of veteran big man to bring off the bench against teams with really big, post-oriented bench players. Tayshaun Prince and Jon Leuer struggled to guard bigger guys, and there’s no reason to think Jeff Green won’t have that same issue. There are veteran bigs available as free agents—Jermaine O’Neal and Emeka Okafor are two names I’ve heard a lot—so I don’t think a trade is necessary if that’s really the direction they’re looking to go.
The other issue, of course, is outside shooting, which I think I’ve been writing articles about as long as I’ve been writing about the Grizzlies, which is not an inconsequential amount of time. But again, this is an area that can be shored up without a trade. I’m not sure Ray Allen will be coming to Memphis, but it’s not impossible, and there are D-League callups that could be made, too, especially for 10-day contract purposes.
Beyond that, there are only two guys on the roster who I think could be involved in a trade that is yet to come:
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Kosta Koufos
Kosta Koufos’ contract is up after this season, and he stands to make a pretty substantial pay raise, having been a solid center for a while now in a league that is short on skilled tall dudes. Having been a starter in Denver, Koufos is clearly somewhat underutilized this season, averaging only 15.7 minutes a game. It’s not impossible for the Grizzlies to re-sign Marc Gasol and still be able to afford to give Koufos a bigger deal, but beyond just money, one wonders whether Koufos wants to stay in Memphis to be a backup or whether he’ll seek out a team that wants him to slot into a starting role. I haven’t run the salary numbers but I know several East teams (Cleveland and Miami come to mind first) could use a true center with Koufos’ skill set.
Larry Kuzniewski
Since the Grizzlies were able to make the wing-related deal they wanted to make without having to include Koufos, it seems unlikely to me that they’ll look to deal him just to gain an asset. The Grizzlies are clearly all-in on this season, and that may mean they’re willing to risk losing Koufos for nothing at the end of the season if they can make a serious run at a championship now. Some will argue that the “smart” thing to do is to trade Koufos at the deadline for assets, but given the Grizzlies’ goals for this season, I’m not sure that’s the case. More than just being Marc Gasol injury insurance, Koufos provides a solid anchor for the all-bench units Joerger has been using this season, and has also seen a lot of minutes paired with Zach Randolph.
All of which is to say, Koufos is possibly someone who could be traded, but it seems unlikely. The fact that the Grizzlies were able to make the Jeff Green deal without having to part with Koufos indicates, to me, anyway, that (pending an insane offer, of course) they’d like to keep him where he is through the end of the season.
Nick Calathes
A more likely candidate to be involved in a deal is point guard Nick Calathes. Calathes is also a free agent after this season, and was involved in talks this summer with his old Euroleague team, Panathanaikos, that allegedly had Calathes wanting the Grizzlies to decline his team option so he could head back to Europe, where’s he’s something of a star. It seems unlikely that after this season, any NBA team will offer Calathes a contract bigger than the one he was being offered in Europe—$4.5 million was one number that was reported—so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect Calathes to be out the door after this season, unless something changes and he does receive those kinds of bigger offers from teams looking for a point guard.
If the team is already expecting Calathes to walk at the end of his contract, it might make sense to try to deal him for the kind of shooting help discussed above—someone who can come in and play spot minutes as a sharpshooter (basically the Platonic Form of Ray Allen).
But Joerger has recently started working Calathes into his Multiple Point Guard Mélange and he’s seen minutes with Mike Conley and Beno Udrih (and sometimes with all three at once), so some of the same logic that applies to Koufos also applies to Calathes: they’re not in a position where they “have” to move him, but it’s the “smart” thing to do. (Was that enough air quotes?)
The other factor with Calathes is that it’d be incredibly unwise to go into the playoffs with two point guards on the roster. Remember last year, when the Grizzlies lost their backup PG to a 20-game Tamoxifen-related suspension? (Oh yeah… we were already talking about Calathes.) So unless there’s a 3rd PG floating around on the waiver wires, it may be in the Grizzlies’ best interests to hang on to Calathes through the end of the season anyway.
Larry Kuzniewski
Others
I don’t think there’s anybody else on the roster likely to be moved. The only other possibility is that Calathes and maybe Jon Leuer could be packaged together in a deal to bring in the kind of veteran PF I talked about above—simply because Jeff Green stands to soak up a lot of Leuer’s backup PF minutes, and let’s be honest: Leuer hasn’t exactly played well enough to earn that rotation spot.
Barring that, I think the Grizzlies are who they’re going to be. I think this is the team they’re going to run with from here through the rest of the season, more or less. The Green trade was a long time coming, and even if you disagree with it (shoutout to frequent Tweet of the Night-er Matt Hrdlicka, who has taken a great deal of Internet abuse for his negative but well-reasoned take on the deal, even from other writers on his own site). Now that it’s over, the complexion of this Griz team has changed slightly, and it’s more than likely going to take a little while for everything to gel. But that notwithstanding, it seems likely to me that the Grizzlies won’t be making any more trades—especially one involving Koufos. It seems like the major roles in this drama—one currently titled This Is The Year, pending any major story revisions—have been cast.
