Category: Beyond the Arc

The Grizzlies offseason gets rolling next Tuesday with the NBA’s rookie draft lottery. The Grizzlies are slotted 6th right now, with a 7.5% chance of winning the lottery. Until then, a quick wrap-up of various news items surrounding the team:

Lottery Watch Party: I don’t make it a habit of using this space to publicize the team’s marketing events, but I’ll promote Tuesday’s lottery watch party a the Poplar & Highland location of Buffalo Wild Wings for a very good reason: I’ll be there. The Chris Vernon Show will be broadcasting live from Buffalo Wild Wings from 3 to 6 p.m. My normal appearance slot on the show is in the 5 p.m. hour, but I’ll probably be hanging around for most of the show, on-air or off. After the show, the whole crew, myself included, will be hanging out to watch the lottery and then commiserate afterwards when the Griz end up sliding down the 7th pick. We’ve all seen this movie before — we know how it ends.

Though all the focus is on the lottery, the Grizzlies will have two other picks in this years draft — at 27 and 35 — and plenty of open roster spots to play with, so those picks will be important.

I’m not going to do rankings for late-first/early-second prospects, but instead list players I’ve seen that are likely to be in that range in rough order of preference.

I’m leaving off a handful of players projected to go late lottery/mid-first round and who I don’t think have a chance to last to #27, such as: Patrick Patterson, Gerald Henderson, Jonny Flynn, Jrue Holiday, Eric Maynor, Tywon Lawson, etc.

Guys I’ve Seen:

Sam Young/Danny Green: Here are two players who project similarly at the next level, and I’d really like to see the Grizzlies come away with one of them. NBA teams can always use those classic Bruce Bowen/James Posey/Raja Bell-style role players — lockdown wing defenders who can hit the open shot. The Grizzlies brought in Quinton Ross to play that role last season, but Ross was too slim to take on all comers on the defensive end and his shot was too shaky to be reliable. Young and Green both have a chance to be that kind of player at the pro level.

Young was a star at Pittsburgh, but at age 24 coming into the draft, he seems to lack the athleticism and upside to be a primary player in the league. His size and toughness suggests he can make his living on the defensive end while contributing on the boards and as a secondary offensive option (37% and 38% from three the past two seasons).

Unlike Young, Green was a secondary player in college on packed UNC teams and is a consensus second-round pick in the mocks, but I think I might like him even better and would be very content to take him at #27. Green is a range-y defensive specialist with a high hoops IQ and a rapidly improving three-point shot (42% last season). He got lost in the shuffle a little bit at UNC, but I think he profiles as a terrific role player in the NBA.

Now that we know who’s in and who’s out of this year’s NBA draft, it’s time for take two of my Griz draft board for this summer’s lottery pick.

What was already shaping up as a weak draft took a big hit with an unexpected group of top prospects deciding to stay on campus an extra year, taking four players — Greg Monroe, Cole Aldrich, Willie Warren, and Al-Farouq Aminu off my earlier list. Another top prospect who decided to stay in school — North Carolina’s Ed Davis — was not on my first list because I never thought he was coming out.

The Monroe and Davis defections, in particular, hurt the Grizzlies, because the Griz desperately need an upgrade at the 4 and Monroe and Davis were the two most promising Blake Griffin consolation prizes on the board.

With those guys, as well as Aldich, out of the mix, don’t think it’s a given the Grizzlies will go big with their top pick. A lot of mock drafts I’ve seen have the Grizzlies going for a power forward, presumably out of pure need. In Chad Ford’s mock, he has the Griz taking Jordan Hill 6th, but James Johnson 6th or 7th in scenarios where Hill is off the board.

Surprising no-one, O.J. Mayo finished second in the NBA’s Rookie of the Year race, behind current Chicago Bull and former University of Memphis Tiger Derek Rose.

Mayo was the leading rookie scorer but by playing point guard on a team that made the playoffs, Rose became the clear favorite, garnering 111 of 120 first-place votes. Mayo, with five first-place votes, was a clear second in the race. New Jersey’s Brook Lopez and Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook finished third and fourth, respectively.

Griz center Marc Gasol finished eighth.

The full standings:

Rookie, Team 1st 2nd 3rd Total
Derrick Rose, Chicago 111 5 4 574
O.J. Mayo, Memphis 5 64 29 246
Brook Lopez, New Jersey 2 28 33 127
Russell Westbrook, Oklahoma City 2 13 24 73
Eric Gordon, L.A. Clippers – 4 10 22
Kevin Love, Minnesota – 2 10 16
Michael Beasley, Miami – 2 1 7
Marc Gasol, Memphis – 1 1 4
Robin Lopez, Phoenix – 1 – 3
Rudy Fernandez, Portland – – 3 3
Mario Chalmers, Miami – – 2 2
Courtney Lee, Orlando – – 2 2
Nicolas Batum, Portland – – 1 1

The Grizzlies victory over the Atlanta Hawks in the season’s final game might prove costly. With the Minnesota Timberwolves laying down for the league-worst Sacramento Kings the same night, both the Grizzlies and Wolves finished 24-58, tied for fifth worst record in the league.

Today, the NBA announced, the Wolves won the random-drawing tiebreaker and will be seated 5th heading into the lottery. The Grizzlies will be sixth.

I misreported part of the lottery impact of this earlier this week. In terms of the odds of getting the top pick, the tiebreaker difference is minimal. The Wolves will now have 76 of 1000 lottery combinations. The Grizzlies will have 75. Of course, the difference would have been greater in the Grizzlies favor had they been alone in 5th with the Wolves sixth.

A more likely impact will be if neither team is selected in the lottery — which impacts only the top three picks. In that event, the Wolves will be slotted ahead of the Grizzlies in the draft order.

The Grizzlies ended their season Wednesday night with a 98-90 win over the Atlanta Hawks to finish 24-58, tied with the Minnesota Timberwolves (who folded to the Kings — boo!) for the fifth worst record in the league.

I’m excited to get into the offseason stuff, but my plate is extraordinarily full on my other beats the next two weeks. So I’m going to get on the record with this batch of quick thoughts on Lionel Hollins and the entire season-ending Griz roster.

The rest of this month, Beyond the Arc will be on semi-hiatus. I might pop in with breaking news, links, or responses to reader comments as warranted, but don’t expect much else here until the first week of May.

Lionel Hollins: I was probably a little unfair toward Hollins a few weeks ago in my post-Calipari piece. He’s gone 13-26 as head coach — a slightly better record than Marc Iavaroni had this season with slightly less talent (following the Kyle Lowry trade) and against a much tougher schedule. Despite his disappointing reluctance to give O.J. Mayo serious point guard minutes when Mike Conley sits, he’s done a pretty solid job with this team, particularly getting Rudy Gay refocused. Mike Conley also blossomed on his watch, but I think that started when Iavaroni left, not when Hollins started. Given the solid finish, the response from the team, and financial factors, he’s very likely to remain head coach heading into next season, and that’s fine. My biggest concern: That he’ll have too much off-season influence, often a danger with head coaches, as Griz fans have seen. More on this later.

O.J. Mayo: Mayo averaged 38 minutes a game and played all 82 as a rookie, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he couldn’t quite keep up his torrid November scoring pace. But more than 18 points a game on 44/38/88 shooting is very good for a jumpshot-dependent rookie that defenses have been keying on most of the season. His limitations in terms of size and athleticism by NBA two-guard standard in conjunction with his promising playmaking ability suggests a fulltime move to the point could be in his future. He’s too turnover-prone for that now and has proven he can be a big-time player at the two (potentially on both ends of the floor), so the team has a lot of options with Mayo in the backcourt. Mayo is clearly the most significant player on the team, but doesn’t profile, to me, to be a top tier ballhandler/scorer (Lebron/Kobe/Wade). He can clearly be a second-tier guy (Roy/Billups/DWilliams), but that means this team is still on the “balanced-talent” rather than the “star and role players” team-building plan. (Which is fine by me, actually.)