Tag: 2013 draft

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Griz Draft-Night Haul: Kosta Koufos, Jamaal Franklin, Janis Timma

Kosta Koufos

  • Kosta Koufos

A quick, late-night look at what seemed to be a nice first draft night for the Grizzlies’ new front office, with follow-up tomorrow:

Move 1: Traded Darrell Arthur and the #55 pick to Denver for center Kosta Koufos
I thought there was a chance that Arthur could move on draft night, but for a late-first-round pick. And expected him to move this off-season regardless, but to free up more payroll space under the tax line for other moves. Instead, it came in the form of a (basically) financially even player-for-player deal with only minor draft implications.

But this looks like a good move for the Grizzlies. They checked off their second or third biggest off-season need (a true back-up center to play behind Marc Gasol) and cleared up a crowded scene at power forward, solidifying Ed Davis as the back-up power forward and creating a potential opportunity to develop Jon Leuer as a fifth big. The team’s entire frontcourt rotation fits together better now.

Beyond that, they likely got the better — or at least most valuable — player in the deal: Koufos is a 24-year-old true center (7’0”, 265 pounds) who started 81 games for a playoff team in Denver last season. Koufos averaged 8 points and 7 rebounds a game on 58% shooting in 22 minutes a game in what was something of a breakout fifth season. He’s a much better rebounder than Arthur and doesn’t have as troubling an injury history. He’s a more efficient scorer than Arthur, but won’t space the floor the same way. His offense is primarily rooted in the paint. Koufos will allow Marc Gasol to get some needed rest and should be among the NBA’s best back-up centers.

Arthur, when healthy, is a better player than he showed last season. But there’s reason to wonder how much he can get back to his peak form. And this front office — high on Ed Davis — was not as high on Arthur as, for instance, Lionel Hollins was.

Financially, it’s also a plus. The deal frees up an extra $200,000 or so this season, but, more significantly, it puts the Grizzlies in the driver’s seat for 2014-2015. Arthur’s deal was a player option for $3.5 million that season. Koufos’ deal is a team option for $3 million, which is more advantageous for the Grizzlies.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Draft Preview: If Hollinger Had Made the Picks

Tyreke Evans and Jarrett Jack might be wearing Beale St. Blue if current Griz exec John Hollinger had been running past drafts.

  • Tyreke Evans and Jarrett Jack might be wearing Beale St. Blue if current Griz exec John Hollinger had been running past drafts.

A depressing realization of this offseason has been that John Hollinger’s annual “draft rater” column — one of my favorite seasonal NBA reads — is no more. Hollinger is still running draft prospects through his rating system, of course. Only now, as VP of Basketball Operations in Memphis, it’s for internal Grizzlies use only.

We’re two weeks away from the first draft for the Grizzlies’ new regime, even if they only have a trio of second-round picks with which to work. And while Hollinger’s “draft rater” process certainly won’t be the sole determinant of what the team does, it will have a big role in the team’s draft-night decisions.

Unique among NBA decision-makers, Hollinger’s past pre-draft thoughts are public record. Here are the links for Hollinger’s year-by-year draft rater findings, though you might need an ESPN Insider account to read them in full:

2002-2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

Perhaps Hollinger’s past assessments can provide a clue to what kind of picks the team will make going forward. And I might attempt to play that game in another draft preview post over the next couple of weeks.

But first, I thought it would be interesting to retroactively apply Hollinger’s published draft rater pieces to past Grizzlies drafts. How might these drafts have been different if Hollinger had been making the picks?

First, a few caveats:

*Hollinger’s draft rater only runs projections for players with college experience and thus doesn’t factor in players making the jump straight from high school (relevant to the earlier drafts) or international players.

*Hollinger only published a full, subjective draft board — adding international players and accounting for factors the draft rater can’t measure — for 2011 and 2012. In prior years, only raw draft rater rankings were presented. So it’s more of a stretch to say “this is who Hollinger would have picked” in those years, but going strictly by draft-rater rankings still gives a pretty good indication. And better that than trying to predict subjective adjustments. (With one exception.)

*The first draft rater was published in 2007, though Hollinger did a retroactive look at the system’s projections for the years 2002-2006 focusing only on lottery-level picks, updating 2007 and 2008 projections with new system tweaks in the process. So there generally isn’t enough information to assign second-round picks for earlier years.

All that said, here is how the draft rater suggests Hollinger would have picked for each Grizzlies’ draft since 2002, with explanatory notes:

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Deflections: Levien’s Money Quote, Draft Workouts, Hollins’ Future

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Jason Levien

Levien Speaks: Soon after I posted yesterday, writing in part that Grizzlies’ CEO Jason Levien needed to more fully and directly explain the decision to part ways with Lionel Hollins, Levien took to local airwaves via two afternoon radio programs to do just that. (Note: I’m not actually taking credit for something that was going to happen anyway.)

Levien first spoke with team play-by-play man Eric Hasseltine on 92.9/730 ESPN Radio. He followed with team sideline reporter Rob Fischer and Fischer’s co-host Brett Norsworthy on Sports 56 WHBQ. You can listen to the interviews yourself, but if you don’t want to wade through the boilerplate, here’s the money quote, taken from the Hasseltine interview but repeated in close to the same language on Sports 56:

“We want to have the kind of organization where we get people in a room who are prepared, who have opinions, who are going to disagree about what we should do and what the personnel moves should be. I want that disagreement. We want to really dig in and get messy when we’re in that room talking about what the decision and direction should be. And then once we come to a decision, whatever that personnel decision is, we want to walk out of the room arm-in-arm, locked together in how we’re going to proceed. And we’re going to face the public that way together. And we’re going to go out and face our adversaries that way together. We believe that getting the right head coach in here, working with our personnel folks. Working with our organization, we’re going to have great success.”

Additionally, on Hasseltine, Levien shot down the notion that the coaching decision was driven by financial considerations and said a final decision on a new coach would come “sooner rather than later.”

On “Fish & Stats,” Levien said he had not made a decision on Hollins at the time the season ended and that it was possible for events in the interim to change his decision. Levien said that he did not underestimate the amount of criticism the decision would bring and referred to “the public record” of critical comments from Hollins as a factor in the decision.