Tag: Tony Wroten

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Deflections: Calathes, Miller, Summer League React

Coming at you live from Narragansett, Rhode Island:

The latest Grizzlies acquisition: Nick Calathes

  • The latest Grizzlies acquisition: Nick Calathes

The Calathes Deal: I promise Grizzlies transactions when I go on vacation and I don’t disappoint. Yesterday, the Grizzlies formalized a deal with the Dallas Mavericks (first reported by ESPN.com’s Marc Stein) to acquire the rights to point guard Nick Calathes, currently with Lokomotiv Kuban of the Russian League. To obtain the rights to Calathes, the Grizzlies removed protections on a 2016 second-round pick already owed to Dallas.

Calathes had a terrific career at the University of Florida and was a highly regarded draft prospect (particularly by then ESPN.com analyist John Hollinger, as I mentioned here a few weeks ago), but ended up falling to the Mavericks in the second round after agreeing to a contract with a Greek team prior to the draft. After four successful years overseas, Calathes seems ready to jump over to the NBA, and when the Mavericks drafted Shane Larkin and then agreed to free-agent deals with veteran Jose Calderon and Israeli rookie Gal Mekel, it was clear Calathes’ rights were obtainable.

There’s some thought that this deal was made in reaction to the poor play of Tony Wroten Jr. in Las Vegas Summer League [more on that to come], but my sense is that this was considered a good value play by the Grizzlies and would have been pursued regardless. The two pressing questions: What are Calathes’ NBA prospects and how likely is he to join the Grizzlies this season?

On the former, Calathes is roughly similar to former Grizzlies’ point guard Greivis Vasquez: He’s 6’5”/6’6” with advanced playmaking skills but is a spotty shooter with middling athleticism. The shooting — a solid three-point shooter at Florida, Calathes’ percentages from both long-range and the free-throw line declined mysteriously over time — is a concern. But Calathes is coming off an MVP performance in the 2012-2013 EuroCup tournament and the Grizzlies think there’s a good chance he can step over and be a quality back-up point guard.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Griz Summer League Weekend: Grades Incomplete

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Tony Wroten Jr. has gotten off to a rough start at the Las Vegas Summer League.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Tony Wroten Jr. has gotten off to a rough start at the Las Vegas Summer League.

A surprisingly anticipated back-to-back pair of Grizzlies games at the Las Vegas Summer League last weekend turned out to be something of a dud, with two of the three players on the summer roster that are basically guaranteed to be on the regular-season roster — Jon Leuer and Jamaal Franklin — both sitting out with sprained ankles.

That left only rising second-year point guard Tony Wroten, destined-for-a-return-to-Europe late-second-round rookie Janis Timma, non-guaranteed incumbents Donte Greene and Willie Reed, and a handful of non-roster hopefuls to see.

Across two losses featuring miserable shooting, here are a few takeaways:

Tony Wroten: Wroten’s stat line across two games is u-g-l-y: 24 points on 5-23 shooting, with more turnovers (7) than assists (6). This is discouraging considering Wroten faired pretty well in his Summer League debut last year, but it’s slightly less depressing than it seems.

It’s very much an open question whether Wroten’s enticing blend of size and skill suggests true NBA potential or merely “Strotential.” But, for me, two games in Vegas didn’t really move the needle much on that uncertainty, for better or worse. We still know what we knew: Wroten is a big, athletic point guard who is aggressive and can get into the lane and to the line (25 free-throw attempts over two games, that’s good), but has to get better from the line (56%, that’s not) to take advantage of this attribute. He’s a good passer, but is playing without shooters or finishers in Vegas so far. He can’t shoot (0-7 from three) and needs to develop more consistency and modulate his tendency to go for the highlight play. Can he put his size and athleticism to the service of sound NBA defense?

Hopefully Wroten will settle down and show better as summer league progresses, but I’m especially interested to see him with the real team, where his passes will find better targets and having other viable scorers on the floor will hopefully make him more judicious in calling his own number. New coach Dave Joerger has talked about picking up the pace and trying to generate more lay-ups and free throws (including in this in-game interview from last night). That’s Wroten’s game. Whether he can translate it to the NBA level remains a mystery for the moment.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Grizzlies 101, Nets 77 — A Lesson in What Works and What Doesn’t

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Rookie Tony Wroten again made big plays for a suddenly energetic bench.

  • LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
  • Rookie Tony Wroten again made big plays for a suddenly energetic bench.

The Lead: You know about the “tale of two halves,” that most cherished post-game cliché around these parts. But tonight warranted a different 10th-grade English class reference: This was about Jekyll & Hyde offense.

Two days after putting 106 on the Lakers, the ecstatic first half tonight suggested that maybe the deplorable defense of Team Turmoil wasn’t the lone reason for the Grizzlies’ suddenly fluid offense.

A day after being “snubbed” for the All-Star team, Marc Gasol came out more aggressively than he’s been in weeks. It took him three-and-a-half minutes to match his field-goal attempt total from Monday’s game against the Pacers. It took fewer than five to match the seven shots he put up against the Lakers.

The ball was usually running through Gasol and All-Star post-mate Randolph and moving with more quickness and precision than Griz fans have seen since November, while the bench — lead by rookies Tony Wroten and Chris Johnson and a rejuvenated Jerryd Bayless — entered the game with big-play energy. The result was a season-best 67-point half, with 17 assists on 32 made field goals, including 32 and 12 on a combined 16-23 shooting from Gasol and Randolph.

Then, in the third quarter, it all changed. Though I doubt this was the stated game plan, it almost looked like the team decided it needed to get Rudy Gay — 4 points on 2-5 shooting in the first half — going. Suddenly the offense grew heavy with Gay isolation plays. He went 3-8 in the quarter. Gasol and Randolph combined for two field-goal attempts. And the Grizzlies scored only 18 points, four assists on eight made field-goals. Meanwhile, an emboldened Nets squad was able to slice a 30-point Grizzlies lead down to 18.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Grizzlies 106, Lakers 93 — Lakers Continue Death Spiral, Griz Find Some Life

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

The Grizzlies pushed the Lakers around.

The Lead: This game began with both teams in a very fragile state and ended with one in an even bigger world of hurt and the other maybe — just maybe — finding out a few things.

The Lakers began their day in Memphis with an Airing of Grievances, but were not able to follow it up with any Feats of Strength. Instead, their day just kept getting worse:

Dwight Howard had two rebounds and zero made field goals through 14 first-half minutes before grabbing his shoulder and asking to leave the game. He didn’t return.

Steve Nash impersonated a traffic cone on defense while shooting 2-6 with six turnovers.

Kobe Bryant went into Kobe Hero mode, which worked for awhile. Five minutes into the third quarter, Bryant had scored 24 points on 11-15 shooting, with three consecutive makes early in the quarter cutting what had been a 15-point Grizzlies lead down to only three. Bryant then went 0-8 the rest of the game and with the makeshift bandages he was applying to the team’s offense unraveling, the Lakers completely fell apart, the Grizzlies going on a 30-14 run between the late third and early fourth quarter to blow the game open. (An 11-3 Lakers garbage-time run made the game look closer than it really was.)

As for the Grizzlies, the 106 points were the most the team’s scored since January 7th in Sacramento. In both cases, you have to consider the defensive quality of the opponent — per Pau Gasol: “We make these teams look a lot better offensively than they really are” — but for a team that’s been struggling to even hit 85, the outburst served to relieve some pressure. They did this scoring at least 23 points in every quarter, without doing much from outside (4-13 from three), and despite terrible, turnover-riddled starts to each half.

It was the Grizzlies first game since the trade that sent away two rotation players, and Lionel Hollins had only 10 active players at his disposal. If an opponent in a death spiral had a lot to do with the Grizzlies success, part of it probably had to do with a collective — and potentially short-term — reaction to the theoretical adversity of the trade. Coming together. Playing with a chip on their shoulder. Having something to prove. Pick your cliché.

But I also feel like this performance suggests a few things for the now newish-look Grizzlies.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Silver Lining Playbook: Darrell Arthur’s Value and Tony Wroten’s Promise Amid Roster Uncertainty.

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

Darrell Arthut

An unusually eventful Grizzlies season has been even bumpier over the past week, with the most intensely enjoyable home game of the season — Friday’s overtime win over the San Antonio Spurs — followed by two terribly dispiriting non-performances: A big loss in Dallas the following night and a 99-73 drubbing at FedExForum Monday night at the hands of the Los Angeles Clippers, the team that had ended the Grizzlies season on their previous appearance in the building. The 26-point scoring deficit against the Clippers marked the Grizzlies’ worst defeat of the season and the 30.3% shooting in that game was the lowest for a home game in franchise history.

There were excuses for both bad losses, if you want them. The Dallas game seemed like a classic schedule loss, the second night of a back-to-back on the road after a draining overtime win. Monday night, the team was playing without leading scorer Rudy Gay, out of town for a family funeral. Gay’s loss, on top of the loss of his own back-up, Quincy Pondexter, had the Grizzlies playing little-used and unconventional lineups all night, and against the league’s deepest team. The Clippers, of course, were playing without their best player, point guard Chris Paul.

If the Grizzlies have a good showing — win or lose — in a Wednesday night re-match with the Spurs in San Antonio, these losses can maintain their asterisks. A bad showing Wednesday night — a third in a row — and alarm bells will sound.

But while the Grizzlies’ contender status and season trajectory hang yet still in the balance — pending the next game, the next Rudy Gay trade rumor, or the next Lionel Hollins radio interview — let’s take a quiet moment amid the clamor to recognize two players on the roster undercard doing good things now that promise even more going forward.

Darrell Arthur missed all last season with an Achilles injury and then missed the start of this season with a more minor leg injury. Upon his return, it’s taken him a few weeks to improve his conditioning and timing back to something resembling his pre-injury form. But in recent weeks he’s shown why many — myself included, not to mention new Grizzlies exec John Hollinger — thought he was the team’s best reserve player and one of the league’s better back-up forwards before the injury. Arthur’s minutes and production are both up in January — his rebounding rate up, his turnover rate down, his jumper starting to fall more.

Arthur’s surface stats don’t look like much — 7 points, 3 rebounds a game — but watch him closely and you’ll regularly see Arthur make impactful defensive plays that don’t register in the box score: Blowing up pick-and-rolls. Switching onto and containing perimeter ballhandlers. Cutting off drives and setting up teammates’ steals. Racing down in transition to disrupt a fastbreak.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Postgame Notebook: Clippers 99, Grizzlies 73 — U-G-L-Y, Griz Ain’t Got No Alibi

CREDIT: LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

The Clippers manhandled Marc Gasol and the Grizzlies.

After Friday’s stirring win over the San Antonio Spurs, I bypassed my typical postgame notebook. The game was just too good for it. Tonight, after this stinker of a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, I’m forgoing it because the game was just too bad.

Well, not really. I’m actually ditching it again because I have multiple print deadlines looming tomorrow and have to keep this quick. But, boy, was this bad.

What happened? Take it away, Marc Gasol:

“Tonight we couldn’t make shots. We couldn’t score. We couldn’t finish around the basket. We couldn’t make plays for each other. And our defense wasn’t very good,” Gasol said after the game.

Okay then.

The 26-point scoring margin is the Grizzlies’ worst defeat of the season and the 30.3% shooting was the worst home performance in franchise history. It marked two terrible games in a row, with Friday’s big home win over the Spurs followed by a miserable loss in Dallas the next night.

Both games had mitigating circumstances, but not enough to forgive efforts this poor: The Dallas game seemed like a classic schedule loss, the second night of a back-to-back on the road after a draining overtime win. This time, the team was playing without leading scorer Rudy Gay, out of town for a family funeral. Gay’s loss, on top of the loss of his own back-up, Quincy Pondexter, had the Grizzlies playing little-used and unconventional lineups all night, and against the league’s deepest team.

A surprise early insertion of second-year guard Josh Selby proved particularly disastrous. Selby entered with under a minute left in the first quarter and the Grizzlies were only down by two. Four minutes later, when Selby went to the bench, a 13-2 Clippers run had pushed the deficit to 13. A mini-run brought the Griz to within 6, but the Clippers hit back and the Grizzlies were down 15 or more from the end of the second quarter on.