A first look at Grizzlies’ options in NBA draft
With a few games left in this Grizzlies season, postmortems can wait a week. But if the Grizzlies season isn’t quite over, the college hoops season now is.
Pick-and-Pop will take that cue to offer a preliminary take on where the Grizzlies should look with their top draft pick this summer.
We won’t know exactly where the Grizzlies will be picking until the May 15 NBA draft lottery. But while the range of what is absolutely possible is not yet this narrow, it now seems highly likely that the Grizzlies will have a Top 6 pick in the June 21 draft. The last time the Grizzlies had a pick this high? That would be 2009, when they used the second overall pick on … Hasheem Thabeet. Ok, never mind.
Before Pick-and-Pop offers a firstdraft pecking order on where the Grizzlies should place their hopes, let’s sort through the candidates, divided into three at-the-moment tiers. We’ll revisit candidates for both of the Grizzlies picks in greater detail closer to the draft..
Tier 1
If Grizzlies-fan social media is any indication, Duke forward Marvin Bagley
III is probably the People’s Choice, but he’ll have to wait for Tier 2 here. In theory, Serbian guard probably should be the top option for the Grizzlies, and perhaps he will be.
At 19, the 6’6” guard is already the best professional player outside the NBA. At 18, he joined veteran NBA star Goran Dragic to lead his Slovenian national team to the EuroBasket title, becoming the youngest player since Arvydas Sabonis in 1983 to make the all-tournament team. (Pau Gasol and Tony Parker were each 21 when they first made the EuroBasket all-tourney team.)
Doncic is not an explosive athlete, but he’s otherwise the kind of player that has become most valuable in the modern NBA: A ball-dominant perimeter player with size and a great feel for the game.
If this draft were 20 years ago, freshman Arizona center would probably be the top pick without much debate. Also 19, he’s already a sculpted 7’1” and 250 pounds with a 7’5” wingspan, and he paired elite physical attributes with elite production at the college level.
Ayton’s rebounding and interior scoring are among the safest bets in the draft. His defensive awareness, crucial for a center, is a serious question. If Ayton can’t figure it out over time, his impact on winning and losing will fall well short of his individual stat lines. The other question: Even if Ayton is everything he seems to be, will that be as valuable in a league that’s moved quickly away from these kind of traditional scoring centers?
Maybe Doncic is the better prospect in today’s NBA, but without the same access to full games, I haven’t been able to get quite as comfortable with him. Short-term consideration: Doncic is an easy fit on the current Grizzlies team. Ayton and Marc Gasol would be an interesting but complicated co-existence.
6. Trae Young
Tier 2
Why Ayton ahead of
They had nearly identical statistical seasons as college freshmen, but Ayton has a much wider array of skills at this stage and is a cleaner positional fit. And because Bagley’s even more of a defensive question mark.
Bagley is a left-hand-dominant dunk machine. He was quicker off the floor than any big man in college basketball, and he might be quicker off the floor than any big man in the NBA too. This will yield plenty of buckets and boards, but for Bagley to be a better pro than Ayton or Doncic, he’ll probably have more improvement to make in more areas of his game.
You know what? This may well happen. I’m pretty optimistic about Bagley expanding his offensive game as a shooter, passer, and driver.
Michigan State freshman
potentially the youngest player in the draft, is sort of Bagley’s reverse image. Jackson’s surface stats in college (11 points, 6 rebounds) were more meager, his athleticism less electric, and he was simply bad in the NCAA tournament. So why is he here?
Jackson is an unusually precocious defender, with center length and small forward agility, his head on a swivel, and natural shot-blocking instincts. He’s got a chance to be one of the NBA’s best defenders. Offensively, he’s a work-inprogress, but he shot 40 percent from three-point range and showed flashes as a driver.
Bagley projects as an impact scorer, Jackson an impact defender. But Jackson’s
Tier 3
Beyond those four, the Grizzlies would face a choice: Players with the same high ceiling but seemingly more risk (Texas center Oklahoma point guard Missouri forward or safer prospects who are likely to top out below an all-star level (Villanova wing
Duke center
Porter, whose face-up game at 6’10” is as made for the modern NBA as Doncic, was supposed to be in one of those higher tiers. But he had back surgery early in his college season and looked really bad when he came back for tournament play. Perhaps if Porter checks out physically come June, he separates himself from this pack. Right now? Without greater assurance, I couldn’t imagine taking the risk.
Young and Bamba are risky in a vacuum, but also bad fits with a Mike Conley/Marc Gasol Grizzlies team. I do think Young’s deep off-the-dribble shooting range and creative passing will play well in the NBA.
If Bridges manages to be both an allNBA defender and a knock-down threepoint shooter -- and I’d bet on both -- he will impact the outcome of games far more than his scoring average suggests. He’s a good fit on any team. Carter is an ordinary athlete, but a smart, tough, fundamentally sound big man who could easily be a 10-year NBA starter. The bet here, though, is that the Grizzlies are strong enough up front that they should take a big swing at the position or look elsewhere.
All things considered, and subject to change before June: