MVN - Most Valuable Network

Grizzlies Season Recap, Part I

This Grizzlies roster is really in shambles, and it appears that no help is coming soon via free agency, as owner Michael Heisley announced a couple of weeks ago that the team is building three years from now.  That most likely means that no big name free agents, such as Gilbert Arenas, are coming to town to make the Grizzlies a contender next season.
That’s odd because I seem to recall that supposedly being the reason the team traded away star Pau Gasol for, cap space to sign said free agent.  But now the course appears to have changed again, with Heisley looking at the empty seats last season, his team’s current roster, and the tough Western Conference and finally seeing the obvious: the Grizzlies can’t contend.  That means he’s finally gone the cheap route, keeping the roster at the minimum while again claiming the ‘rebuilding’ mode.
That means the Grizzlies are going to have to build through the draft.  The only problem with that is that this year’s draft is chocked full of PG prospects, including quite possibly the only player that could put fannies in the seats (Michael Rose).  Oh, wait, the Grizzlies have about four PGs on their roster and it is the one position they are set at.
Beyond this PG-quartet of Mike Conley, Kyle Lowry, Javaris Crittenton, and Juan Carlos Navarro they have one budding superstar (Rudy Gay), a great third option(Mike Miller), an inconsistent center (Darko Milicic), and an offensively solid, but defensively questionable PF (Hakim Warrick).
The smart thing for the Grizzlies would be to deal from a position of strength, but again going back to the strength of this year’s PG class in the draft, all teams will most likely be set at this position via the draft.
If they do keep this young quartet of guards then they’re going to need some serious bench help at the other three positions.  Gay and Miller are good starters, but again going back to the cheap, rebuilding route the Grizzlies are likely to try to trade Miller along with the albatross contract of Brian Cardinal for younger, cheaper talent.
Other then these two they have question marks at the other positions, as even though Hakim Warrick contributed great offensively when he got into the starting line-up, I’m not sure he provides enough rebounding and defense at the PF-spot to validate keeping his as the starter.      They also have Darko Milicic at center, who battled through injury problems all of last season while struggling to contribute anything consistently on the offensive side of the ball.
Beyond this they don’t really have much under contract, other than the aforementioned Cardinal and Jason Collins, who could be an OK back-up center to Milicic.
But like I said, the Grizzlies need a whole lot of help at everywhere except the guard position, as they really didn’t have any sort of bench to speak of last season.
Later this week I’ll look at the possible free agent and trade targets the Grizzlies could go after, while next week I’ll look at draft prospects and who the Grizzlies should draft after May 20, the night the NBA Draft Lottery is held.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Grizzlies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.