MVN - Most Valuable Network

Grizzlies Choose Love, Greene

So far in the draft there haven’t been very many surprises, and the Grizzlies followed suit, choosing UCLA PF Kevin Love with the 5th overall pick, which was pretty much roundly assumed to be the pick.

Love fills a need at the PF position for the Grizzlies, and he’s really a solid, safe choice here. The only questions surrounding him are really about his athleticism, but he brings interior scoring and rebounding, which are two things the Grizzlies desperately need and lacked last season.

What you hear the most about Love is his high ‘basketball IQ’ and the fact that he knows how to play the game. Probably the main thing associated with this are his outlet passes that help start fast breaks. I’ve never heard so much raving about the outlet passes of a player, and people are saying he’s the best outlet passer since Bill Walton, so that’s quite a complement. But these outlet passes could be very useful, especially if Marc Iavaroni decides to speed things up a little bit. Overall, Love’s passing and vision are two of his biggest pros, and Love could be great at finding an open Mike Miller around the perimeter, or a slashing Rudy Gay.

Now, having said this, I do think that selecting Love 5th overall is a little bit of a reach at the 5-spot, but the Grizzlies really put themselves in a tough position with their glutton of guards, especially point guards. That meant that pretty much half of the top players in the draft (O.J. Mayo, Russell Westbrook, Eric Gordon, D.J. Augustin, Jerryd Bayless) really didn’t make sense for them, especially since none of them really projected to be a pure pure shooting guard, which IS something the Grizzlies need.

Now, saying this, I like Love better than Stanford C Brook Lopez, who had similar athleticism questions to Love, and whose best asset was that he was a 7-footer who had some game. Besides that, the Grizzlies have more depth at the center spot, with Darko Milicic under contract for the next two years. Add this to the fact that Marc Gasol announced that he will be coming over to play in the NBA this upcoming season and the center position could be Memphis’ second strongest position (depth-wise) entering the season.

Memphis’ selection of Love could also be another sign that the younger Gasol will be playing for the Grizzlies next season.

Overall, I’m happy with the selection and I think (other than trading down a few spots and filling a few other holes) it was the best overall choice.

28th pick: Syracuse F Donte Greene

Surprisingly, there were multiple quality players that slipped to the Grizzlies at the 28th overall pick, including Greene, Texas A&M C DeAndre Jordan, and a hometown pick in Memphis SG Chris Douglas-Roberts.

It would have been easy for GM Chris Wallace to make the ‘hometown pick’ in choosing Douglas-Roberts.  It would have been the best PR the Grizzlies have gotten since the hiring of Marc Iavaroni last season and possibly help mend some fences burnt in the Pau Gasol trade, along with the possibly of putting some extra fannies in the seats, something the Grizzlies also desperately need.

Instead they chose Greene, who has been compared to the Grizzlies Hakim Warrick, another Syracuse forward who has been labeled as a ‘tweener’ who doesn’t really have a position and is said to play no defense.

But I applaud Wallace for not taking the easy way out and choosing Greene because, honestly, Greene has more potential than Douglas-Roberts and is better value at this point, as many projections had Greene going in the teens.

Greene also fills a need at the SF position for Memphis, and brings great athleticism and length to the Grizzlies.  His real upside is offensively, as he averaged 17.7 points and 7.2 rebounds in his freshman season at Syracuse.

The only problem is that he does tend to settle for jump shots, especially 3-pointers a lot, which is not something that the Grizzlies need.  Also, the questions about his defense are also something a team with one of the worst defenses in the league last year don’t need.

I still like the pick though, as even though it really centers around Greene’s potential, the fact that he is lottery talent is too hard to pass up on at this point, even for a hometown pick in Douglas-Roberts.

I think that Greene shouldered the load offensively on a pretty mediocre Syracuse team, which could have led to his poor shot selection.  I think that if Greene is the type of player who needed to go to a veteran team and learn from the veterans how to play in the league.  While the Grizzlies aren’t exactly a veteran team, they do have a veteran F in Mike Miller who could be a good mentor to Greene.

I know this pick will take a lot of heat in Memphis, but I like it because even though both Greene and Douglas-Roberts filled a need for the Grizzlies, Greene has more upside.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 6:28 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.