MVN - Most Valuable Network

Love & Greene Out, Mayo & Arthur In

The Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves have just completed a huge trade, that included their first round picks in tonight’s draft.  Here’s how it breaks down:

Memphis gets:

-(Rights to) G O.J. Mayo (USC)

-PG Marko Jaric

-SG Greg Buckner

-PF Antoine Walker

Minnesota gets:

-(Rights to) PF Kevin Love (UCLA)

-SF Mike Miller

-PF Brian Cardinal

-C Jason Collins

This trade is very interesting and something that I really don’t understand all that much.

Al Jefferson, Minnesota’s star player, played last season out of position at center and the feeling is that he is truly a power forward.  So why they would want Love, who would keep Jefferson at center for a long time, I don’t know?

Meanwhile, it’s been well publicized that the Grizzlies have a gluttony of PGs, and while Mayo is projected to be a combo guard, he is still projected to be more of a PG than a SG, even if he will be a scoring PG.

Honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of O.J. Mayo and thought Kevin Love filled a much more pressing need for the Grizzlies than Mayo did.  I thought picking Love with the 5th overall pick was a little high, but I thought he would be a very solid NBA player.  Mayo, I’m not so sure about, mostly because of the hype and allegations surrounding him.

I find it interesting that a team that’s in the tank with their fan base would take a flyer on a player with such a questionable history as Mayo, with his constant moving around and Greg Oden-like, you’d of thought he would’ve dominated the Pac-10 this year.  Now Mayo averaged 20.7 points in his only season at USC, so it’s not like any slouch, but I just wonder about his personality and attitude.

I mean, Mayo has basically played wherever he’s wanted to since high school, he’s the only player I’ve ever heard of that told a school he was going to play for them.  Now, he gets to spend the next few years playing in Memphis for a rebuilding team, no more ‘I’m bored here, where do I want to play next.’

Another reason I’m not a big fan of this deal is because I don’t like it at all from a Memphis perspective.  You can pretty much cancel out Cardinal, Collins, Buckner, and Walker in the trade because those are basically just bad contracts being traded for other bad contracts.

The only good news is that the Grizzlies are getting back over $13 million-worth in expiring contracts in Walker and Buckner.  Well, sort of at least, as Walker has a Team Option at the end of the upcoming season that surely won’t be exercised (since it’s $21 million over those next 2 years) and Buckner has the possibility for a $1 buyout of the remaining 2 years, $8.3 million of his contract at the end of next season.

Meanwhile, the Grizzlies are getting rid of a $6.2 million expiring contract of Collins, while also unloading the horrible Cardinal contract (over $13 million over 2 years).

That really means it’s down to two things, comparing Mayo/Love and Miller/Jaric.  I think that while Mayo has a little bit more upside, but right now Mayo and Love are similar players, contributions wise to either team.  Having said this, I don’t think Mayo is good enough that you should be willing to completely re-shape your roster, giving up basically two starters for him, while taking on additional, bad contracts.

Now it comes down to the Miller- Jaric comparison, which Miller wins hands down.  Miller averaged 16.4 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 3.4 assists last season with Memphis, where he started all 70 games he played in and was Memphis’ legitimate scoring threat behind Rudy Gay last season after Pau Gasol was traded.  He also is owed a decent $18.75 million over the next two seasons.

Meanwhile, Jaric averaged 8.3 points, 4.2 assists, and 3 rebounds in just over 29 minutes of game action last season and has just about as bad a contract (3 years, $21+ million) as any of the aforementioned huge contracts…I mean players.  Honestly, the best thing  going for Marko Jaric is off the court, as he is dating supermodel Adriana Lima.  Add this to the fact that he is ANOTHER PG (albeit the world’s tallest at 6′7″).

Honestly, I think that the Grizzlies just got fleeced by the T-Wolves and their GM Kevin McHale, which automatically makes Chris Wallace the NBA’s worst GM.  It seems teams knew that Memphis didn’t want to settle for Love and were just waiting until Memphis finally saw at least a decent offer they liked.  Now, while this isn’t as bad as some of the proposed trades for Beasley (Miller, Conley/Lowry, and 5th pick for Beasley) it still is not a good trade for the Grizzlies.

Arthur In, Greene Out: The Grizzlies have also traded their other draft pick, as they’ve traded the rights to Syracuse F Donte Greene AND a 2009 2nd round pick to the Trail Blazers for the rights to Kansas PF Darrell Arthur.

Honestly, I think this trade sickens me the most because we basically traded a 2nd round pick in next year’s draft, in all likelihood a top-40 pick, to get a player who went the spot before us.  Is getting the guy who went 27th overall really worth trading away the 28th AND a top 40 pick in next year’s draft.

Haven’t we learned that trading future 2nd round picks for either late 1st round picks or 2nd round picks in that year’s draft is a bad idea.  Just think about what we could’ve had if Memphis would’ve had their 2nd rounder this year: Memphis G Chris Douglas-Roberts or Texas A&M C DeAndre Jordan.  If you combine either of them with Love and Greene and you have the potential to pick up three lottery-projected players in one draft.

Now we’ve traded away next year’s 2nd round pick for a guy with kidney problems who was sinking like the Titanic at the draft.  I mean, Arthur was projected to go about the same place as Greene, both slipped, so it’s not like trading a player who slipped for a player that had less value, they both had pretty much equal value.

But, with Memphis moving Love that left a gaping hole at PF that needed to be addressed, giving Portland the upper hand, thus giving them the opportunity for Chris Wallace to be taken in another trade.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 12:57 am 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.