GrizzBag!!!! June 8, 2012.
If you’ve missed my Twitter account (@bealestreetbear) spamming all 12 of my faithful followers about this, allow me to explain. This is going to become a weekly feature here at Beale Street Bears where we answer all of your Memphis Grizzlies related questions that we may not cover over the course of the previous week.
Look, I’ve met me, I can be quite forgetful or awful at explaining things. That fact isn’t lost on me, so if there’s something you want to know just write in and I’ll answer it regardless.
That goes for anything as well. If you’d like to know more about your author, go for it. If you’re just dying to know my favorite beer or what movie I watch when I”m down in the dumps then whatever. It never hurts to ask.
On with GRIZZBAG #1!!!!
Would you trade Rudy to Charlotte for the #2 pick. If so, who would you draft?:
– Sweet E., Memphis, Tennessee.
I think that I would and mostly for reasons that I listed here:
https://bealestreetbears.com/2012/06/01/2012-nba-draft-rudy-gay-for-michael-kidd-gilchrist/
The biggest question I’ve gotten from fans of the site (there are two, so technically the plural works) is why I hate Rudy Gay. It’s a fair question as every other article I write is how the Grizzlies can move Gay out of town and how he’s basically a menace.
The fact of the matter is that Gay is a good player, has been a good player for some time and would stand out on any team that he may be on. He’s a good guy and his teammates love him.
The problem is his massive salary (that the Grizzlies willingly gave him, so I’m not absolving the front office either).
Do you realize that you could trade Gay and LeBron James for each other straight up?
Part of that is because James left money on the table to join the Heat and Gay signed the maximum contract that he was able to with the Grizzlies.
Also in Gay’s defense, he made good on that contract extension and played the best ball of his career in the first half of the 2010-2011 season before that season-ending shoulder injury.
If you want to delve further into it, this has been a weird NBA season, to say the least. If you’re Rudy Gay, you’ve just come off of a serious injury, you watched your team respond and thrive in your absence and then you get locked out as soon as the NBA Draft ends. For a while, it looked like there would be no season at all, and when it was announced that there was a season, you have a week’s worth of a joke of a training camp, then you jump into your first actual game action in 10 months. Then Zach Randolph gets hurt in your fourth regular season game and you get used to playing without him, and then have to worry about reintegrating him in time for the playoffs.
These are all reasonable concerns, and Gay may be the Grizzlies’ future (along with Marc Gasol and Mike Conley Jr.) but if the Grizzlies think that they can win now and want to carve out some flexibility going forward, moving Gay for two or three pieces would be a good idea.
I would pick Kentucky freshman Michael Kidd-Gilchrist because I think that he would bring a lot of that grit and grind that Memphis loves. His jump shot is a work in progress, but most young guys struggle to fix their shot when they first enter the league.
More importantly, Kidd-Gilchrist could be better than Gay one day and while the Grizzlies’ title window is open right now, adding a younger piece like MKG extends the life of that window. Whether we want to admit it or not, the Grizzlies aren’t going to win it all with Rudy Gay making $16 million a year on their cap. Also, ice is cold and fire is hot. That doesn’t mean that another team wouldn’t want Gay. That team likely won’t compete for championships, but the Bobcats just want to win double digit games. Gay can get them there.
I would do Gay for the #2 straight up if Charlotte would allow me, and I may even toss in #25 if they insisted. If they weren’t interested in #25 then…
Assuming all 3 are available when we draft, would you take Marquis Teague, John Jenkins or Tony Wroten?:
I would take Teague over the other three and I actually think that he’s going to be a really good player in his career. If you haven’t paying attention, Bledsoe’s career is off to a pretty good start and was a big problem for the Grizzlies in the first round just this year.
The only downside with taking Teague would be how Coach Hollins would react to his presence. Hollins has proven to be rather tough on point guards not named Mike Conley Jr. during his time in Memphis. If you don’t believe me, may I direct your attention to the slew of back-up point guards left in Hollins’ wake? Greivis Vasquez, Marcus Williams and Jamaal Tinsley are all nodding sadly right now. I know what you’re thinking and the answer is yes, they are definitely reading the GrizzBag right now.
Even Kyle Lowry who arrived the year before Conley got the full-on Hollins treatment and was practically given away to the Wizards before the 2009 trade deadline. The funny thing about that is Lowry now may be a better player than Conley and makes less money to boot.
I say all that to say that if the Grizzlies draft Teague and Hollins plays him 8 minutes a night, then the odds of him having a solid career go down considerably. That goes without saying.
I think Teague has star potential, but it’s important to realize that he’s still a young player and needs room to grow. That may not happen in Memphis under Lionel Hollins.
Would you trade Rudy and our puck to Raptors for their lottery pick and Bargnani/Calderon?:
This is the other hot trade rumor being thrown around and it’s not quite as interesting to me.
In my mind, I only trade Rudy Gay in two instances:
1.) Memphis gets an upgrade at his position. There are a number of better small forwards out there and as we found out here they’re all priced cheaper than Gay. If a player is better and tied into a better contract, why would any team make that deal? Carmelo and LeBron would definitely be upgrades to Gay, and cost more as well. That would be a worthwhile upgrade though. So that takes us to…
2.) The Grizzlies taking back multiple pieces for the amount of salary that is being paid to Gay. This seems way more doable. If the Grizzlies traded Gay to Charlotte for just the #2 pick, they clear all of that salary, are able to afford O.J. Mayo and maybe even Darrell Arthur AND Marreese Speights.
That’s a great trade by any stretch of the imagination. Even if the Grizzlies took back a small forward on a rookie deal and picked up a pick, that’s still not bad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of breaking up the core of a team that lost in the first round, but if you feel like you’re close (the Grizzlies apparently do) why not keep as much of that team together as you can?
The problem with the Toronto trade is that the Grizzlies don’t accomplish any of that by taking back Andrea Bargnani and Jose Calderon. Calderon is at least an expiring deal after the year and would give the Grizzlies a quality back-up point guard in the interim. At the end of the year, if he plays well, the Grizzlies would own his Bird rights and be able to sign him to however much money they choose, or let him walk.
My problem is with the 8th pick. At that point, there will likely be no sure things on the board. There will be some late bloomers and some guys who will see their stock rise at the combine, but to take back a bad contract and go from Rudy Gay to “maybe Bradley Beal if you get real, real lucky!” just doesn’t do it for me.
Would you bring back Darrell Arthur:
Let me say this; I like Arthur a lot. He was crucial to the Grizzlies during the 2011 playoff run and allowed the team to go really big (with him spotting some minutes at the 3, or him playing the stretch 4) and was becoming a real bench hero for the Grizzlies. It’s unfair that he could lose his spot to an injury.
That said, nobody knows how he’s going to respond to that achilles injury that cost him the entire 2011-2012 regular season and playoff run. At this point, you’d assume he’ll be fine because it wasn’t a serious injury like an ACL or MCL tear, but there is that uncertainty.
Ideally, I’d like to bring him and Marreese Speights back and have my four bigs covered. The problem is that someone could overpay one of them and the Grizzlies can’t afford to keep both on accelerated contracts.
It would be advantageous for the Grizzlies to extend each of them the Qualifying Offer so that they would retain their individual Bird Rights, then try to sign one to a modest extension (two or three years for $8-9 million total) and hope nobody signs the other to any kind of ridiculous extension that the Grizzlies would have to match or allow them to walk. If they could keep one on the QO for next season, they could extend them then, or let them leave, but they would also be able to let the season play out and decide which one is the best fit, or keep both of them in the fold.
However, if I’m picking just one, I’d probably have to pick Speights because of his ability to play 4/5. He’s not an ideal fit at center, but with his frame, he’s definitely passable and played there a lot with Zach Randolph after Z-bo’s return. I think Arthur is the better player, but between his injury and Speights’ versatility, I would probably keep Speights in the fold, but would prefer both to hang around.
Not a bad first week for the GrizzBag, but we can do better. This is our new Friday tradition, so get us your questions in by 10:00 a.m. on Friday morning. You can send them to our Twitter account (@bealestreetbear) our e-mail account (bealestreetbears@gmail.com) or our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/BealeStreetBears .)
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it and if you think you have better questions, let’s see them. Until we meet again, Grizzlies fans…