Memphis Grizzlies Midseason Grades: Brandan Wright

At the NBA regular season’s midpoint, we are grading each Memphis Grizzlies player based on his performance and progress through the first half of the season. Today we grade Brandan Wright.

Devastated by the news of Marc Gasol’s season-ending foot injury, Grizz Nation turns its lonely eyes to…Brandan Wright?

We hardly saw Brandan Wright play at all during the first half of the season, but now facing a daunting sans-Gasol second half of the season Wright suddenly finds himself cast in a pivotal role in the Grizzlies’ effort to keep their playoff hopes afloat.

He’s only appeared in seven games for Memphis, and that was during the Grizzlies’ horrid start to the season that included 30-point and 50-point drubbings from the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors, respectively. During that stretch Wright averaged 6.6 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks.

Wright has missed the majority of the season while recovering from a leg injury and arthroscopic knee surgery, and now his anticipated return to the court after All-Star break is crucial for a frontcourt now lacking its greatest asset while also running out of 10-Day contracts to throw at journeyman center Ryan Hollins.

In Wright’s absence, we probably saw a little too much of Hollins and not enough of the more dynamic JaMychal Green, but Hollins proved to be a decent substitute. Hollins has demonstrated his serviceable skills as an adequate rim protector and a capable alley-oop option out of pick-and-rolls, most notably on lob passes from Mario Chalmers, but his ceiling was always being a Brandan Wright fill-in. Hollins is like one of the cheaper knock-off brand soft drinks at my neighborhood’s grocery store, for instance “Mountain Shoutin’” or “Dr. Bob”: he only vaguely resembles the name brand, but he’s affordable and he gets the job done.

On a side note, I’m not looking to trademark a product name for Ryan Hollins being an off-brand version of Brandan Wright, but the grocery store version would almost assuredly be blatantly titled something like “Brenden Left” or “Brandon Wrong.”

Unfortunately for the Grizzlies, there is no near substitute for team anchor Marc Gasol. Brandan Wright can’t and won’t be expected to bring everything Gasol brought the team, but he will have an opportunity to see his fair share of playing time with faster lineups that could benefit from his ability to be a center who can get up and down the court on fast breaks and make athletic dunks in the half court offense.

In a positive trend we saw beginning to develop before his injury, Wright displayed some heartening pick-and-roll chemistry with point guard Mike Conley. In his limited attempts, Wright shot 60 percent from the field, thanks in part to five slam dunks and other scores from close to the hoop. Now, out of necessity, he’ll have more chances than ever for running the p-n-r and converting easy dunks.

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Two seasons ago when the Nashville native played for the Dallas Mavericks, he averaged 9.1 points per game on 68 percent shooting that included 94 dunks in 58 games, and posted an extremely efficient PER of 23.5 (for reference, the league average PER is set at 15.0). Last season while playing for the Mavs, Phoenix Suns, and Boston Celtics (briefly), Wright finished the season with an average of 7.3 points per game on 64.2 percent shooting, with 95 of his made field goals coming from dunks. His per-minute production from last season yielded a PER of 20.4, including a PER of 25.7 in his 27 games with the Mavericks.

With the team changing philosophies and looking to score more quickly this season, and now with the huge, gaping, Gasol-shaped hole in the Grizzlies’ roster, Memphis would do well to figure out how to utilize Brandan Wright’s strengths and abilities that were so evident when he was a Maverick; after all, those were the same skills that prompted the Grizzlies to pursue him in the first place. If Dave Joerger and the Memphis Grizzlies can maximize Brandan Wright’s talents anywhere near as well as Rick Carlisle and the Dallas Mavericks did in 2015, then the guys in Beale Street Blue might hold their ground and edge out the Mavs for the fifth seed in the 2016 Western Conference playoff race.

We don’t have much material to grade from the first half of the season, but think of Brandan Wright’s season as a course that is weighted most heavily on the final exam/term paper, the end result.

Grade so far: Incomplete (like when the department chair and registrar’s office give you additional time to turn in assignments because you had Mono for half the semester)

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