With minimal healthy options at the center position, the Memphis Grizzlies have turned to Tyler Zeller for frontcourt assistance to finish the season.
Help is on the way for the injury-plagued Memphis Grizzlies, who are down to just one resource for true centers. In order to continue to compete through the final four regular season games, the team has signed veteran center Tyler Zeller.
On Friday morning, ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski had the initial report of the Grizzlies’ addition of Zeller. This explains why Memphis aborted the 10-day contract of Dusty Hannahs prior to its expiration.
Free agent center Tyler Zeller is signing with Memphis for rest of the season, league sources tell ESPN. Grizzlies are waiving Dusty Hannahs.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) April 5, 2019
The Memphis Grizzlies were down to just Ivan Rabb to man the middle. While this is the opportunity Rabb needs and deserves as his sophomore season comes to a close, the team needs another guy to substitute for Rabb to give him a breather. Plus, the Grizzlies need all the rebounding assistance they can gain as they rank 29th of 30 teams in this department.
Immediate help was needed at center as the Memphis Grizzlies lost Jonas Valanciunas to a season-ending ankle injury in the past week. Plus, Joakim Noah remains out, though his status has recently upgraded to “questionable.” Still, he is not quite ready with one week remaining in the race-to-convey sweepstakes.
Tyler Zeller does fit the mold of your typical Memphis Grizzly fan favorite. He is a blue collar worker who battles on the boards. He is a paint protector. Tyler’s game is definitely “Grit-‘N’-Grind” and he does not allow opponents to score easily at the rim. Overall, this is a quality signing this late in the season for a minimum deal, though it is unlikely to extend into the 2019-20 season.
This season, the 29-year-old Zeller has appeared in just two games for the Atlanta Hawks. Those instances took place one month ago (one of which took place versus Memphis), so he should be in game shape from the start.
Through seven NBA seasons, Tyler Zeller owns career averages of 6.9 points and 4.4 rebounds on 50.8% shooting from the field. To gain a further grasp of his potential impact, the North Carolina product owns a career Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of 14.9.
The free-agent signing of Tyler Zeller will make this 28 different players to suit up for the Memphis Grizzlies during the 2018-19 NBA season if he checks into any of the final four regular season games. Dusty Hannahs was No. 27.