The Grizzlies have plenty of young talent on their roster. Does the emergence of two rookies open the door for potential trades?
When it was announced that Jaren Jackson Jr. and Justise Winslow would be missing time for Memphis, nobody was thinking of this as good news. And in the short term, there still aren’t many positives to take away from this situation. But there is a silver lining in the Grizzlies playbook this season.
In the absence of Jackson and Winslow, this team has transformed itself into a playoff threat in the Western Conference. Now, whether or not Taylor Jenkins squad is capable of making a deep playoff run is an entirely different question, but this squad is in an undeniably in a great position to make a late-season push for a solid playoff seed.
For this, we have a lot of players to thank, but something that really pushed these guys over the edge was the emergence of Desmond Bane and Xavier Tillman. For starters, Bane has been an elite 3-point shooter so far this year. He’s currently shooting 48.2% from beyond the arch, putting up 10 points per contest on 22 minutes played.
Tillman, on the other hand, has filled in nicely for his former Michigan State teammate and current Grizzlies teammate, Jaren Jackson Jr. While his minutes have dwindled from earlier in the year, he has still been an extremely productive player, notching almost 8 points per game along with 5 rebounds per match. His defensive stats aren’t particularly impressive with one steal per game and a half-block per contest, but his value on that end of the court cannot be understated. What more can you ask of a second rounder?
Specifically, the coming out of these first-year NBA players shows that the Grizzlies have depth. Players like Grayson Allen, Dillon Brooks, and Gorgui Dieng suddenly don’t seem so invaluable to this team’s depth and success. The future of this squad becomes less fragile, and as a result, there are more avenues to explore in the trade market.
Add this onto the fact that the Grizzlies own the rights to all of their first round picks in the future and they’ve got some bargaining power that most NBA teams don’t have. This creates an opportunity for Memphis’s front office to bring in talent that will help the team down the road by trading for a player like Bradley Beal.
For a small market team, the Grizzlies’ front office has put them into as good of a position as possible right now. They’ve drafted well and signed a promising coach in Taylor Jenkins to lead this team to its inevitable success. We, as fans, can’t do anything except for believe in the process that got the team to this point.