For the first time since 2001, the Memphis Grizzlies have an incoming rookie who has dominated on major platforms before reaching the NBA. 25 years after drafting European superstar Pau Gasol, the Grizzlies drafted the most dominant player in college basketball in 2026: Cameron Boozer.
Memphis has experienced remarkable periods of success since trading Gasol to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2008, of course, but they hadn't drafted a player quite like him until Boozer.
Ja Morant was electric, but he was a mid-major player who didn't truly reach the NBA radar until his sophomore season of college. Mike Conley and Jackson were heralded and decorated, but not quite regarded as future franchise players. Even O.J. Mayo, hyped as he was, had cooled off to some degree by the time the NBA Draft arrived compared to the Kobe Bryant comparisons he received in high school.
What the Grizzlies have in Boozer, however, is a player who has faced superstar expectations at every stage of his career and steadily met every one of them.
In a stacked class with three players competing for the No. 1 pick, Boozer going No. 3 somehow didn't feel like a slide. Instead, it was simply a landing spot based on team needs at the top of the board and marginal differences in upside projections by the top two teams.
With Boozer now in Memphis, the Grizzlies have their first battle tested top five pick since they landed Gasol in a 2001 class that was expected to produce as many as four All-Star centers.
Cam Boozer knows what it's like to thrive under weight of expectation
Gasol entered the 2001 NBA Draft as a two-time Liga ACB champion and a Eurobasket bronze medalist. He'd not only taken well to professional basketball, but showed signs of dominance in the world's second-best league before he'd even turned 21.
Even in a generation that questioned how European players could translate to the NBA, Gasol still went No. 3 overall in what was initially perceived as a stacked class for big men.
Boozer, meanwhile, was a five-star recruit who was in a three-player race with Darryn Peterson and AJ Dybantsa for the No. 1 spot in the country. Faced with the burden of living up to his All-NBA father's name and the hype of a potential No. 1 pick, he more than delivered.
Boozer won the National College Player of the Year award, thus joining Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Cooper Flagg, and Zion Williamson as the only freshmen to achieve the feat.
Boozer will now join the Grizzlies as not just a beacon of hope, but a player who's familiar with the burden of expectation. That is the separating factor between Boozer, Gasol, and so many other Grizzlies rookies: By the time those two ended up in Memphis, they had already proven to be franchise-level talents in the game's most competitive non-NBA environments.
For a Grizzlies franchise in need of a new identity, the addition of a proven talent who isn't afraid of pressure is exactly what they needed.
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