- Jun 23, 2008
- 33,485
- 27,225
- AFL Club
- Collingwood
- Other Teams
- Norwood, Everton, Detroit Red Wings
I don't feel like the Grizzlies necessarily draft poorly with the picks they have, but they certainly give up on guys and dump them pretty quickly. They draft guys who are young project types, and then lose their patience after a year or two, when they guy is barely above college age.
Obviously those inside the team would have a better insight into a player's development and worth than we would as fans, but names like Jordan Adams, Josh Selby, Jamaal Franklin and Tony Wroten were all just 21-22 when Memphis cut them. Even someone like Haseem Thabeet was dealt with pretty swiftly. I'm not saying any of those guys would have been good NBA players if the Grizz hung onto them, but surely they're also not considered the finished product at age 21-22 either, as either athletes or people. Just feels a year or two too early to be making final judgements on guys. You know what you're getting with these types of players going in, and you know they're going to take time to adapt and develop, so it's a bit strange to discard them so quickly because they haven't met your expectation after a year or two.
Mike Conley is really the only guys the Grizzlies have drafted over the past decade that they've stayed patient with and developed, and he's become one of the top guys in the league at his position, and will probably go down as the franchise's greatest player (alongside the Gasol brothers) once he's retired. You could maybe count Marc Gasol, Rudy Gay, O.J. Mayo too (drafted by other teams, but played their first NBA game as Grizzlies), but there's not really a long list of guys they've persisted with.
