After yesterday’s final workout, featuring Kentucky point guard Marquis Teague, Grizzlies Player Personnel Director Tony Barone Sr. was asked about the likelihood that the team’s pick at #25 in Thursday night’s NBA Draft would come from the pool of players that had been in for a workout. He put it at 60 percent. A few minutes later, I posed the same question to Scouting Director Tony Barone Jr., who put the odds at 70 percent.
With that in mind, I’m going to focus on the — by my count — 10 draft-worthy players that were brought in:
My Pick: If I had my choice of this group it would be Michigan State forward Draymond Green. If the Grizzlies went with Green it would be seen as going for “best player available” over “need”: Green seems more ready to be an NBA rotation player next season than anyone else in the group but would join Rudy Gay, Zach Randolph, Dante Cunningham, and Darrell Arthur in a glut of 6’7”-6’9” forwards on the roster.
Because he’s a tweener (a 6’7.5” college power forward) who played four years at Michigan State, Green’s been promoted as the proverbial “guy who plays hard” with a “high basketball IQ” who “coaches love.” All that seems to be true, and it’s all important, but I also think it short-changes Green’s impressive and versatile skill-set: He rebounds at a very high level, which we know tends to translate. Along with Royce White, he’s probably the best frontcourt passer in the draft. And he can shoot it: Connecting on 39% of his threes last season on 3.6 attempts per game. He showed all these skills in a very strong workout with the Grizzlies, including a demonstration that he should be able to extend that shooting range out to the NBA three-point length.
Physically, Green’s over 7’1” wingspan and toughness allows him to play bigger than his 6’7.5” height suggests. He’s in the ballpark, physically, with effective undersized power forwards such as Trevor Booker, Carl Landry, and Udonis Haslem, but with much better passing and shooting ability. His ability to score on the block in the NBA will probably be match-up dependent, but that’s true of most frontcourt prospects. The real question is defensively, where Green’s tweener status is a real issue: Is he too small to guard bigs and too slow to guard wings? But Green’s steal and block numbers were good in college, and his combination of wingspan, strength, and smarts should make him at least a passable defender in most instances.
