The Broad Strokes
If you pair the Grizzlies’ trade-deadline maneuvering with their three-year, $35-million contract extension for incumbent scoring guard Dillon Brooks — and those decisions are very much paired — then a general team-building strategy is revealed, one that you can break into three related parts:
- Add another young talent to the team’s core
- Punt on outside free agency in 2020
- Position the team to make another major move in 2021 free agency or, perhaps more likely, in next season’s trade market
The Grizzlies are rebuilding, but through a mix of good luck and good decisions have found their success accelerated.
The team began this season with twin 20-year-olds Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. as cornerstones and the outside expectation of being the worst team in the Western Conference.
Despite owing a future first-round draft pick to the Boston Celtics, the road more taken suggested being bad enough to add a third high-lottery pick to go with the Morant/Jackson duo. The Grizzlies must now know that this path has likely been closed to them.
At the same time, the team’s ahead-of-schedule spot in the playoff race this season could have inspired short-term thinking. What can be done to maximize playoff odds
this season?
Instead, the team’s decisions this week suggest an eye on the middle path: “Sustainable success” on a slightly accelerated timeline.
Short-term would have meant trading for or keeping vets. Long-term might have meant building more draft assets. In focusing on the 23-year-old, five-year-vet Winslow in trade and extending the 24-year-old Brooks, the Grizzlies have locked in a young starting lineup — joined by Morant, Jackson and 27-year-old center Jonas Valanciunas — for at least the next two seasons. This is a group that, with Clarke and Melton, can win now and still has room to grow together.
The Grizzlies are betting that Winslow has a better chance to be a new core piece than anyone who would come out of the next couple of drafts or anyone who could have come out of free agency next summer. But because the veteran contracts — guard Dion Waiters and center Gorgui Dieng — the Grizzlies absorbed to acquire Winslow each expire at the end of next season, the team still has the flexibility to hunt for another big splash, either in 2021 free agency or in next season’s trade market.
More on the New Guys
The Grizzlies are placing a big bet that Winslow is the right new core piece to add to what the team already has. Winslow seems like an ideal fit in terms of age (23), position (small forward, the team’s most unsettled), skill set (3-and-D with a little extra playmaking) and contract (cost-controlled at $13 million in each of the next two seasons).
The biggest question with Winslow is the back issues that have limited him to 11 games this season. The Grizzlies don’t anticipate him playing until at least after the All-Star break and plan to be cautious with him despite being in a playoff race.
The Grizzlies seem to believe that the back strain/bone bruise issue that Winslow has had this season is akin to what Melton dealt with in training camp, and is not a long-term worry. Others around the league have expressed more concern. Time will tell.
Already in his fifth NBA season at age 23, Winslow has only averaged 9 points a game in his career. But after shooting 39-151 (26%) from 3-point range in his first two seasons, Winslow shot a combined 145-385 (38%) over his next two seasons. Winslow has been a modest and not terribly efficient scorer, but will be something of a fifth scoring option in the Grizzlies’ starting lineup. The hope will be that Winslow’s growth as a 3-point shooter is sustainable and that the team’s system can coax a higher rate of long-range attempts from him.
This will be important because while Winslow is an excellent playmaker as a wing, Morant will be running the show in Memphis and Winslow will need to be effective off the ball.
But Winslow’s biggest impact will likely be elsewhere. He’s an excellent rebounder and defender for his position, and the Heat have consistently been better defensively with Winslow on the floor.
Coming over from the Minnesota Timberwolves in a late-breaking addition to what had been a two-team deal, center Gorgui Dieng might be something of a Solomon Hill redux: A locker-room class act who helps off the bench and whose large soon-to-be-expiring contract ($17.3 million next season) could become a meaningful trade piece.
Dieng isn’t much of an offensive threat inside the arc, but like a lot of current big men has worked to extend his shooting range. After never taking more than 14% of his field-goal attempts from long-range, Dieng is taking 40% of his attempts from 3 this season, and making 39% of them.
This suddenly stretchy game could pair well off the bench with rim-attacker Clarke and could also allow Dieng to play some in bigger lineups with Jackson or (less likely) Valanciunas. Dieng is a good shot blocker and rebounder and, like Winslow, has tended to have a positive impact on team defense.
The Grizzlies added more than a million dollars in salary for next season in swapping forward James Johnson (initially coming over from Miami) for Dieng, but like that Dieng could shore up the team’s depth chart at center, where the team took a big hit whenever Valanciunas was out, and adds a quality veteran in the locker room to help replace what was lost with the departures of Crowder and Hill.
Speaking of which …
At his peak, Dion Waiters was a mid-teens scorer and meaningful 3-point shooter, but recurring ankle problems have slowed him down and, of late, myriad off-court issues have sidelined him completely: Waiters was suspended by the Heat three times this season.
Waiters arrived to a team with an already crowded depth chart at his position (Brooks, Melton and Grayson Allen) and one that doesn’t seem to have a lot of interest in keeping distractions in house when they can instead send them away.
The Grizzlies have a recent history of managing awkward player situations with Chandler Parsons, Andre Iguodala and Josh Jackson all under contract but away from the team — for different reasons — over the past two seasons. Anything seemed possible with Waiters and now it appears that the Grizzlies will buy him out, putting $12.7 million of dead money on next season’s salary cap sheet (or perhaps a little less pending buyout negotiations).
This will cost the Grizzlies a trade chip: Waiters’ expiring contract next season is only movable if he’s still on the roster, but there’s precedent here: Last summer, the Grizzlies flipped Chandler Parsons for Solomon Hill and Miles Plumlee, turning one big expiring contract into two with the notion that this would be better for future trade purposes. Hill ended up being a nice contributor before becoming a trade chip. Facing a roster crunch, the Grizzlies chose to buy out Plumlee rather than keep his contract on the books.
In this scenario, where Dieng is the Solomon Hill, Waiters is now the Plumlee, whose $12.5 million dead salary has been on the team’s books all season. Perhaps this was a tough decision, but it was hard to imagine the Grizzlies bringing Waiters into this young locker room.
Footnote: The Grizzlies got some very minor but favorable draft return in swapping Bruno Caboclo to the Houston Rockets for center Jordan Bell. Caboclo was going to be an unrestricted free agent this summer; the Grizzlies can make Bell restricted. So there’s more control there if they want it. Bell is an undersized, rim-running center who is a pretty good rebounder and shot-blocker. Is there really room for him and the similar but better Clarke on the same roster?
The Value
Was this a good deal for the Grizzlies? The dispassionate evaluations have been decidedly mixed. The Grizzlies took on nearly $30 million in what are considered “bad” contracts next season to get Winslow, but the players they traded away, particularly Iguodala and Crowder, were thought to have positive value of their own.
It may be that the trade market for Iguodala wasn’t quite as robust as once imagined. Remember, the Grizzlies got paid a good draft pick — rather than paying one themselves — to absorb his contract last summer.
Winslow is certainly a more valuable get than whatever bundle of draft assets Iguodala and Crowder would have fetched in separate draft-oriented deals. But with the extra $30 million salary addition for next season?
It’s somewhat disappointing that the Grizzlies apparently couldn’t have done this deal excluding the Solomon Hill for Dion Waiters swap (it would have worked financially without either in the trade) or couldn’t get at least some type of draft-asset return from Miami (that didn’t have much to give).
But the opportunity cost of taking on the extra salary might be minimal given where the Grizzlies are and want to be in their competitive trajectory.
Yes, the Grizzlies decided to forgo potentially massive cap space this summer, but in doing so are making the calculation that Winslow for an additional two years and $26 million would be preferable to anyone they could reasonably sign.
Setting aside New Orleans’ Brandon Ingram, a restricted free agent who will be hard to poach, the best wings on the market this summer are likely to be restricted free agents Bogdan Bogdanovic and Malik Beasley, unrestricted free agent Joe Harris or potential free agents with player options such as Evan Fournier or Otto Porter. In terms of age, upside, position and skill set, none of them are as strong a potential fit as Winslow.
What else could that cap space achieve? They could take on contracts in exchange for draft picks, as they did last summer for Iguodala. That’s the classic rebuilding-team strategy. That the Grizzlies preferred to lock in Winslow now rather than build up assets for some indeterminate future suggests an embrace of a slightly accelerated timeline.
What Does it Mean for This Season?
At 26-25, the Grizzlies are solidly in playoff-qualifying eighth place in the Western Conference, with a three-game cushion ahead of the Portland Trail Blazers, 3.5 on the San Antonio Spurs and six games each on the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans.
Do this week’s moves make the Grizzlies a stronger or weaker bet to make the playoffs this season? That’s hard to say, but it seems clear that this year’s playoff race had minimal impact on the team’s decision-making, and that’s encouraging.
From a simple subtraction standpoint, the losses shouldn’t be crushing. Crowder had been starting and soaking up heavy minutes, but had also generally been shooting poorly. The Grizzlies have gone 6-0 with Kyle Anderson in the starting lineup in Crowder’s place. That could be happenstance. More persuasively, while the Grizzlies’ starting lineup on the season has been effective (+6.4 per 100 possessions), the same lineup with Anderson rather than Crowder has been even better (+8.3).
And that’s not factoring in Winslow at all, who is a better player than either.
In the front court, Dieng is an upgrade over Hill, though a different player positionally. The Grizzlies also have a recently promoted Josh Jackson in the mix.
Even if Winslow doesn’t play this season, the trade shouldn’t lower the team’s chances. If Winslow does, it’s likely the Grizzlies have improved for the rest of this season. And while some will wonder about the less tangible impact of the loss of the locker-room presence of Crowder and Hill, the Grizzlies’ precocious core seems ready to take the lead.
The field remains a better bet than the Grizzlies in this season’s playoff race, but this week’s moves should not diminish their chances.
What Does it Mean for This Summer?
By my math, the Grizzlies will enter the summer above the NBA’s projected $115 million salary cap, including qualifying offers for restricted free agents Melton and Bell and a cap hold for unrestricted free agent Josh Jackson.
But in terms of guaranteed money, they would be more than $25 million below the NBA’s projected luxury tax. So the Grizzlies should have plenty of room to retain Melton. They could then re-sign Bell or Jackson (or both) if they so chose or pursue lower-salary outside free agents via the league’s mid-level or bi-annual exceptions. They have Phoenix’s second-round pick in June’s draft, but likely neither of their own.
Unforeseen trades could always shake things up, and probably will, but it’s easy to imagine a fairly quiet summer that gets the Grizzlies to their 15-man roster next season:
- Point guard: Ja Morant-Tyus Jones
- Scoring guard: Dillon Brooks-De’Anthony Melton-Grayson Allen
- Small forward: Justise Winslow-Kyle Anderson-Marko Guduric
- Power forward: Jaren Jackson Jr -Brandon Clarke
- Center: Jonas Valanciunas-Gorgui Dieng
With three spots left, choose among the following: Josh Jackson, Jordan Bell, second-round pick, lower-level free agents.
It probably won’t be that simple, but it could be. It feels like the Grizzlies did their summer work early with the Winslow trade and Brooks extension. Next February’s trade deadline could be more momentous than the coming summer. Which brings us to …
What Does it Mean for the Broader Future?
If the Grizzlies send their first-round pick to the Boston Celtics this summer, as expected, they will be clear of future first-round pick obligations.
This means they would have all of their own first-round picks available to trade as well as one from Utah (likely in 2022) and one from Golden State (likely 2024). Eight first round picks over the next six seasons, all unencumbered.
The Grizzlies will also have a big expiring contract (Dieng), with several smaller contracts connected to actual good players. It will be easy to arrive at most salary levels, though dead money for Waiters could hurt them somewhat.
Translation: The Grizzlies will be very well positioned for the trade market starting next season.
Maybe Justise Winslow becomes the third leg of a championship-contending stool along with Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. Maybe that player is Brandon Clarke or Dillon Brooks or even De’Anthony Melton. More likely is that this group, collectively, is good enough together that no one is a clear third in the pecking order.
More likely still: That player is still out in the NBA ocean somewhere, and the Grizzlies now have the tools to pursue a big fish.
They can eschew multi-year contracts in free agency this summer and let Dieng’s contract next season expire and go into the summer of 2021 with the meaningful cap space they decided to forgo in 2020. In the last summer before they have to pay Jaren Jackson Jr. for real, the Grizzlies could be an attractive free agent destination with money to spend.
There are plenty of intriguing potential free agents looming in 2021, both unrestricted (C.J. McCollum, Victor Oladipo, Kelly Oubre) and restricted (Jonathan Isaac, O.G. Anunoby, Luke Kennard, Derrick White, Duncan Robinson).
Yet the trade market seems a more fertile future option for the Grizzlies than free agency.
But as the 2019-2020 NBA season enters its post-trade-deadline homestretch, the blow-it-up Grizzlies of last summer now have a young playoff contender whose core is locked up for the foreseeable future, and they have the assets in place to be opportunistic in pursuit of even better.
This isn’t — yet — the best team in franchise history. But the Grizzlies have never been better positioned for sustainable success, and at a very high level.
