Brian Wright could never

What’s impressive is that they have had the top 10 guys in 8 drafts and they are still trash.

Rookie of the Year and maybe 2nd/3rd place are difference makers, the rest are not.

Baby Jokic comps about to get some GMs fired in the next couple years (👀 at Rafael Stone and Joe dumars)

I get why Blazers fans are upset, but centers take a while to develop in a normal setting. And he’s a young guy coming to a new country for the first time with a language barrier and playing in a totally different setting basketball-wise. I bet he’ll make a significant jump this year just in terms of being able to stay on the court, and then after he gets comfortable, we can start to see his actual skill. I’m not defending the aggressive trade up when Coward would have actually fit this current Blazers team pretty well, but you usually draft for ultimate talent and maybe the Portland FO believes he has a higher ceiling.

Your owner going to be happy in a few years as Hansen next contract will be cheap in comparison. /s

Being a blazers fan still has got to be hell

I love Portland but man, you guys have the worst ownership track record

Can’t win when it’s rotten from the top

Not everyone lucks into a 1st, 2nd, and 4th overall pick in consecutive drafts, so the Grizzlies have to find value elsewhere. GG was just 19 when taken in the second round, and Wells was a second round pick as well. Des was the 30th overall pick.

There are obvious misses in there as well so I’m not saying Kleiman is perfect, but it’s not like we’re blowing lottery picks on Primo.

GG Jackson in the second half of this season is infinitely better than GG last year. Wells and Edey are in their second years, and Edey was amazing in his small sample size this year. Brandon Clarke would have continued to be a premier role player if not for an absurd string of injuries. The only guy who I think this could apply to is Wells, who just finished year two as a second round pick

Not to mention all of the scrap heap guys like Scotty Pippen Jr that have turned into real NBA players.

Here’s the thing: they made the right choice taking higher floor players that ended up being good right away.

They built their core in 3 straight drafts with JJJ/Bane/Ja. They continued to bring in solid players through the draft every year that produced very well.

The issue is that their core just wasn’t good enough to compete with other elite teams, and ja went off the deep end. You kind of have to operate under the assumption that your max players will be worth the max contract but it just wasn’t the case with their core, nothing you could do with a string of 20th picks to fully salvage that unless you draft a Jokic or something lol

Like the Coward-Bryant conversation will be interesting in 4-5 years time

Why do I have the feeling if Spurs drafted Coward you’d laugh at anyone attempting to compare him to Carter Bryant?

I don’t agree. I really like Santi Aldama, and he’s definitely shown real improvement since entering the league. I know that he wasn’t drafted by them, but Memphis has developed Scotty Pippen Jr. well, too. They’re doing a good job.

i don’t agree with this. the standard for a non lottery pick is simply someone who can stay in the league and provide valuable minutes. you can hazard whether the better strategy is to go for complete moonshots or consistently bat above-average but this is a good cast of talent. also the only thing polished about edey is his height. he is incredibly raw as a player.

high floor older players are guys like malcolm brogdon. guards usually, sometimes wings

And I would point out that only 3 players on that list (pick 2, pick 4, and Desmond Bane) have shown any real improvement since coming into the league.

Coward is still a rookie, so youre critizing them because only 3 of the 7 all-rookie team players developed into all-star caliber players? What?

Also, among the other four, GG has absolutely improved and Clarke and Edey had injuries.

So basically your critique is that 2nd round pick Jaylen Wells has stagnated as a good role player.

Ok.

Hitting an all star level player with 1 of 4 non lottery picks is already a win. Jaylen wells looks like his floor is a future starter too, which is amazing for a 2nd round pick

We’ve been going through it 😭😭

Relish in some positive friend lol

JJJ, Ja, and Desmond are successful while the others are literally in year 2

I think two issues, one a few of those guys couldn’t stay healthy sadly and two, ja went nuts. Clarke also is a sad situation but he was also hurt a lot too. Freaking Grizz!

If all the recent articles and player quotes are anything to go by, Memphis is the single most disadvantaged team in free agency in the entire league.

Gotta be Boozer man.

Gotta go high potential when the analytics show effort will never ever be a problem. When dudes athletic as Caleb play hard great things happen. And he’s got a fantastic IQ too. I understand playing it safe but I feel like with all these picks in the future we can take a swing on Caleb and potentially have our go to guy.

He was top 3 the first half of the season. Then injuries and tanking happend

Prior to the JJJ trade (and the Grizzlies tanking), Coward was averaging 14/6/3, on 46.⁷⁄₃₄.⁵⁄₈₄.9 splits, while being the team’s primary perimeter defender. After the trade, his numbers went down a bit as the Grizzlies began tanking. But he still ended up putting up 13.⁶⁄₅.⁹⁄₂.8 on above league average TS% while being the team’s primary perimeter defender. Queen and especially Reynaud were outright liabilities on defense, and Queen was a less efficient scorer on lower volume than Coward. CMB was much better defensively but had a much more limited offensive role. The voting was pretty close between Queen, Reynaud, and Coward though. Feels a bit disrespectful to CMB, but I feel like Coward is at least a viable option among those vying for the 5th spot after Kneuppel, Flagg, Edgecombe, and Harper.

I thought Raynaud/CMB deserved it, but Coward played great at the start of the season and slowed down/got sat for tanking at the end so guess they took that into consideration too

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Oh no, now they won’t be punished for trying to get their developing players playing time and winning some games.

I wouldn’t say that. It’s a shame that the Ja era ended the way that it did, but they still got 8 first round picks out of Jaren and Bane. Those are very favorable assets, plus Edey and Coward look like very promising pieces for their future.

Spurs fans better be careful. You’ll be the new Thunder fans before you know it.

Lucky ass team has the fucking audacity to talk about anyone lmao. Enjoy your dynasty gifted to you by the league, man. We are all jealous.

Fully healthy minus Ja, they’re probably a fringe play-in team as one of the youngest teams in the league. Then you add Ja Morant (or whatever they trade him for), the 3rd overall pick, the 16 and 32 picks, 3 firsts next year, swaps in 2029 and 2030, and extra 1sts in 2030 and 2031. That’s quite a lot to show for it. And that’s ignoring the 4 playoff appearances in the last 6 years, despite many injuries. That’s more postseason success in that timeframe than the Rockets, Pelicans, or Kings, to name some other teams with recent top 2 picks.

Why are there so many shithead spurs fans in my comments

There hasn’t been a superstar in FA in a long time lol