Grading The Last 5 Grizzlies 1st Round Picks #nba #nbadraft #grizzlies zlies

Grading The Last 5 Grizzlies 1st Round Picks #nba #nbadraft #grizzlies zlies

Let’s grade the last five Memphis Grizzies first round picks, excluding the 2025 draft, but shout out to Cedric Coward. It is funny, this team is so much better drafting in the second round than they are in the first round. So, we’ll talk about Zach Edi, who is the ninth overall pick in the 2024 draft. There’s definitely some more intriguing long-term centers that went after him, but he was a productive rookie and should be a solid big man for them going forward. I’m going to give this pick a B+. They didn’t have a first round pick in the 23 draft from the Marcus Smart trade, so they had two firstrounders on the night of the 2022 draft. The first one was Jake Orbia out of Wake Forest. I’m going to give this pick a D+. I think Jake Oravio was a solid Sacramento king this past year. I think he’s going to be a solid LA Laker, but this pick just did not work out in Memphis. They had to salary dump him at the 2025 deadline. And then they also took David Rody late in the first round as well out of Colorado State. This pick is going to get a D. Rody’s turned into a fine enough rotational player on the back end of a rotation, but there are so many better players that went after Vavia and David Roddy like Christian Brown, Walker Kesler, and Andrew Nemhard. Then there was a draft trade between the Pelicans and the Grizzlies on the night of the 2021 draft. The Grizzlies took on some bad money from the Pelicans to move up from 17 to 10. Well, the Pelicans went down to 17 and they got Trey Murphy out of Virginia. The Grizzlies moved up to 10 to take Zyra Williams out of Stanford. I got to give this pick a D as well. Williams was a fine Brooklyn net last year, but did not work out of Memphis whatsoever. And lastly, we’re going to talk about the second overall pick in the 2019 draft, John. It’s an A+ and all NBA caliber point guard, all-star point guard, and is the franchise player over there in Memphis. One of the best point guards in the NBA when he’s healthy. But they drafted Gigi Jackson, Vince Williams, Jaylen Wells along the way in the second round, which are a lot better than some of these first round picks.