Zach Edey Breakout! Memphis Grizzlies Fantasy Outlook

Zach Edey Breakout! Memphis Grizzlies Fantasy Outlook

[Music] I think we’re at that point of the cold where I start to give up that I’ll ever be healthy again. And then usually by the day after that, I’m mostly better. Uh, apologies if I cough into the microphone. We’re going to get through this damn show. My voice at least is starting to sound I don’t know like sort of closer if a bit nasly. We’ll fart our way through. Hello everyone. It’s Old Man Squad Fantasy Basketball. I’m Dan Baspris. Today we’re talking Memphis Grizzlies on the podcast show. However you’re taking it in, make sure to hit that like button. If you’re watching on YouTube, subscribe. Dear God, please subscribe. However you’re taking in the content and let’s get cooking. We have really like four players on the Grizzlies that I think we definitely need to talk about on today’s show. Then there’s three more that I wanted to mention in kind of a lightning round fashion towards the end of the program. And for Memphis, it’s a year of change. You know, this is a team that had been playing well for a few seasons. They had high expectations and uh you know, they were fine. You know, they scored a lot. They played fast as hell and they went 48 and 34, but they just could never get over that hump of being a dangerous playoff team. And so, it’s kind of semi turn the page time. Not all the way, but the Memphis Grizzlies did get a massive haul for Desmond Bane this off seasonason, sending him to the Orlando Magic. Pick picks, picks, picks, picks as far as the I can see. They also got Contavius Caldwell Pope back in the deal, but not too concerned about that part of it. And now we have to figure out what this means for the Grizzlies going forward. Is is this a team that’s going to be fighting to make a bunch of noise again this year or was as it kind of seemed like at the time was the Desmond Bane trade the start of more stuff cuz it we haven’t seen much else from Memphis other than signing Tai Jerome which is not usually something you do if you’re about to throw in the towel. So, right now it seems like the Grizzlies are still intent on competing, but we’ll see if they make any other moves as we get this thing going. We’re going to get into the business today with a look at Jiren Jackson Jr. Trip JJ, however you want to refer to him, just Jiren if he’s your bud. Coming off a pretty good fantasy season this last year. He wasn’t amazing, but he certainly wasn’t bad. He was number 31 across nine category leagues. 22 points. That was a pretty good number for him. Five and a half rebounds. It’s just that’s just never going to be a thing. Two assists, 1.2 steals, 1.5 blocks on 4978 splits, which is all uh fairly repeatable numbers. The usage was down a little bit this year, but the efficiency was better specifically from the field. uh one would assume that at least some of that has to do with having John Moran back with him alongside him for the entirety of a season. So he wasn’t kind of the focal point of the offense. And then looking towards this coming year with no Desmond Bane and no nobody that you’d point to and say, “Oh, that’s the guy that’s definitely going to pick up all of the Desmond Bane usage,” you might start to wonder if perhaps there’s a little bit more that JJ could do. The big question on Jiren Jackson Jr. is how do the blocks look this coming year? Because they’ve been all over the map throughout his NBA career. They’ve always been good, but there were two seasons where they were very good and then hyper elite. What’s real is the question cuz he’s had multiple seasons now where he’s played around 28 29 minutes and actually last year it was at 32 where he’s averaged about one and a half 1.6 six are the two different block numbers per game. He had a season where he averaged 2.3. He had a season where he averaged three and they came back to back in there. So, it started to look like, oh, this is a guy that’s figured out how to stay on the floor without fouling and block two shots per game. I just don’t think that we can say that’s the expectation anymore. So, if you’re drafting Jiren Jackson, you’re probably drafting him with an eye on what happened last year, which is 20, like we said, 20 basically 22 six and two. Good numbers, decent enough percentages, not great for a power forward, but not bad certainly either. Two three-pointers is useful again out of a power forward/c center. And then obviously very good combined defensive stats, but not where it was a few seasons back when it looked like he could be sort of a borderline firstrounder. That said, he probably now gets drafted where he belongs, which is a third rounder, Jiren Jack. And that’s where I think that’s where he went this past season as well. And I think that’s fair. Like I don’t know that we need to do a deep dive on him because what you saw last season is probably something like a reasonable factimile of what you’re expecting to get this coming year. Also, he played 74 games. That was despite actually not coming into the season at full health. The hope of course is that he comes into this season at full health and so you know maybe that’s going to be a super healthy year. This actually last season was a pretty healthy year as well. I don’t know that you can specifically say this is a durable dude cuz his games played have kind of bounced around based on larger injuries and what those have done to him. But when he hasn’t had the big injury, he’s been pretty good. That of course is like two two and a half of his NBA seasons. Not a lot of them, but he has done it a couple of times. So, Jiren Jackson, you are basically the first center in the Jared Allen corridor. He’s got that high floor cuz the blocks are probably not going to drop below one and a half and the steels are probably not going to drop below.9 or one and there’s going to be scoring and there’s going to be threes and so again, that sort of preserves the floor for him, but the ceiling is probably not, you know, late first, early second anymore. Unless all of a sudden he explodes and has a two and a half block season on top of all this other stuff. That is where the upside lies and that’s why I’m okay with drafting him near the third round. Friends Bet Online continues to be your number one source for sports betting action with baseball in full swing. Football around the corner, UFC going whenever it is that UFC goes. I can’t pretend to actually know. Tennis is basically happening all the time as is soccer. You got WNBA. You got international basketball as well. Bet Online has more ways to stay in on the action with the latest sports betting info, odds, news, scores, and of course, even live iname betting. And of course, in between bet online action, head to the bet online casino where you can play the top Vegas style games available, including poker, a live casino, and blackjack. Head to the website today. Take advantage of the industryleading bet online VIP program with level up bonuses and weekly cash boosts. Bet online. The game starts here. Let’s talk John. Yeah. Okay. We’re going to talk John, who is a multi-season points league darling, but a multi-season nine category mega overdraft. Luckily, a lot of you play eight C category leagues and in those, at least from a per game standpoint, John Morant was number 50 last year. Nine cat, he was down around the edge of the top 100. He was like around number 90. That’s those 3.7 turnovers hard at work. Also, to Jaw’s credit, free throws are no longer a weakness for him. They were the first uh first four seasons of his NBA career. Uh this past year he was up to 82 and a half% at the foul line. That’s good. So where you could point and say this dude was only draftable in points leagues, he has pushed his way now to a guy that you can draft in eight category leagues as well. That is progress. He’s still not a good field goal percent guy. He still doesn’t hit that many three-pointers and he certainly doesn’t shoot them at a particularly good clip. So, you can kind of understand why he’s under two three-pointers a game while jacking up a lot of shots from that point guard spot. But more than anything else, there’s plenty of stuff you could point out with John Morand and say this, like look at these great numbers. He’s a mid20s points per game guy. He’s somewhere between seven and eight and a half assists per game. He’s at a steel or more. This last year was at 1.2. He rebounds not all that well this last year, but relatively well for a point guard typically where he’s been throughout his career more like a high fours to low fives rebound per game guy. And now he’s fixed his free throw stroke. So all these things, yes, they’re good, but John Moran has never Well, we’ll give him a little bit of credit. He has basically never stayed healthy in an NBA season. his rookie year, which was uh COVID season. God help us all. He played in 67 out of 72 games. That’s good enough. Only five games missed. We’ll take it. Co year number two, he missed nine, which again sort of acceptable, but trending the wrong way. And then the last four years, he’s missed 25, 21, 73, and 32 games. He just hasn’t been close. The minutes per game tell the entire story. His first two seasons in the NBA, he played almost 2100 minutes. That dropped to 1,900. I mean, COVID was remember those seasons were shortened. Then he was at 1,900 again, then 300, and this year he was at 1500. So, like, it’s just not it’s just not a thing, man. He’s not a healthy basketball player. The way he plays, we could point to that and say, well, you know, he’s flying through the air too high and he’s putting too much stress on his body. whatever it is. I’m, you know, I’m not a doctor. He’s not able to stay on the court. Suspension, no suspension, health, no health, whatever. He’s not able to stay on the court. And so, it makes him an extraordinarily difficult player to draft regardless of format. And I get it. If you’re looking at John Marant and you’re playing in a points league and he’s there at, you know, pick 50 something, historically he’s been a top 40 points league guy. This last year he was in the in the 40s because again the free throw actually got better and the scoring got worse. So for points leaguers you were not all that thrilled about this last year. For category league guys you were probably like good finally. Funny the different styles of fantasy basketball. Uh but again, only 50 ball games. So John Morant is going to get drafted. I mean, he always gets drafted in the 40 range or higher. I like it almost doesn’t matter what he’s done year over year over year. He’s gonna go in the third, fourth round range and maybe in some very sharp nine cat roto leagues he’ll fall into the fifth round, but someone’s going to take him because he’s a 25 and seven guy and we can just sort of close our eyes to all the other stuff. I don’t even care about the the stat set thing anymore. It’s all about health for me now. I’ve talked so much on this podcast about how you must start your team in a safe way. John Morant is almost like the polar opposite of that. Not only does he have sort of goofy stat set stuff that makes it very hard for him to get inside the top 50 in straight nine category leagues, again, eight cat is a different monster, but he can’t stay on the floor. So, if you’re drafting him at 40 or whatever where he probably is going to go again this year and you’re in a nine category league, you need a lot of crap to break your way. Ninecat, I would probably take him in the 70s and I know he’s not going to fall that far, but that’s where I would take him. And you’re like, Dan, that’s 20 slots higher than he finished in ninecat. Yeah, because turnovers is the big one. And you know, if you draft like I draft, you’re probably going to end up with a lower turnover guy in the second, third, or fourth round, meaning you have room for a higher turnover guy later if you want. Eight category leagues, it’s that same. This is the harder dilemma, I think, because nine catties is just not going to fall as far as you’d want him to. Eight category leagues, he will fall fall to where you are basically going to have to consider him. And I would just humbly ask that you go another direction. Could he play 70 games this year? Absolutely. This might be the season where Jaw gets it back into shape and the health is better and all that good stuff. But he hasn’t shown the ability over four seasons now to do it. So, he’s going to have to prove to me that he can before I’m willing to believe that he can. Let’s talk about a couple of guys that might fly a little bit under the radar. The first of them is Zack Edy, who we talked a lot about going into last year because we always try to look at rookie big men and there’s nobody bigger. Ed’s 74305. He is a big Canadian and he had a little bit of a mixed year. You know, overall the rank is not going to look like what you’d want it to, but you have to look at the trend line for the season. Ed was number 134 in nine category leagues on averages of nine and eight with 1.3 blocks, good field goal percent, not a terrible free throw percent, but just sort of like didn’t quite do enough to be fantasy relevant. Second half of the year, he was about 20 slots higher. He was at nine and nine with slightly better free throw percent and that pushed him up 20 slots. Second half of the year, he played about 40 games. Final two months of the year, his rank actually slipped a little bit, but not for anything that he did particularly wrong. In fact, he was at 9 and 9 and a half with 1.9 combined defensive stats. The field goal percent was a little bit lower. The free throw was actually still fine. That’s the last 25 games of the year. Last 134 games, his minutes went up 1-2. He was at 9 1/2 and 10 12 with 2.1 combined defensive stats, 5974 splits, and he was number 78. This is in 24 minutes a game. You’re seeing the pattern here. Final 10 games of the year, he played 26 minutes a game, he was at 10 and 12 with 2.2 combined defensive stats, and he was number 70. Should we do we need to keep going? You guys get the idea. final seven games. Screw it. Let’s do one more. He was at nine and 14. His rank went down because his free throw number was just not as good over those seven ball games. But again, 9 and 14. I don’t think we need to do just the last week, but if you wanted to look at it, he was at 11 and 15 with 2.6 combined defensive stats playing full starters minutes. Do I think Zack Edy comes in and plays 31 minutes a game this year? I do not. I do not uh because you know that was end of season goofballery which happens all the time everywhere forever. Uh Grizzlies in terms of like who they have at the center spot. JJ will play some center minutes. They brought in Jock Landale but he’s not going to take minutes away uh from Zack Edy. Brandon Clark can also kind of come in there for a little high-fly stuff every once in a while. Ed’s the center and I think if you’re looking at like expectations that final month of the year when he played about 25 minutes a game and he was a top 80 player that to me is I would think the expectation I don’t want to call it the floor cuz anything can happen and things can go terribly wrong but it’s not that far away from the floor for ED this year is like 80 to 100 range. So, with that in mind, and we we’ve talked about this a lot, and we’ll talk about it more during fantasy draft season, I like to picture when I’m drafting a player, a bar, a horizontal bar in the sky. Join me, if you will, on this magical adventure. A horizontal bar numbered, and I forget if the YouTube video reverses me, but I’ll I’ll just do it, you know, one through 150 or something like that. I think the YouTube bar does reverse me, so I’ll try to I’ll try to go backwards for you guys. And on that bar, this is representing rank, by the way, if you guys weren’t following along already. You put a player’s draft value, their ADP, their pre-rank, whatever you want to call it, and then just put a marker basically on this bar in the sky that indicates their floor and their ceiling and figure out how that fits around where they’re being drafted. I don’t know where Ed’s going to get drafted this year, but I’d be pretty surprised if he opened up as anything higher than like a top 85 to 90 type of pick because again, for the entire season last year, he was outside the top 100. He was number 134. But that was because for the first four months, he was playing 18, 19, 20 minutes a game. And only really for the last month was he getting truly consistent minutes. And I frankly don’t know how many people were watching the Grizzlies over the last month because even when he was playing and I mean we’re talking about the last three or four games where he started putting up goaudy rebounding numbers, people are not that excited about a center going for 9 and 11 with, you know, one to one and a half blocks and okay percentages. that doesn’t move the needle for a lot of fantasy players, even if it translates really nicely and gave us an indicator of what he could do if opportunity got bigger. I’m not here to tell you that opportunity is definitely getting bigger. I am here to tell you that it could. And that’s why you have that blue marker bar drawn on the ADP bar in the sky, which is okay. Let’s say he only does get 22 23 minutes. Again, he’s a top 115 120 kind of fantasy play. Yeah. Wampmp wamp kind of thing. You could you could play that all year if you wanted to. But what if he gets 24? Okay, now he’s a top 90 guy. What if he gets 25? He’s top 75. What if he gets 26, 27? This is how I mean this is a little bit of the Avita Zubots theory from last year. Although part of the zoo handicap was being a pick and roll partner with James Harden all the time. That maybe that’s part of it with Edy. We know the Grizzlies incorporated more pick and roll once they made their coaching shifts midseason. So I’m relatively high on Zack Edy this year. I again I don’t know where he’s gonna go and I’m frankly pretty worried that he’s gonna open up as like a you know top 105. I don’t say top 105. I mean I don’t need the word top in there. I’m a little worried he’s going to open up as like a pre-rank of 105 and then analysts such as myself are going to be like oo this is amazing and then on the next board he’s going to be like number 70. So let’s keep an eye on it. Let’s see where he bounces around. But I do think that this is a center who has uh sort of a top 50 kind of high gear, but the free throws are going to have to be more consistent and a lot of things are going to have to break right. But I’m into it. I’m I’m very much into the Zach Edventure this year and uh I I don’t think that much is going to push me off of that. The last big name I wanted to talk about in Memphis is Santi Alama who signed a contract extension this off season. And even though it kind of seemed like the team didn’t like him that much, it does feel like they’ve now invested in him. And with Desmond Bane gone, they almost have no choice but to give him a whole bunch of stuff to do. Aldama got off to a really good start this past year. We knew it was kind of a mirage because he was shooting like 54% from the field and he’s never been anywhere near that. Down the stretch last year he was playing 28 minutes a game. He was only getting 9 and a half to 10 shots per game and that got him around the, you know, 145 150 range in nine cat because he’s not a good field goal percent guy. He’s not a good free throw percent guy and it’s hard to do enough counting stuff. He kind of has to like turn himself into PJ Washington because you’re not going to be good at either percentage. And he was not awful at field goal percent. He ended up at 48 over the entire year. But like you need to be very good at defensive stats and rebounding and scoring and assists if you’re not going to be good at any of the percentages and that’s what’s going to hold Aldama down. However, however, if we can get an Aldama that’s taking like cuz in the entire year he took about 10 shots per game and that got him to the 115 n category rank range. Another shot, you know, 11 11 and a half shots per game. He probably does squeeze himself inside the top 100. And so where with Ed, I think you’re going to have to spend a little bit more draft capital to get him. I don’t think Aldama is going to get drafted particularly early. He strikes me as like a maybe a a second tier flyer type that’ll go, you know, one somewhere in the 110 to 130 range. I don’t know exactly where yet. The beginning of that range is usually where you’re attacking your best flyers. And I don’t think that Aldama falls into that category, but the middle of that range is where you start to get into kind of the next tier. And there is, again, you’re like, you’re looking for the the guy that might pop off. Do you want to draft a guy at 120 who has a ceiling of 100 but a floor of like 130 and you can just plot them along all year or do you ought to take a shot on a guy like Santi Alama who’s let us down many many times but Desmond Bane took 15 shots a game last year and Tai Jerome is not going to take 15 shots a game coming in for him. It’s going to get split up a little bit, but like what if Aldama takes two of that of those Desmond Bane shots? What if he gets to play 27, 28, 29 minutes a game instead of 25 or 26? What if 10 shots becomes 12, so scoring goes up to 15? What if the minutes go up by two or three a game, so the rebounds get into the sevens? What if the assists get into the threes? What if the three-pointers get up to two? What if the Steels get up to one? Now you’re talking about a guy who’s doing enough in the counting stuff where we can kind of ignore the fact that he’s a bad foul shooter. Going to take that many anyway, and the turnovers are low and the field goal percent maybe will be serviceable again this coming year. And those numbers are pretty well inside the top 100. 157 and three with a steel, two three-pointers, and like an okay field goal percent. Yeah, I mean that’s probably a top 80 kind of guy. So if I think someone has top 80 potential, I’m willing to draft them in the 120s even knowing that it might not hit. You know, it’s a lower probability one, but again, you’re hunting for some kind of upside. That first tier of flyers, you’re hunting for guys that you think could go top 60 or better. That second tier, you got to be a little bit more I don’t know. Uh, you set your expectations a little bit better. So, speaking of Ty Jerome, there are three guys on the Grizzlies that I want to talk about at kind of the tail end of the show here. Ty Jerome is one of them. Scottie Pippen Jr. is another, and Kavius Caldwell Pope is the third. And so we’re gonna start with KCP because he’s going to come in and he’s going to do the same KCP crap that he’s done for a million years where every once in a while he’ll go on a steals and three-pointers barrage and during that twoe run he’ll be fantasy startable but for the entire year he likely won’t be. You do not need to draft Contavius Caldwell Pope. Scottie Pippen Jr. is intriguing if he gets a starting nod and even then he’s going to probably get overdrafted. Scotty Pitman Jr. played 21 minutes a game this last year. He was number 161. You can look at all kinds of different alignments on like can we find a way to get him inside the top 100 over a particular stretch of time. The way that that works was when John Morant was out because then he would get six assists a game and he was a decent field goal percent guy even if the free throws were not all that terrific. Good steals from Scottie Pippen Jr. It’s hard for me to see a path for him to get inside the top 100 if John is there. But also, you know, I don’t want to completely write it off. My expectation though is that KCP is going to take Desmond Bane’s starting job. And so the starters will likely be uh KCP, John, Zack Edy, Jiren Jackson Jr., and kind of doesn’t matter. Maybe Aldama, maybe Jaylen Wells. I think he got to he racked up a bunch of starts this last year. Maybe Vince Williams Jr. Uh maybe Scottie Pippen, maybe Ty Jerome, but the fact that we don’t know and the fact that even if it was one of those guys, there’s no guarantee that that dude any of those dudes plays more than 23 24 minutes game makes me think that unfortunately, as much as I’d love to tell you to go draft Scotty Pippen Jr., I don’t think the minutes are going to be consistent enough. you’re probably going to be see something more in like the I mean you’re looking at the game log here on on uh the YouTube feed like he had 18 17 23 27 John Morant was out for some of those ball games. I don’t think there’s any way to know how many minutes he’s going to play. And then Ty Jerome to his credit he did a lot with a little with the Cavaliers last year. Um and there were there were a lot of fantasy websites. No, you know what? There weren’t that many. There were a couple of fantasy websites that were telling you you had to hold on to them all season long. He was like the definition of the totals value at the end of the year is going to look like he was fantasy relevant all season cuz he was number 91 by totals while shooting 52% from the field and 87% at the foul line. Like that was good. But if you’re looking at the per game side, he was number 125. He was relatively durable. Not amazing, but relatively. and he just sort of acrudeed stats over the entirety of the year doing more of his damage when either Donovan Mitchell or Darius Garland was out in Cleveland. And that probably falls into a similar bucket in Memphis where he’s probably like a top 150 guy when the Grizzlies are fully healthy. But if John Maran misses a game or honestly if any of the scorers miss a game, that’s where maybe you see the minutes jump from 20 up to 25 for a couple of days and that’s when Ty Jerome was more like a top 100 guy. So, uh, burger board play on Tai Jerome, probably also a burger board play on Scottie Pippen Jr. That one to me is more directly tied to John Morant because when he’s out then they’re going to want a point guard to come in and point guard up a game where Ty Jerome is more of a scoring tried not to cough into the microphone more of a scoring guard. Um, even if he’s like kind of point guard size, maybe a little bit bigger than an average point guard, he’s not a true assists guy the way that Scottie Pippen Jr. is more of a assists type, you know, pass first, not going to jack up shots sort of point guard. So, Scotty Pippen Jr., Ty Jerome probably burger board plays. We’ll have to figure out exactly how that fits. K uh KCP more of a like play him while he’s hot kind of dude and probably even more so on the head-to-head side because then at least you’re not punished if you play him and he has a bad ball game. Roto, you don’t want to use up a games cap on KCP. And that I think wraps up your Memphis Grizzlies. Thanks so much for watching everybody. Going to try to get a show in tomorrow uh because we skipped Monday of this week. My kid got sent home from camp early for misbehaving, so we didn’t get a chance to do a show. So, I’m trying to get four in this week. Uh, pray for little Theodore to make it through a week of camp. And, uh, we’ll wrap up the Southwest Division tomorrow if time allows. Happy end of July, everyone. Like, rate, and subscribe. I’m Dan. Find me on social. See you guys later.

We saw the signs late last year: Zach Edey is ready to bust loose. Is this the year and how high should we draft him? Plus, who takes over for the traded Desmond Bane?

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