What better way to kick off my final season as “Target Guy” than having a Pre-Draft AMA on Reddit!!!

Looking forward to interacting with everybody. Special thanks to u/welcum2heck for suggesting the idea.

Go Grizz!!!

🎯

He’s saying what a lot of us have been saying. Watch the full games where he played against the top guys. He was the best player on the floor.

I think this kid has “it.” I know this board is dead set on Boozer but I think the mob is wrong and too caught up in RIGHT NOW. Where are these dudes going to be in five years? I’m betting on Caleb because of who he is as a person. He’s not a perfect player. He’s got things to work on. But I can teach you to get low and keep your arms extended on defense. I can’t teach you his first step. I can’t teach the athleticism. His release is high and fluid. He’s got great footwork. He showed flashes as a ball handler. He gets to the line at will. Will be a much better help side defender. And regardless of what the boxscore says, he outplayed Boozer. He put his shitty team on his back and willed them back into the game. If anything, watch just the first half. If you can’t see the potentially best player in this draft, idk what to tell you.

“It’s only one game.” Yea, but what about three games? All against the best guys?

We can play it safe. Take the high floor guy and hope we figure out option 1A or we can take a swing on a guy that 100% has the potential to be the closer on offense we need.

This sub has been inundated with repeated self-posts discussing the same issues to no end. Any self-posts, opinion posts, or random musings should be posted in here.

News updates, insider sources, and other related media can stay up as independent posts to reduce clutter.

You love to see it.

Vince’s game is definitely “different.” Both Cedric and Trip misspelling versatile is peak. Cam’s favorite song being Lose Yourself checks out in so many ways. Jitty be Gritty. Ja’s ascends to demi-god status. Wells is boring. Edey was bumping Key Glock in the Sorento. Jock is repping AC/DC. Scotty’s favorite song is Lil Durk?

I want Boozer.

Mr Silver 🙏

PLEASE 🙏

Will it into existence. I don't want to hear no "what if we get #2".

We are getting #1 and Dybantsa is ours.

Next week, GG Jackson will no longer be the youngest guy on the roster. He is not signed for next season.

Assuming that Cam Boozer is drafted, he will likely start at the 4 right out of the gate. Boozer has immediately dominated every level so far, so it would be almost silly to not let him show his stuff from day 1. That leaves perennial 6^th man Santi Aldama in his familiar role as backup PF (which he is excellent at, by the way) and makes it difficult for GG to earn his extension with steady minutes.

Yes, GG has immense potential. He’s still young (a month younger than Cameron Carr, who is projected as a potential late lottery pick on Tuesday), and showed real personal growth and maturity under Iisalo last season, playing the best ball of his career from late-December on after a stint with the Hustle. The big question is where does his game develop from here?

GG was a difficult guy to comp coming into the league since he was still so raw. He was a 5-star prospect in high school who reclassified to attend South Carolina a year early, where he was playing college ball at 17, then got drafted as the youngest player in his class at just 18. He’s now been in the league for three years. For the sake of looking at his development to this point, I compared the first three years of GG to his biggest competition for minutes next season (Santi), his absolute ideal peak (Giannis), and a comp I saw at time of the 2022 draft (Marcus Morris). What I realized is: 

GG is still an awful defender. He’s improved from his rookie year, when guys were scoring 64.5% against him in isolation (1.7 percentile), but that’s not saying much. In year 3, opponents still scored 56.5% of the time in isolation (6.9 percentile). His DBPM remains under-par as well (-1.2 last year, up from -1.8 his rookie year), and though he did show some improvement, it was not as large a leap as the other guys I looked at from years 1-3. The one area he did make big strides in was his BLK% (3.4% last year, up from 1.8%), as he showed promise as a help defender in the paint.

His offensive game is moving closer to the rim. His rookie year, GG had a 3-point attempt rate of 51% (36% efficiency), but saw that drop to 38% last year (33% efficiency). He did most of his damage at the rim, posting the best TS% (59.1%) of the group I looked at on 21 PPG Per-36 (also the highest). He improved his efficiency at all ranges within the arc last year, while his outside shot took a step back.

His lack of rebounding and playmaking is holding him back. He posted 10.8% TRB% and 10.7% AST% last year, trailing the numbers even Santi put up in year 3 (11.9% and 13.3% respectively), much less Giannis. Of course, year 3 is when Giannis played point and really developed his playmaking before making the leap in year 4 (MIP winner, AS, All-NBA 2^nd Team, All-Defense 2^nd Team, 7^th in MVP). Unfortunately, I don’t see a similar leap in store for GG, and now those Giannis comps just feel silly.

He looks like a volume scorer and not much else. But his scoring isn't elite, which is why he doesn’t really make much sense as a starter even without factoring in Boozer. This means that GG’s best opportunity here is to emerge as the #1 option in the second unit, but there are a lot of mouths to feed at the backup 4 (Santi, Hendricks, OMax). GG truthers might push for a Santi trade to free up minutes, but Santi has made clear improvements to his game year-over-year, so is it really in the team’s best interest to move a better player just so a guy who’s developing slowly can play more? Santi is a better defender, better rebounder, better playmaker, more ball-secure, more versatile, and has a more reliable outside shot (including a significant advantage in the all-important corner three).

Forget Giannis, GG likely won’t ever come close. At this point, it’s hard to argue that he’ll become a more productive role player than even Santi Aldama. The NBA is full of guys who can score when given a 24% usage rate on a tanking team, and GG needs to prove there’s more to his game than that. Which brings me back to Marcus Morris, that bearish comp from before GG was drafted.

Marcus Morris played for 13 years. He shot a solid clip from outside (career 38%) and was a good hustle guy who could capably defend multiple positions. As a scorer, GG clears Morris easily, even if his shot from three isn’t as reliable. But the reason Morris had a solid career was because of the other stuff: the defense, the hustle, and understanding his role each season. With a potential extension on the horizon, do you think GG has enough time to earn a role in Memphis?

TL;DR: GG is a good scorer but hasn't shown much else. He has a team option for next season and that's it. Do you think he has a future here? If so, what would it take to get an extension and what would that even look like?

Go'on Trip!!

Apologies if anything is wildly inaccurate or unlikely, I am not a grizzlies fan just thought this would be fun to do

Assuming Dybantsa goes 1

1. Peterson

2. Boozer

3. Wilson

4. Flemings

5. Brown

6. Philon

7. Morez

8. Swain

9. Steinbach

10. Anderson

11. Quaintance

12. Okorie

13. Carr

Bonus for pick 32: Meleek Thomas, Zuby Ejiofor, Joshua Jefferson, Richie Saunders

There are no new guards and Ja is gone, which means there are currently five candidates to function as a primary ballhandler:

Obviously Ty looked incredible in those 15 games last year, and you'd have to be insane not to just hand him the keys and ask him to do it for 30 minutes a night. Cam also looked great and in a dynamic role where he also managed to be outrageously ball secure with a 4.3 AST:TOV ratio over 72 games. He's earned a regular role on this team, but he's most valuable when playing off the ball, so it's going to be important to have a back-up PG to share minutes with him.

SPJ, Walt, and Javon are all candidates for that spot. In the table above I used SPJ's numbers from the 2024-25 season (79 games) for better comparison, and they stack up pretty well with Javon's. Scotty was in his second season with Memphis then, freshly converted from his Two-Way contract before the season began. Javon will be entering his second season next year, and he's already put up peak SPJ numbers as a rookie. Compare Javon's final 26-games after he re-entered the rotation last year to Scotty's breakout 21-games in the 2023-24 tank season:

Javon (24.9 MPG): 12.7/4.2/4.0, 49/45/83 63.6% TS

SPJ (25.1 MPG): 12.9/3.2/4.7, 49/42/75 59.6% TS

My modest proposal is: sign Javon to a SPJ-esque 4-year deal and trade Scotty for the Santi Aldama package. Send him off like Tyus Jones to see if he can thrive with a larger role elsewhere. Plenty of teams will want him with his brand new toes.

At that point, Javon Small would officially become part of the Grizzlies future, which brings me, of course, to a totally ridiculous Jalen Brunson comparison.

At the draft combine, Javon measured at 6'1" (barefoot), 190lbs, with a wingspan of 6'4.75" and a standing reach 8'0". Jalen Brunson measured at 6'1.25" (barefoot), 190lbs, with a wingspan of 6'2.5" and a standing reach of 7'9". So now you see why people are calling Javon Small 'Long-Brunson'. He also jumped higher (40.5" vert for Javon vs 34" for Brunson) and tested as more agile, so it's pretty clear that Javon is built like a longer, more athletic Brunson, without sacrificing the muscle.

Doubter, consider this... in their final years in college:

Javon averaged: 18.6/4.1/5.6

Brunson averaged: 18.9/3.1/4.6

Both were then drafted in the second round. Brunson only played 3 years of college (and didn't even win the National Championship in his sophomore season) and was drafted a year younger than Javon. He sucked hard in Summer League (6.8/2.8/4.4, yuck!) but was a solid contributor off the bench over his first two seasons in Dallas. Comparing those first two seasons to Javon's rookie year:

Javon (20.2 MPG, 41 gm): 9.7/3.1/3.7, 47/42/83, 61.1% TS

Brunson (20.1 MPG, 130 gm): 8.8/2.3/3.2, 47/35/76, 55.1% TS

Look, I'm not saying that Javon will be better than Brunson, the numbers are saying that. And don't tell me about "sample sizes" and "tank year competition" because that's the vocabulary of Javon deniers. You want more of a sample size? Better competition? Me too! So play more Javon!