With the dust settling from Thursday night’s NBA draft, let’s sift through the remains of the day:

We had it half right?

For all the surprise of the Grizzlies’ selection of Ziaire Williams, in retrospect we had a pretty good notion of their guiding principle, just not the specifics. All week, my elevator pitch of what I thought they were doing was that they were “trying to get the highest upside player they can who fits with Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr., both on the floor and on their timeline.” Simpler version: The best young wing available.

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That was in fact what they were doing and this was actually well understood. I also think that, despite the usual “we got our guy” post-draft proclamations from Grizzlies decision-makers, observers were correct in concluding that the team’s move up to No. 10 wasn’t about a single player but rather some universe of acceptable options.

What absolutely no one outside the Grizzlies war room knew: The composition and order of that universe of players, and that not only was Williams in it, but likely toward the top of the list. 

Speaking of that war room, there has been some post-draft suggestion that team vice president Tayshaun Prince had a heavy influence on the selection. In an earlier era of Grizzlies hoops, parsing the often competing influences of different front office figures was a kind of sport. In these more buttoned-up days, when basketball ops honcho Zach Kleiman is both final decision-maker and avatar for his larger staff, there’s much less of that. But I see no reason to doubt that the quiet, highly regarded Prince wields plenty of appropriate influence on player evaluation, here and elsewhere. 

Back to where he once belonged

A year ago, Williams was projected to be a top-10 pick in the 2021 NBA draft. Moses Moody and James Bouknight, whom the Grizzlies bypassed to pick Williams, were not. Fast-forward through a full college basketball season and endless mock drafts and rumors and, hey, look at that: Williams wound up being a top-10 pick in the 2021 draft and Moody and Bouknight did not. If you conclude, as the Grizzlies apparently did, that Williams’ misbegotten college season was worth mostly ignoring, then this was not a surprising pick. Time will tell if the team was correct in that approach.

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Williams pick reactions

Some post-draft media reactions to the Williams pick:

From ESPN’s Jonathan Givony: “Ziaire Williams started the season projected as a top-5 pick but saw his stock drop after a disappointing, disjointed campaign at Stanford. He was able to rebound from that in the pre-draft process by showing his significant talent in workouts, and measuring a hair under 6-foot-10 in shoes, giving him tremendous size to go along with elite-level shot-making prowess. The Grizzlies are betting that Williams' projection in the NBA is closer to that of what we saw in high school compared to the version at Stanford.” 

From The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie: “There is some legitimate All-Star upside here, and he flashed it at times this past year in a significant way. But if he doesn’t have the ability to get stronger with what looks to be a frame on the slighter side, and the shooting merely translates to ‘good,’ and he continues to struggle to shoot it off the catch, there are some worlds where Williams ends up out of the NBA within five years.”

From The Athletic’s John Hollinger: “Williams had an awful year at Stanford but his size and potential still had a lot of teams in the teens interested; I wasn’t as blown away but the Grizzlies did have a need for more size on the wing.” 

NBA draft: Grizzlies pick Ziaire Williams at No. 10

From The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor: “This is the first reach in years from the Grizzlies, and maybe the first pick of theirs I’ve disagreed with in recent memory. Memphis traded up to No. 10 to take Williams, who was a top high school recruit, but had ups and downs during his freshman season at Stanford. Anyone with his size, score, and fluidity has a chance to become a long-term success, but he’s still very raw at this stage of his career. He is a good positional fit next to Ja Morant, but his selection provides more questions than answers.” 

The Aldama plan?

There was something going on here but we don’t know quite what it is. The Grizzlies’ trade-up pick at No. 30, Santi Aldama didn’t really participate in pre-draft activities, with the league or teams. There was some speculation that the Oklahoma City Thunder were responsible for shutting him down with the intent of taking him in the second round and the Grizzlies jumped ahead to steal him. There was somewhat differing speculation that it was the Grizzlies who shut Aldama down, with the intent of taking him in the second round, but had to jump up to 30 when they found out the Thunder planned to steal him. 

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Regardless, Aldama probably wasn’t quite as out of left field as it seemed. As I noted on the afternoon of the draft, in speculating about potential Grizzlies options at No. 40, Hollinger had given Aldama a first-round ranking and both Vecenie and ESPN’s Kevin Pelton had him ranked among the draft’s top 40 prospects. 

Will Aldama be on the roster next season or will the Spanish forward head back overseas to marinate at least another season? That still seems undetermined. First-round selections come with two guaranteed seasons, but that contract doesn’t have to begin next season if the parties agree to wait. 

Right now, it’s hard to imagine more than one of Jontay Porter, incumbent G Leaguer Killian Tillie and Aldama all on the same 15-man Grizzlies roster next season. The assumption here is that Porter will be gone, with Tillie and Aldama, both essentially “stretch” bigs, in the mix for one spot. 

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The rest of the West

The big move in the West on Thursday didn’t happen in the draft, but via trade, with the Los Angeles Lakers sending out three good rotation players (Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) for former MVP Russell Westbrook.

Remember, as part of Monday’s trade agreement with New Orleans, the Grizzlies will be receiving the Lakers’ 2022 first-round pick as long as it isn’t in the top 10. Obviously, the Lakers made this deal to raise their championship ceiling. But the regular season is what will determine where their pick — now likely the Grizzlies’ pick — falls. Will this make them better or worse in the regular season, where it could take time to build chemistry and where a lack of depth could make them more susceptible to injury-related struggles? 

Elsewhere, there were no big deals for the Portland Trail Blazers, who appear to still be in a holding pattern. With Josh Primo, the youngest player in the draft, coming in and free agent DeMar DeRozan likely going out, the San Antonio Spurs seem likely to be taking a step back next season.

The Sacramento Kings spent a lottery pick on what will almost certainly be a backup guard (Davion Mitchell) and then publicly failed to trade away sharpshooter Buddy Hield, who presumably will be moved in the coming weeks. Interestingly, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported Friday morning that prior to their deal with New Orleans, the Grizzlies had been in heavy talks to send center Jonas Valanciunas to the Kings while trading up from No. 17 to No. 9. (I didn’t see Valanciunas to New Orleans coming, but had speculated about the Grizzlies sending him to center-needy Sacramento.) The Golden State Warriors are presumably still eyeing the trade market, despite adding two lottery picks on Thursday night. 

Next week’s free agency should further clarify the projected West pecking order. Draft night didn’t seem to shift it much.