Herrington: What the Grizzlies’ trade offer to Brooklyn says about this season
Despite online rumors, the Memphis Grizzlies did not make a trade on Sunday. Instead, Brooklyn Nets' Dorian Finney-Smith will go to the Lakers. Finney-Smith plays during an Emirates NBA Cup basketball game, Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, in Philadelphia. (Matt Slocum/AP Photo file)
On Sunday afternoon, the Memphis Grizzlies did not make a trade.
Normally, this wouldn’t be newsworthy. Most days of the year, the Grizzlies do not make a trade.
But this was different: A trade happened — the Brooklyn Nets sending forward Dorian Finney-Smith to the Los Angeles Lakers — and we got an unusual amount of immediate reporting about a competing offer from the Grizzlies.
As apparently first reported by veteran NBA writer Marc Stein on his Substack site and subsequently corroborated by multiple other sources, the Grizzlies offered Luke Kennard, John Konchar and a protected 2025 first-round pick to the Nets for Finney-Smith and their 2025 second-round pick.
If this sounds familiar, you may have seen this scenario presented in my initial Grizzlies trade-market preview column a couple of weeks ago, where Finney-Smith was one of four potential targets featured.
It was perhaps the most obvious potential deal on the board.
The Nets instead chose the Lakers’ offer of guard D’Angelo Russell and three future second-round picks, with an exchange of low-contract guards (Maxwell Lewis for Shake Milton) also part of the deal.
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Grizzles basketball Los Angeles Lakers Dorian Finney-Smith Subscriber OnlyAre you enjoying your subscription?
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Chris Herrington
Chris Herrington has covered the Memphis Grizzlies, in one way or another, since the franchise’s second season in Memphis, while also writing about music, movies, food and civic life. As far as he knows, he’s the only member of the Professional Basketball Writers Association who is also a member of a film critics group and has also voted in national music critic polls for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice (RIP). He and his wife have two kids and, for reasons that sometimes elude him, three dogs.
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