Grading the Josh Smith Signing

By Chip, Josh and Kirk

Or how does this move by the Grizzlies help the team in the 3 Year Plan?

Michael Heisley said after the big trade to acquire O.J. Mayo back in late June that all moves by the Grizzlies from this point forward should be viewed in regards to the Grizzlies established Three Year Plan (TYP). Since then the team has signed Marc Gasol to a 3 year contract for a relatively small amount of money. That move clearly sits well in regards to a 3 year plan. They have been rumored to be involved in trade discussions with Orlando, New York, Atlanta, New Jersey and a host of other teams but nothing has come of those rumors as of yet.

Then there was the one definitive move of signing Josh Smith, an unrestricted free agent of the Altanta Hawks to a 5 year deal for a reported $58 million. Once the Hawks received the offer they immediately matched the offer and therefore locked up Josh Smith with the team for at least one year. How should fans judge this move in regards to the TYP?

3 Shades of Blue asked this question to each of our writers. Only three responded which should give you an idea of how much editorial clout people have on this site. So in opposite order of seniority here are thier opinions.

Kirk:
Well, in my honest and humble opinion, losing Josh Smith hurt, but we were all aware from the first moment that Atlanta would match the offer sheet we signed him to. Signing Josh Smith would have been fantastic for both the team and the franchise in general, but with the low ball offer we gave him, we all knew it was nothing but a pipedream at best. Josh Smith would have given us the athletic 4 we have been so desperately needing, as well as given Rudy an upcoming star to be paired with. If Conley and Mayo develop the way they should, and according to plan, then you would have an extremely formidable 1-4 that could compete with any other in the league. Then you could plug any stiff you deem appropriate at the 5 spot, and his assignment should be nothing more than shot blocking, setting picks, and clogging the lane.

Honestly, not signing Josh Smith really has no effect on the "3 year plan", because according to it, we are trying to build a team that can compete by that time. We still have 3 years left.... I will reserve judgement till after the offseaon following this basketball season, and see if the team has improved both on the court, and on paper as well. Who knows, with another strong draft and sound decisions in free agency, we truly could have the type of team Mr. Heisley is hoping for.

All I can say is the kool-aid sure is delicious, so we should all start drinking it.

Chip Crain:
I think the signing of Josh Smith was a great public relations move but little else. As Kirk already stated, there was little chance that Atlanta wouldn't match the offer. Josh Smith is an up and coming star in this league along the lines of Andre Iguodala, Luol Deng and Monta Ellis. Each of those players resigned with their teams for far more money than the Grizzlies offered Smith. It was a pipe dream to assume Atlanta would allow Smith to leave with no compensation. It did however get people around the country in general and Memphis in particular to start thinking that Heisley wasn't solely interested in running the cheapest operation in the league.

Since public relations are not a component of making a team competitive for the playoffs that bit of emotional lift does nothing in regards to the team's 3 year plan. What it did do is take off the market a player who the Grizzlies could have tried to sign next summer with their free cap space. By offering him the contract and having it matched by Atlanta, Josh Smith won't be a free agent for 5 more years. 5 years is outside of the 3 year time frame Heisley established. Even if the Grizzlies couldn't sign Smith next summer that is one fewer player for other teams to use their cap space.

So if we are only judging the signing in a three year window it would seem that this hurt the team.

Joshua Coleman:
Before the signing took place, I made my feelings about Josh Smith quite clear. In the time since then, we've learned that Smith showed up in Atlanta more muscular and physically imposing, appearing ready to play the position of PF. And you know what? Doesn't change my opinion a great deal, even though I rate him more highly as on the "Big Change Capability Potential Meter" as a result of those physical improvements. (Yeah, I just made that up, by the way.)

So, how does his signing affect the much ballyhooed TYP? Well, as has already been noted, it received some good publicity on many fronts, although there were plenty of people who viewed it as nothing more than an obvious PR move in which the Grizzlies had no intention of having Josh Smith in Beale Street Blue. With the tumultuous nature of things in the ATL, I don't know how anyone could think that there wasn't at least a chance that the Hawks might let Smith go. But ultimately, that didn't have any effect on the TYP. I believe that Smith's presence in Memphis would have resulted in more wins this year, as well as the next two after that, but not enough to justify his salary. Just my opinion, of course, but Smith seems like another Shawn Marion or Andrei Kirilenko to me -- great team players who provide eye-popping stats on a nightly basis, but aren't #1 options, or even guys that you really concentrate on running plays for. I think that signing Smith would have been a detriment to the goal of the TYP, as it would have placed the Grizzlies further back in the lottery next season, which is where they are most likely to find the top talent needed to help them return to the postseason at the conclusion of the TYP. In this respect, cheaper talent (Hak, D.Arthur, new draftees) would be better than higher priced free agent talent.

Links: Offseason Rolls Along

Great interview with Marc Gasol as he prepared to kick off the Olympics. I've really been impressed with his defensive ability so far and hope that he can be a solid contributor for the Grizzlies.

Be sure to read HoopsAddict.com's interview with Josh Smith in the aftermath of Atlanta matching the offer sheet he signed with the Grizzlies. He talks about why he was interested in coming to Memphis and was willing to sign with them.

Floor Burn Tournament: Round Two: Even though Kyle Lowry came up short against Mark "Mad Dog" Madsen last week, there are still a lot of interesting matchups to vote on, so go over there and click away.

Salt Lake Tribune: Utah fans are gauging interest in acquiring Darko Milicic as a backup center.

Memphis Flyer: Frank Murtaugh links Elvis songs to Memphis sports in honor of Elvis week here in Memphis.

Over on HoopsWorld, Steve Kyler continues to ride the Backtrack Express in the wake of his poorly conceived column from last week. Somebody please tell him to just leave it alone already. What's done is done. I'd hate to for hem to have to let Chris Herrington out of his cage again to deal with him. That could get ugly quick.

Courant.com: Rudy Gay spends time in Conneticut at Jim Calhoun's basketball camp and talks about life in the NBA. He also won the MVP of the charity game.

Stay tuned for a few announcements about some changes coming to the blog later this week.

Pacifiying the Fan Base

Out of nowhere Friday, the Memphis Grizzlies signed the most dynamic player on the free agent market to a 5 year/$58 million offer sheet that was immediately matched by his hometown Atlanta Hawks. Josh Smith was the prototype for the power forward position in the offense that Iavaroni wants to run.

The funny thing is that I don't think I read a single account by a Grizzlies fan that actually thought that Atlanta would not match that offer sheet because it was reasonable. So why would Chris Wallace and Michael Heisley even waste their time with the offer? Why wouldn't they do like Philly and trade some of their young talent to clear out cap space to make an offer to Smith that Atlanta would not match? IMO it is because Memphis finally has a GM that knows what he is doing.

The Memphis Grizzlies are on The Three Year Plan (3YP) for better or worse. The first year of this plan is going to be real painful. I am not sure most fans have a realistic concept of the type of frustration they will experience this season. As such, the pressure to "do something" will be hard and heavy once the 2009 NBA trade deadline approaches and the Grizzlies are in dead last in the Western Conference. So Wallace (and Heisley) need to buy time. And that is just what the Josh Smith offer sheet did for them.

Why waste their time with the offer to Josh Smith? Why not? Josh Smith would have been a great fit for the Grizzlies long term and his talent would have mitigated the lost draft position that they would have missed on with the better record. He actually would have allowed the Grizzlies to potentially complete their future starting lineup a year in advance and thus accelerating the 3YP into a two year plan.

Why not make moves to sign Josh Smith to an offer sheet that Atlanta would not match? Although I have previously advocated making an inflated offer to Josh Smith because I think his future production will justify the salary, the Grizzlies just could not do so with their current roster. If the Grizzlies pay Josh Smith based on what they project his production to be in the future, what do they do next summer when Rudy Gay comes up for an extension? The Josh Smith offer sheet establishes the Grizzlies as a market level contract giver. Giving Smith an inflated deal would have painted them in the corner of giving Gay a near maximum extension even if he just reproduced this past season's production. That is a bad precedent to set.

So in the end the Josh Smith saga was a one day break from the offseason hibernation that the organization is experiencing. It came out of nowhere but it does reveal the motivations behind the 3YP. The Grizzlies are on the lookout for an impact player at power forward. Also, there will likely be no rumors of what the Grizzlies plan on doing until it is essentially a done deal. Sucks for us bloggers and message board folks but is good business for the Grizzlies.

Celebration Day! Griz Sign Josh Smith...or Offer Contract to Smith? Either Way, Grizz Brass Come to their Senses

UPDATE II:

The great Ron Tillery is now reporting that the offer sheet has yet to be signed and might not be signed until tomorrow morning.

Sheesh, can anyone get something straight. Tillery's earlier piece had the feeling of him not knowing what the hell he was talking about in it. Then the AJC piece seemed to fill in the blanks and make it all legit. Now this.

Tillery also says that Atlanta is prepared to offer more than the Grizzlies. A 6 year deal. Why would they not just match our deal? Is that extra year worth it? Tillery called it a bidding war. Has a team with restricted rights on a player ever got into a bidding war before? That doesn't make sense either.

Oh ya, the sham site Hoopsworld says Atlanta will match.

At this point, I don't care what happens. Tillery says we have been debating signing Josh Smith for 3 weeks, which makes me happy. And makes me feel pretty smart too...hehehe...ok, enough gloating over this.

Please Atlanta, let us have our future PF.......stay tuned for more....

UPDATE I:

The Atlanta Journal Constitution is reporting the offer sheet is signed. The waiting game now begins. It will probably by 7 days before we know anything (IMO).

Herrington thinks the sign/trade route makes the most sense. Can't say I disagree.

Gay/Mayo/Smith....watch out...

EDIT...

I interrupt this Josh Smith Celebration for a second.

It has been brought to my attention that the Ron Tillery article is confusing. At first it says we sent a contract offer to Josh Smith. Has he signed it? Will he sign it? Why is Ron Tillery so vague? I don't have these answers.

But later on, Tillery says the Hawks have 7 days to match. Which implies it has been signed.

Why is Tillery so vague? Has Smith signed the contract yet? We need answers. Which means we need Herrington.....

Below is my original post
---------------------------------

I am in disbelief. That THUD you heard was half of Memphis falling out of their chairs at work.

Ron Tillery is reporting that the Grizzlies have [EDIT] sent a contract offer[/EDIT] to Josh Smith for 5 years, 58 Million Dollars. The Hawks have 7 days to match [EDIT] if Smith signs it.[/EDIT]

This deserves more of these:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So much for saving our cap space for next season.

Actually, we will still have cap space next season even with Josh Smith. About 9 million if my calculations are right. As for this contract, it looks like this, again by my calculation.

Year 1: 9.9 Million
Year 2: 10.69 Million
Year 3: 11.54 Million
Year 4: 12.46 Million
Year 5: 13.46 Million

Those numbers are rounded.

Anyway, I don't know what to say, except for more screaming.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Josh Smith, if he doesn't get matched, will be our starting PF. Many, even a pair of disbelievers on this site, don't think Smith can play PF.

Hogwash, I say. He will be the perfect PF for our team. He is athletic. He can play great defense, in the post, but also on the perimeter. He is the NBA's premier perimeter shot blocker. He will lead our team in rebounds, steals and blocks. Oh, and dunks. He can't shoot a lick from the outside, but who cares.

From my perspective, this fits perfectly with the 3YP. I know about 60% of the Griz fan base disagrees with that. How do I know that? Because Josh Smith has been the sole topic of conversation on Griz Messageboards for about 2 months now.

I wanted us to trade Pau for Smith. So, naturally signing him with cap space created from trading Pau makes me ecstatic.

It seems Heisley and Wallace finally came to their senses and made the move that was obvious from the beginning.

Will the Hawks match? I have no idea.

Could this turn into a sign/trade? Maybe.

For the 60% of the fanbase that believed Heisley was telling the truth about not spending any money this summer, I'm sorry, but you have to believe me that this is for the best.

We will be back later with updates and everyone else's take....for now, you get more of these:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Celebration Day, Memphis....rejoice!!!

Drink a beer for lunch.....Go dance around the office.....Call into Verno at 3 and just start screaming....It's Friday, we signed Josh Smith and things could get no better (except, maybe if I had this paper already written, which makes this news not the best timing, but who cares....celebrate!!!!)

Moving Forward with the Forwards

(Photo by Getty Images)

Matt over at Hardwood Paroxysm emailed me last week to ask me a simple question that has been bandied about on the message boards for quite some time. That question was this: Why not take a stab at Josh Smith? He didn't use my response in his post about the matter, which is great for me, because now I can use it here.

The Grizzlies should probably at least make a cursory call in to his agent for two reasons:

1) To drive up the price that the Hawks eventually sign him for. Nothing better than making other teams overpay for their own free agents.
2) To make the Grizzlies fanbase believe that they might have intended to spend some of their cap space this offseason, even though they have said repeatedly that they were targeting the 2009 offseason to spend it.

Now, as far as them making a legitimate play for him -- this is problematic. Since he's a restricted free agent, the Grizzlies would have had to offer him more than what the Hawks were willing to match in order to actually acquire him. Because they signed Marc Gasol already, the Grizzlies only have about $10 million in cap space for the first year of that contract, which Atlanta would almost surely match.

I don't believe that Josh Smith (or any of this year's young free agents) are max-level players, but that's the kind of contract offer it would probably take to pry any of them away from their current teams. While I'm not convinced that the trio of Antoine Walker, Hakim Warrick and Darrell Arthur will be enough to cover the Grizzlies at the PF position this year, I don't see any reason why they should overpay for Smith either, given that this team is still 2 years away from making any real noise no matter who they choose to go out and sign this offseason.

Besides, there is another possibility that most people haven't discussed. What if Smith (and Igoudala, Okafor, Deng, et al.) decide to just sign the qualifying offer and test the market next summer as unrestricted free agents? Then the market truly sets their real value, rather than having to haggle with an agent, only to see their current team match that offer, leaving you with nothing to show after putting your cap space on hold for a week. This is why the Grizzlies didn't sign Andres Nocioni or Anderson Varejao to offer sheets last year, despite serious interest in them, and instead went after Darko Milicic for a reasonable sum.

Restricted free agency is almost always a fool's gambit. You either overpay, get suckered into a bad deal via trade (Kenyon Martin to the Nuggets, Joe Johnson to the Hawks) or simply waste your time (Corey Maggette retained by Clippers after signing offer sheet with Jazz). The NBA has designed it to favor the "home team" and they certainly succeeded in that regard.

On top of that, even though the Grizzlies would be more exciting and talented if they were able to sign Smith, would they be able to compete with the Lakers, Hornets and Trail Blazers over the next few years with that core group?

Now, as I stated in the email entry above, I'm not sure that I buy into the idea of entering the season with a trio of Warrick, Walker and Arthur, but I know that I don't want Josh Smith as our starting PF for the next 4-5 seasons. I'm a big fan of Smith's style of play...as a SF. That's his natural position, after all. Last time I checked, we already had a decent small forward by the name of Rudy Gay. He needs a backup, but I don't think that's what the fans have in mind when they suggest signing Smith.

I know that a lot of Grizzlies fans (all 11 of us) get a little upset when they consider the ramifications of letting everyone know that we have no intention of making a major free agent signing this offseason, despite the fact that we are the only team with any significant cap space. It sends out a message that seems to plainly say, "we're not going to try to compete this season". I mean, that's what all the media pundits are reporting across the board anyways. I've seen that phrase, or some version of it, on no less than 5 different major media websites in the past week. But just because the Grizzlies aren't throwing cash around simply because they have it, doesn't mean that they aren't being competitive. I'm not saying that I'm on board with what the Three Year Plan represents initially, but given that this is the stated direction of the front office, we might as well accept that and look at moves that fit in with that direction.

Here is my suggestion -- and one that I believe we will be able to see in action over the next two seasons. Why don't we see what we have first? As I noted yesterday, we have two young players at 4 of the 5 positions, with SF being the only one that is without competition for the next season. Conley vs. Lowry, Mayo vs. Crittenton, Warrick vs. Arthur and Gasol vs. Milicic. What if Darrell Arthur -- a consensus Top 15 pick on nearly every reputable mock draft in existence -- turns out to be worthy of that designation, rather than displaying the talent level of where he was actually selected near the end of the 1st round? In other words, what if Arthur proves to be talented enough to be the starting PF as early as next season? Wouldn't that negate the need to go out and sign a player like Josh Smith this offseason? That should be a very realistic possibility, given that he was ranked #14 overall on the Grizzlies draft board and the #4 PF by DraftExpress.


Photo by David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images

In this piece on SI.com, Chris Mannix makes it clear that the Grizzlies front office has very high hopes for Arthur and loves the fact that he has come in with a tremendous chip on his shoulder due to the way that his draft stock plummeted needlessly, taking him from the back end of the lottery to the very end of the 1st round. After all, If D.A. can come in and use that motivation as a positive force (like Paul Pierce did regarding his draft position), then the rest of the league probably won't be laughing at the Memphis Grizzlies much longer. Check back tomorrow for what that future might look like.