Basketball

Grizzlies, Pelicans trade an odd match of patience and urgency: Hollinger


Well, that’s interesting. And backwards.

The offseason unofficially officially kicked off Monday with the announcement of a trade between New Orleans and Memphis — one that can’t be consummated until Aug. 6 — and looking at it, one is almost immediately struck by the fact opportunism met urgency in a way we don’t usually see. The classic format for an NBA deal is when a bad team opportunistically takes on draft picks to absorb contracts a better team doesn’t want. What’s unusual in this case, however, is that the opportunists had a much better team last year.

Memphis, who went 38-34 and made the playoffs last season, opted to take on contracts and draft picks in order to help streamline its future, while New Orleans – who had finished 11th and 13th in the West the past two seasons — went the opposite way in giving up draft equity to create cap room that it may either not need or end up using on a 35-year-old point guard.

First, let’s discuss the parameters. The Grizzlies agreed to send center Jonas Valanciunas and the 17th and 51st picks in Thursday’s draft to New Orleans for center Steven Adams, guard Eric Bledsoe, a 2022 first-round pick from the Lakers (top-10 protected, becoming two seconds) and the 10th and 40th picks in Thursdays’ draft.

To complete this trade, in the absence of other moves between now and Aug.





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