Friday, February 01, 2008

Grizzlies Trade for Stephon Marbury; Management Reacts

Ever since they bought out Damon Stoudamire's contract, the Grizzlies have been missing veteran leadership in the locker room. In an effort to shore up that leadership, they have traded Rudy Gay and Michael Conley for Stephon Marbury.

In a press conference on Saturday, Marc Iavaroni said that he liked Marbury's fearlessness. 'Marbury's not afraid to take the big shot at the end of the game. He knows how to play this game and he fits well into our system.'

Wallace added 'The Marbury trade really gives us some flexibility for the future. Marbury is going to teach Javaris Crittenton how to be an elite point guard in this league. Then at some point, Marbury's contract will expire. Think about that for a minute.'

Reached by phone, Majority owner Michael Heisley stated, 'I'm not going to be influenced by public opinion.'

He added: 'We want to try to develop a team along the lines that Phoenix has done -- more crowd-pleasing and upbeat, and we have a better chance to do that with Marbury. He played in Phoenix, and he's a quality guy and a great leader in the locker room."

'Listen', Heisley reiterated, 'I'm the owner, and Wallace is the general manager. I'm not making the basketball decisions, and I'm not selling the team, but if the right buyer came along, I'm listening. I mean I'm not going to refuse to sell to someone who overpays for this franchise, but I really think someone who lives in Memphis should own it. The problem is I don't want to live in Memphis, and the people in Memphis who can afford to buy it don't want to over pay. We're not having a fire sale here.'

When asked where this addition put the Grizzlies' plans for rebuilding, Wallace emphasized,'We have a lot of nice pieces and Iavaroni has a long term vision for this club. If we continue to save cut payroll, we're going to have a lot of money to work with during the summer of 2013. That puts us in a good position to really develop our players to the point where we'll be competing with the best teams in 2014 - 2015. I see us as the Phoenix Suns of 2015.'

5 comments:

Jonesy said...

2015?

That's some amazing fucking long-term planning.

Anonymous said...

There's some real truthism in what C-Wal is sayin'. It's all about the cap room dawgs. I mean, how you think the 6'ers got where they are now?

JC said...

dude if you aren't already depressed enough:

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/columns/story?columnist=ford_chad&page=Gasol-080205&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1&action=upsell&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fnba%2finsider%2fcolumns%2fstory%3fcolumnist%3dford_chad%26page%3dGasol-080205%26lpos%3dspotlight%26lid%3dtab1pos1

Anonymous said...

wow, this is the first time I have gheard about the trade.. is it official? wow....

can rudy win the slam dunk contest?
http://basketballnonsense.blogspot.com/2008/02/nba-slam-dunk-contest.html

David Jones said...

Justin, I don't think many of these trades are very realistic.

I don't want to defend this terrible trade, but these trades aren't very exciting either and Ford's 'reasoning' isn't very sound.

The key takeaway for me is that the Grizzlies didn't get an exciting young prospect to build their team with.