It’s Happened Again: Steven Adams Has Been Traded To The Memphis Grizzlies
It was Tuesday morning in Aotearoa, almost a week after the end of the NBA Finals and a few days before the subsequent NBA Draft with Olympic basketball also catching plenty of attention... and Adrian Wojnarowski had something to say.
The first big blockbuster trade of the NBA offseason and it was a doozy that just so happened to include Steven Adams. Which was not a surprise, to be fair. It had been rumoured since the Pelicans missed the playoffs last season that the New Orleans Pelicans would seek to move Adams elsewhere and those rumours only got stronger after Stan Van Gundy was fired. SVG’s attempts to introduce to concept of defence to the Pels had failed and Adams, as a defence first player coming off a subpar season where injuries had been an issue for him and team fit an even bigger one, was left vulnerable.
A lot of the chat about how bad Adams was with the Pellies is wildly exaggerated. Eric Bledsoe was bad. Eric Bledsoe shot the ball poorly and didn’t even come close to backing up his past All-NBA defensive efforts. Steven Adams on the other hand... he was merely average. Yes his scoring dropped substantially in New Orleans however most of that you can put down to how undefined his role on offence was. Adams is a paint scorer, right? But Zion Williamson bossed the paint for this team so Adams was left chasing offensive boards and not much else. Even his heavy screens weren’t as prominent, not with Williamson as the primary ball hander.
Adams didn’t play badly though. The team rebounded much better with him around and he always brought the effort on defence. It’s just that this wasn’t a team where his best attributes were put to use. There’s a difference between bad player and bad fit. Eric Bledsoe belongs in that category too. NBA coaches and GMs are clever at what they do and there were always gonna be plenty of them who saw more value in what Adams offers than he was able to show in New Orleans... hence a trade was always something to look forward to. And mate he’s gotten himself a banger right here.
Cast your mind back now, if you’re capable, to Steven Adams’ rookie season. No beard, shorter hair. A tendency to wind up opponents with his unflinching physical demeanour back before he earned his reputation for being the strongest man in the NBA (Is it true? Probably not... but his colleagues keep on saying it). This article from 2014 remains our all-time most viewed piece and it breaks down the phenomenon of veteran dudes getting ejected for lashing out at Rookie Steve.
The most infamous of those ejections came in game six of the first round playoff series between Memphis vs Oklahoma City. Zach Randolph had a brain snap. Running back in transition defence, he got tangled up with Adams and threw in an elbow. He was ejected and suspended for game seven which OKC subsequently won. That incident caused Adams to get booed whenever he played in Memphis for a couple years afterwards and now seven years later he’s one of their own. Crazy how professional sports work, aye?
The Memphis Grizzlies – the Grizzly Adams jokes have already started, don’t worry. When Steven Adams left the OKC Thunder, he left a pretty exciting young team that was beginning a new era but which wasn’t quite ready to compete for a full season again after that rebuilding process. So he was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans who were a similarly exciting young team with one truly transcendent talent and they were very much ready to compete... but they weren’t quite good enough and still needed to make a few more shuffles to the roster. Hence he was traded again and now finds himself on the Memphis Grizzlies who not only have a young team, not only have a future superstar of the league (in Ja Morant), not only are ready to compete... but they actually are. Adams has progressed through three stages of rebuild in three consecutive years... with a different team each time.
The Grizz went 38-34 last season (despite starting 2-6) to finish eighth in the Western Conference. They beat a red hot Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors 117-112 after overtime in the play-in match with Morant topping with 35 points and eight other players all scoring at least 9pts (Anderson, Jackson Jr, Brooks, Valanciunas, Bane, Tillman & Jones) and then chased that by then taking game one against the top seeded Utah Jazz... but Utah recovered to win the series 4-1. Bit of a disappointing end as it was made clear that the Grizzlies still have a few glaring weaknesses to be amended before they’re going deep in any playoff series. Granted it’s a lot easier when it’s clear than when it ain’t (see: New Orleans Pelicans).
Ja Morant is entering his third year in the league and will only be 22 years old when it begins. Jaren Jackson Jr is one month younger, with an extra year of experience, and will probably get a heap of minutes in combination with Adams in the frontcourt as well as plenty without him in smaller line-ups. Dillon Brooks is 25 and has emerged as one of the better defenders in the NBA. Kyle Anderson is a clever wing player from the Spurs system, soon to be 28 years old yet he and Valanciunas were the old dogs on this roster last time. It’s a funky group that could, with one or two more fellas, like say a top ten pick in the upcoming draft, start pushing their way up the seedings in a brutal Western Conference. Nice timing for Steven Adams to stroll into town, then.
But of course Steven Adams was not the focal point of this trade, he was merely a means to an end. Jonas Valanciunas wasn’t the focal point either. For the New Orleans Pelicans, it was all about financial flexibility and by dodging the money owed to Adams and Bledsoe they now have the cash to chase a major free agent (such as Kyle Lowry) and to match offers on restricted FA’s Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart. Whatever the plan is, they’ve got room to make it happen.
Adams for Valanciunas was a straight swap of starting big men. Bledsoe was a player they were keen to be rid of. Hence all it really cost the Pelicans to do this was moving down from 10 to 17 in the draft plus a future first which is top 10 protected and some second round pick shuffling. That’s a solid deal from a New Orleans perspective. One which erases a major confusion and some would say corrects a past mistake too (but that’s harsh – taking back Bledsoe was a necessity in making the Jrue Holiday trade work while Adams was traded to do one thing and ended up being asked to do another as Zion Williamson’s position changed – the only mistake there was in acting on the idea that Zion was a power forward and not a point guard).
The Grizzlies meanwhile, their intentions aren’t as clear but most likely they’ve decided there’s a dude they love in the draft who they don’t see dropping below the lottery and for what’s probably a slight downgrade at centre they’ve been able to move up to get him. Could even be Australia’s Josh Giddey by the sounds of it but let’s not speculate on that. Wait a day or two and it’ll be known – although this is all gonna get confusing because in order to complete there’s some cap balancing that needs to be done (specifically declining Justice Winslow’s contract option which can’t be done for another week) so it might not be confirmed wee while. Meaning that these teams will be drafting for each other when the clock starts ticking on draft day. It’ll get even more confusing if Memphis make subsequent trades, which is very possible.
Eric Bledsoe isn’t expected to stay in Memphis. Steven Adams probably will. There’s a ready-made spot for him in that starting line-up replacing Valanciunas who is a pretty similar player. Both are magnets on the offensive boards, international big men with great size and strength, even their minutes averages were pretty similar last season. The major difference between the two is that Valanciunas has range to his shooting. Not a lot, he only attempted 57 threes last term shooting 36.8%, but enough that it’s a factor to his game. Whether that makes a difference considering the Zion Williamson factor that opposing defenders are trying to balance is another thing... let’s just say that Jonas better keep that percentage up because he’s going to get plenty of good looks as Zion gets double teamed more than ever.
The comparison between the two is pretty funky.
Per36 Stats for 2020-21 Season:
SA – 9.8 PTS | 11.5 REB (4.8 OFF) | 2.5 AST | 1.8 TOV | 0.9 BLK | 2.5 PF
JV – 21.7 PTS | 15.9 REB (5.2 OFF) | 2.3 AST | 2.1 TOV | 1.2 BLK | 3.7 PF
Shooting Splits for 2020-21 Season:
SA – 61.3% FG | 0.00% 3PT | 44.4% FT
JV – 59.2% FG | 36.8% 3PT | 77.3% FT
On the basis of those numbers this is a massive upgrade for the Pels... but numbers can be deceiving. Even balancing for their minutes by using the Per36 stats (as in, their averages per 36 minutes on the court) we still don’t account for the difference in role, etc. Looking at that and seeing how well Valanciunas rebounded in what was clearly the best season of his career (compared to Adams who had numbers that looked more like his first or second year in the league – the Grizz definitely selling high and buying low here), you can come to the conclusion that JV is a better rebounder. Or you can start salivating at how much fun Adams is gonna have hauling in offensive boards in that Memphis system. Also for what it’s worth he has been going hundies on upskilling his shot this offseason...
Valanciunas was pretty beloved by Grizzlies fans and within that playing roster too. This was star dude Ja Morant’s public reaction to the trade...
Again though, that leaves a nice Jonas shaped hole for Steven Adams to slide into because there’s a lot more to love about the fit here for Kiwi Steve than there was in New Orleans. The box score side of things we’ve covered but there’s more to the picture. This is a team that knows what it’s about. There’s a clear identity that head coach Taylor Jenkins has instilled here and it’s not a million miles away from the grit-and-grind Grizzlies of old that Adams came up against early in his career. They should make significant strides on the defensive end next time around and Steve-o could well be a large part of that. He’ll definitely feel more at home. His leadership should be more valued, his sacrificial traits more embraced... and just quietly Ja Morant is about the closest thing to Russell Westbrook out there these days short of ol’ Rusty Buckets himself.
Adams was beloved in OKC yet he never got that same love in New Orleans. Check out all the offseason yarns about the Pels, this is a team that seems to operate with a perpetual worry that Zion Williamson is gonna leave them for a bigger market after Anthony Davis did the same (as if he didn’t first give them seven years of his career, with all but his rookie season at an all star recognised level). Then when the bearded kiwi rolled into town it was as an amended part of the Jrue Holiday deal meaning that he arrived as another favourite son was being shipped out by his own request. The whole time Adams was there, there was this frantic urgency to make things work for Williamson (a second year player who hardly even played in year one) and Adams was scapegoated as a by-product of that. He arrived in panic, he left in panic... and everybody should be better off now.
Get amongst the Patreon whanau if you rate what we’re up to on TNC and wanna support it
Also whack an ad to say cheers, sign up to our email newsletter, and share the yarns far and wide
Keep cool but care