Keith Parrish

I know the Grizzlies got dealt this weird hand with Ja Morant plateauing or maybe getting worse.

But I'm still confused where you still had so many other things going for you on the roster.

You still had... They signed... Desmond Baines is the best draft pick in the franchise's history.

It's an unbelievable trade, unbelievable draft pick.

And they said, oh, I think our analysis of that trade for the Magic was, all right, well, if this team's limited, Zach Kleinman, after the Thunder series getting swept, said this team isn't close to the Thunder.

And everyone's like, oh, great, that's fine.

But that team wasn't close because...

my analysis they've been short-circuiting themselves for two years because they kept pointing towards the future saying we have to pay jaron we have to pay desmond we have to pay jaw we can't bring in any extra salary right we can't bring in even oh yes we can match salary to bring somebody in but then eventually we'll have to pay them in 2027 we'll have to pay them they didn't use their mid-level exception for multiple years

They traded away good players for draft picks thinking, oh, maybe if Jake LaRavia and David Roddy turns out, we'll have cheap replacements.

They salaried up Marcus Smart a year ago, basically today.

They used a first round pick to salary up Marcus Smart, not to get better.

to get further away from the luxury tax.

So eventually the off season, they could give Jaron a renegotiation and extension.

They short circuited the last few years of job, Jaron and Desmond.

If you give them the benefit of absolute brilliant foresight, clairvoyance, you say, well, they knew job wasn't going to work years ago.

So they did all those things.

But from my perspective, they didn't even build up the team as good as it could have been because they were worried about paying people in 2027.

We're not even in 2027 yet.

Yeah.

And they've traded everybody away and now we're starting over.