<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Spanish website AS.com is reporting that Marc Gasol will sign a three-year contract with the Grizzlies. Gasol went to high school in Memphis while his brother Pau was a member of the club. Marc was included in the trade by the Lakers where Pau was acquired.</div> Link (realgm - no other link, unless you know Spanish) Well, this should be fun. I can't wait for the Gasol-Gasol matchup.
I played Gasol back in the day, and back then, he was nothing to write home about. In fact, he was just like this big wall blocking the paint and not doing much except that on either end of the floor. I looked up an old post I wrote about Gasol in early June of '07 though, when he was a draft candidate, and having not seen him since, my opinion's pretty much the same - <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Yeah, a lot can be said for the right training. A lot of people don't realize how raw most high school players are and how crucial of a time it is for them to improve on their games. Contrary to popular belief, when a player is 16, 17, 18, or even 19 years old, their games are still very shapable, and if you put a guy like Marc Gasol into the hands of some of the top international trainers in the world, that certainly gives him the edge over all of his former colleagues back in the states. Take Lenny Cooke for example. When you talk about raw physical abilities, a very important commodity in the draft, Lenny Cooke was at the top of the '02 class, even rivaling LeBron James. When he was a high school freshman, he was the one who was touted as the next big thing, not LeBron. Unlike James though, Cooke fell into the wrong hands, was misguided, and never put in the hours or had the benefit of the same training that James did. Sure, he went to all the Adidas camps and whatnot, but he didn't have a stable high school team, transferring from school to school because of academic eligibility problems. He has since gone undrafted and has only had brief success professionally, as an NBDL player. To me, he's the prime example of how crucial that time is for developing a physically gifted but fundamentally raw player. You also have to realize that Marc Gasol has been growing over these past few years. Not only does that mean that he was several inches shorter and probably a good deal of pounds lighter when he played in Memphis, but it also means that he probably never got to be able to get comfortable with his body around his early teen years like most of us did. When you grow at such a fast rate as he was growing, your game changes all the time because your physical attributes are changing as well, and that's what makes a lot of young big guys awkward out there on the court. So while he may have been clumsy three years ago in Memphis, he could be more comfortable with his size now. Not to mention that his last name will help him get looks from the NBA. Michael Jordan's oldest kid, for example, is probably going to get a scholarship to a solid DI school, whereas if his last name were Smith, Jones, or Johnson, he'd be trying his luck at his local community college. Obviously the Gasol name doesn't carry the same weight that the Jordan name does, but it's still a valid argument that scouts and GM's will make for drafting him, because they'll point to the fact that his brother was an equally raw prospect at that age and has developed into one of the top ten big men in the league. In the end though, it's the guy's size that will get him drafted. How many 7'1", 270 lbs. players are in the league right now (if his reported size is true)? The moment he gets drafted he'll be one of the ten or so biggest players in the league. In a way, the fact that he's only projected #20 by nbadraft.net (which isn't a crediblt source, but for the sake of argument I'll comment on it) is actually a testimate to his lack of skill. How many players with that size would be borderline first rounders? Hilton Armstrong was a lottery pick last season just because he was 6'10", 240 lbs., and even Oleksiy Pecherov was taken in the top twenty because he was 6'10", 232 lbs., so if Gasol has such a significant size advantage over both them, why isn't he projected to be drafted ahead of where they went last season? It's not because it's a deeper draft in the mid-first this year; it's that Gasol is extremely raw and underdeveloped.</div> Not to mention, the Grizzlies could use all the help they can get in the paint. No matter what, you know he'll be an upgrade over Kwame Brown.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Big Frame @ Jun 20 2008, 02:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I hope he wears number 16, so all the Memphis fans dont have to buy another Gasol jersey.</div> That was great. Where's a rep system when you need one?
