Sports Radio Interviews

Lionel Hollins: Thabeet Wasn’t The Guy From The Get-Go

I love the draft because everyone has an opinion and everyone is right (that’s the same reason why I also hate the draft).  Person ‘A’ will say, ‘No, Hasheem Thabeet was a terrible pick at number two, Tyreke Evans or Ricky Rubio will be a better player,’ and person ‘B’ can argue till he or she is blue in the face that, ‘Thabeet will impact the game more than those two,’ and both person ‘A’ and ‘B’ will be right.  Fight all you want about the best player available at the two spot in last night’s draft, but this move fits better with the current Grizzlies team than the players who went three through seven.  As far as I know, Memphis is happy with Mike Conley, O.J. Mayo, and Rudy Gay, thus, they went big.  One move that went under the radar yesterday was the Grizz shipping Darko Milicic out of town for Quentin Richardson.  That was odd to me.  Grizzlies’ head coach, Lionel Hollins, joined Fox Sports Radio to discuss how Sam Young dropped to them at 36, that Thabeet wasn’t their guy from the start, and what need this draft fulfilled for his squad.

Was Hasheem Thabeet the Grizzlies’ choice from the moment you knew you had the second pick?

“He wasn’t the guy from the get-go.  We went through the process like we normally do and we came to the conclusion that he was the best player, and somebody was gonna have to knock our socks off for us to move down.  And, as we got further in the process, it became apparent that he was the guy, and we didn’t wanna move.  There were some people who wanted to get up above us and we think that they wanted to take him too, so I wasn’t willing, and Chris (Wallace) wasn’t willing, our owner wasn’t willing to move down, and hope that he got to us at three or four.  So, we stayed pat, and we took him, and we’re excited.”

Do you feel your team addressed its needs?

“I thought that going in that we needed to shore up our defense, our athleticism, and quickness, and toughness, and we got all of that.  When you get a shot blocker and a rebounder behind everybody to add to your team to go along with Marc Gasol, and then we have DeMarre Carroll who would be behind Rudy Gay, and we got Sam Young who’s gonna be behind O.J. Mayo, I mean, we feel very fortunate to be in the position that we are.  I know practices are gonna be something else to watch with all the activity and toughness that’s out there on the court.”

How did Sam Young fall all the way to 36?

“We were hoping that he’d get there and we played it that way and it worked out that way.  I don’t know if we had done it the other way, DeMarre Carroll gets to 36, but we’re happy it worked out.  We added two aggressive, tough players that can run the court, they can guard and get out to people, get on the floor for loose balls, fairly athletic.  And, obviously, we added a big guy that gets a chance to be a pretty good shot blocker in the NBA.”

Listen to Lionel Hollins on Fox Sports Radio s with JT The Brick

Tags: Basketball, DeMarre Carroll, Hasheem Thabeet, Lionel Hollins, NBA, NBA Draft, Sam Young