Now that the NBA offseason is over, scores for each player for the next season are being made public.
Zach Edey, the starting centre for the Memphis Grizzlies, hasn’t gotten as much attention as they thought they would after being named to the NBA’s first team of All-Rookies last season.
Last season, the 7’4″ big man became more stable in his role after the team’s head coaches were replaced with nine games left in the regular season.
He played most of the season as a starter, but came off the bench for three games before Taylor Jenkins was fired as head coach.
With Tuomas Iisalo as temporary head coach (the “interim” tag has been taken off), Edey started the last 15 games of the regular season and all six postseason games. That was his best stretch of play.
During the 56 games Edey played under Jenkins’ coaching, he averaged 9.2 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game. In the eight regular-season games he played under Iisalo, he improved his game and averaged 9.3 points, 13.4 rebounds, and 1.8 blocks per game.
He also played more minutes, going from 20.6 to 27.8; his field goal percentage also went up, from 57.1% to 64.6%.
In spite of a clear rise in production under a new rule during the most important part of the season, national media don’t seem to believe the Zach Edey hype.
ESPN didn’t rank Edey in their most interesting sophomores
And Jaylen Wells, who plays starting football with Zach Edey, was ranked eighth on ESPN’s list of the most interesting sophomores lost before next season.
Both players were on the All-Rookie first team last year, but Edey wasn’t in the top 10. But keep in mind that it wasn’t a list of the best sophomores; it was just a list of the most interesting ones.
It was also said that Edey wasn’t on the list because he had surgery on his ankle summer, which will keep him out for a while to start next season.
Since no one knows how his healing will go, it makes sense that he wasn’t featured in the top 10. Among other reasons, that’s probably why he wasn’t on another well-known list going into next season.
Edey ranked outside of top 15 of Western Conference centers
Iztok Franko of digginbasketball substack made a list of the 30 best centres in the West, and Zach Edey was ranked 16th out of all of them.
Nobody ranked below him is likely to be a starter, and there were centres ranked below him who aren’t stars or didn’t do as well as he did last season.
Edey still has a lot to show in the NBA, but being named to the first team of All-Rookies has to mean something.
The way they play on the court will speak for itself, and Edey could keep getting better in the same system that helped him have his best stretch of the rookie season.
Leave a Reply