Welcome to the brave new world where the Memphis Grizzlies have landed one of the top free agents to change teams. Friday afternoon, former Dallas Mavericks forward Chandler Parsons reportedly agreed to a four-year, $94 million max offer to join the Grizzlies.
Now that Memphis also has agreed on a deal to re-sign Mike Conley, where do the Grizzlies fit in the Western Conference playoff picture going forward?
How Parsons fits in Memphis
If healthy, Parsons should be far and away the most talented wing player the Grizzlies have had alongside their Grit-and-Grind core of Conley, Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol since trading Rudy Gay during the 2012-13 season. The most win shares any Memphis wing has posted in a season since then was Tony Allen's 5.1 back in 2012-13; Parsons had nearly that many last season (4.3) despite missing 21 games due to injury.
Parsons isn't a leading option on offense, never having used more than 20.6 percent of his team's plays in a season. But that's OK for the Grizzlies, who already have a couple of shot creators in Conley and Gasol. Parsons should help them continue to take more off Randolph's plate offensively and provide insurance if one of the other starts are out of the lineup.
Parsons is also a far more efficient scorer than the players he's replacing. His career true shooting percentage (TS) is .567, including a career-best .589 last season, when no Memphis wing who finished the season had a TS better than .537 (Lance Stephenson). So his presence should boost the Grizzlies' offense.
Additionally, Memphis needed an injection of youth. The Grizzlies were the league's oldest team last year in terms of age weighted by minutes played, with the typical Memphis player on the court at any given time age 31 at season's end. Parsons will be 28, so he won't exactly make up for the Grizzlies' recent draft misses, but he's a step in the right direction.
Parsons' injury risk
Given all the fawning over his game so far, you'd be excused for wondering why the Mavericks didn't push harder to keep Parsons. The answer presumably lies in his right knee, which has been repaired surgically twice in the past 14 months.
The first procedure, according to ESPN's Tim MacMahon, was an alternative to microfracture surgery in which bone marrow from Parsons' hip was transplanted to his knee to help regenerate cartilage. The procedure got him back on the court six months later -- barely after the start of the 2015-16 regular seasons.
Having spent the entire offseason rehabbing, Parsons started slowly and had a .523 TS through the end of 2015. After the calendar turned, he was scorching hot from 3-point range (44.3 percent) the remainder of his season, which ended in March due to another, more standard knee surgery.
The net effect of Parsons' cartilage damage is that his long-term health is tough to predict, particularly given the limited track record for the original surgery he had. It's possible Parsons' knees could become a problem soon, or they might not cause issues for years. Such is the randomness of cartilage injuries.
Understandably, Dallas tried to convince Parsons to opt into the final year of his contract to have him on the roster without having the risk of guaranteeing him money long-term. That was a tough sell for Parsons, who will make more money in 2016-17 after opting out and locks in security over the next four years.
It's Memphis that now assumes the risk of Parsons knee troubles, and in conjunction with Gasol coming off a broken bone in his foot and the myriad other injuries the Grizzlies suffered last season, that puts their medical staff in the spotlight.
Where the Grizzlies stand
Assuming reasonable health, Memphis has solidified itself as one of the eight best teams in the West next season. However, I don't think Parsons makes up the gap on the top four teams as the Grizzlies hope to return to home-court advantage in the opening round of the playoffs -- which they had in 2015. In fact, I'd start with the assumption that the Utah Jazz will probably be the biggest challenger to this group rather than Memphis.
Perhaps I'm putting too much weight on point differential. The Jazz finished fifth in the West in this category (plus-1.8) despite missing the playoffs last season, while even before the injuries the Grizzlies had a minus-0.9 differential with a 31-22 record at the All-Star break.
At the same time, Memphis has a long track record of outperforming its differential by winning close games (and, last year, by losing in extremely lopsided fashion at times). So the Grizzlies might still have the edge on the Jazz, who underperformed in close games last season.
That said, it's still July 1, and both teams and the rest of the West have plenty of time to make moves that could change their outlook before the start of the 2016-17 season.