The Memphis Grizzlies and Jordan Hawkins have agreed to part ways via waivers, which means a 2023 lottery pick who got traded into a new building a few weeks ago now gets to pick the next one himself. That is the Memphis Grizzlies news of the morning, and it is a smaller story than it is an interesting one.
Start with the language, because the language is the tell. The reporting says the two sides agreed to part ways. That is not a roster casualty discovered on a transaction log at 4 p.m. That is a conversation. Somebody sat down with a 24-year-old guard, looked at the depth chart, looked at the minutes that were realistically coming, and both parties decided he was better off finding a fit than waiting for one. Clean. Faster than most teams would move, too, and credit where it is due: holding a young player hostage on the end of a bench helps exactly nobody.
I do not have Memphis's full roster calculus in front of me, so I am not going to pretend to know which move the open spot is chasing. What I do know is the shape of the thing. He arrived in a trade from New Orleans and did not make it to opening night. Weeks. That is a short runway for a player the Pelicans spent a lottery pick on.
Checked the almanac on the arc here, and it still lands funny: in April 2023 Hawkins was pouring in threes for a UConn team that won the national title, and that June he was a first-round pick. Three and a half years later he is a free agent before his fourth season tips off. The league moves like that. It does not slow down for your draft slot.
The good news for him is that his best skill is the most portable one in basketball. Shooting travels. There are teams right now whose second unit cannot space a floor with a tape measure, and a guard who can run off two screens and let it go is a real phone call for them. He should get one.
What I am watching next: where he signs and how quickly, because the speed of that answer tells you what the league actually thinks of the jumper. And what Memphis does with the spot.