Marc Iavaroni Post-Mortem, Cont’d

I wanted to make sure that the world did justice to Marc Iavaroni’s tenure as Memphis head coach. However, that didn’t necessarily mean complimenting him. Just reminding us that we shouldn’t have expected a savior there in the first place.↵
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↵Grizzlies GM Michael Heisley did his own post-mortem over the weekend. At best, it was back-handed to the max; check out this gem, via The Memphis Flyer:↵↵⇥Heisley said he thought Iavaroni had done a good job with Marc Gasol and Darko Milicic, but wasn’t happy with the development of perimeter players, particularly Conley and Gay and thought that Hollins, as a former point guard, could help more in that area.↵↵(Dear Marc, thanks for bringing along two clumsy, unpleasant post players that were an afterthought and a lost cause, respectively. Too bad you couldn’t do jack for the lottery pick meant to run the offense and our team’s rising star.)↵
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↵But oddly, Heisley saved his best material for . . . himself:↵

↵↵⇥On one tangent, Heisley expressed regret about trading Jason Williams and James Posey for Eddie Jones: “The Eddie Jones deal was a disaster for us,” he said.↵↵I kind of follow the Grizz, and I’d already forgotten about the trade. Heisley’s already got to spend the rest of his career explaining away the Pau Gasol deal. Maybe that’s why this one hit me like fresh news, and why, relatively speakng, it’s not so bad. But really, this is ridiculous. Sure, Jason Williams may have no longer been the sensational “White Chocolate” of old; instead, he was a steady vet who helped the Heat win a title. And Posey, he’s nothing less than his generation’s Robert Horry. Fred Jones may be a decent scorer, and one-time Dunk Contest champ, but he was out of the league for a minute. He’s turned up running the point for the decimated Clippers.↵
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↵I’m sure there were financial reasons behind this deal, and Posey didn’t look quite as attractive then. Still, seen today, it makes the hiring of Iavaroni look like an honest, if misguided, mistake, a further reminder of why the ill-begotten, largely unknown Thunder have more organizational cred than the Grizzlies.↵