A perhaps revealing moment

 Hey, we all know what the wise guys thought. They told us enough times.

What they told us was there was no room in the NBA anymore for a low-blocks big man like, oh, you know, two-time college player of the year Zach Edey from Purdue.

They said Edey was a big 7-4 galoot who was just a garbage collector around the rim and had a shooting range of approximately two feet. Said no big in the Association played that way anymore, that the best of them played out on the floor and handled the rock and could knock down the three when the opportunity presented itself.

Edey was a late first-rounder at best, they said. More likely a second-rounder.

And then ...

And then the Memphis Grizzlies made Edey their guy with the ninth pick in the 2024 NBA draft.

And the wise guys, or more than a few of them, wondered what on earth the Griz were thinking, reiterating all the big-galoot stuff.

And then ...

And then, the other night.

Preseason game against the Pacers. Edey back home in Indiana. An evening that perhaps, or perhaps not, revealed the Grizzlies had not in fact lost their minds by taking Edey so high.

Zach Edey played 19 minutes, see. He scored 23 points in those 19 minutes. And he cleaned nine rebounds off the glass while he was doing it.

Again, perhaps that proves something, and perhaps it doesn't. It was, after all, only a preseason game.

But this is not the NFL, where preseason games are as useless as the appendix. In the NBA, they're warmups for the real thing, which you kinda need when your regular season spans entire epochs of human history. Also, NBA rosters are 12 guys, not the 70 or 80 NFL teams bring to their early preseason games.

In other words, Edey wasn't doing it the other night against fifth-string linebackers who are about to be cut. He was doing it against a lot of the same people he'll see all season.

Make of that what you will.