3SOB: Hello Mike, how are you doing?

Michael Heisley: I'm doing fine.

3SOB: You've had a busy 24 hours. Can you talk about the trade yet or is that not allowed?

MH:  We're not allowed. You should understand there is no trade. 

3SOB: There is no trade?

MH: There is no trade. I don't know what people have a problem with. Until the 8th [July 8^th] and the cap room comes out, you can't take a trade or a proposed trade to the League. The League has to approve every trade. So this trade has not been presented to the League and won't be presented until after the 8th when the cap situation comes out which will clearly identify whether you have the ability to accept the impact on your cap. If we do the [rumored] trade then it will have a big impact on the cap room.

So the point is that until that happens there is no trade. The parties could back out if they wanted to. So everybody is talking about it because it came out despite it's supposed to be confidential until the 8th.  It took all of two hours for somebody out in LA to release it. 

3SOB: Well actually I had been informed of this before the LA Times released it. A blogger friend called me and asked if I could confirm it.  

MH:  I'll tell you what. The deal wasn't put together more than 90 minutes before the deal was on the LA wire. But anyway the whole point is that [any] deal isn't official until submitted to the League. We have various people saying they will do it but when it gets done it gets done. Right now I am not saying it is done. I'm not saying there is any trade and there can't be until after the 8th. 

3SOB: Well I had wanted to talk about things you can talk about in respect to the draft. Let's go back to the first pick with Thabeet. What was it that you and Chris (Wallace) and Lionel (Hollins) all saw that set him head and shoulders above everyone else? 

MH: Well to begin with that's not the way it happens. We have at least 10 people, maybe more, say 10-12 people who follow respective draft choices all year. They see them in actual games in person. They watch tape. They go through it. That goes all the way from me and Chris and Tony Barone and Lionel Hollins down to our scouts and so on and to our international scout. 

So that is done. You're looking at who that will be and every so often you fill out a paper that says who you feel we should draft if we're picking. Who's going to pick first, second, 3rd, 4th, 5th and so on.  Then that list from everybody is compiled. So you have a list from every person. Then that list is circulated so everyone knows what everyone else's view is. 

Then we put together a combined list periodically. The further away the draft is away ... the bigger the interval is when we put together a list that we are going to talk about. So that goes on and really it gets serious about 2-3 weeks before the draft day. Everyone is involved in what is going on. Then a week before draft day everybody comes in and gets together. There is a series of meetings where we go over everything we have been doing. We look at tapes, re-look at tapes, videos and so on.

So to put a long story short we probably watch either video or in person every game that Thabeet has played the last two years and the same thing is true about [Ricky] Rubio and of course Griffin and everyone else. Our view has been, for us and only us now, that because of our needs and so on Griffin was first, and Rubio early on Rubio was second and Thabeet was third, maybe fourth, and there were other players moving up or down, floating in around those numbers.

So when we finally got together the last week or so and started going over everything we began to lean more and more toward Thabeet and away from Rubio. We think both of them will be great players. It really got down to, from our point of view, where we felt we needed the help the most.

Now you normally don't try to draft for position unless it is a pretty even toss up between which ones you want. I would say that as we got closer and we felt it was a pretty even toss up and we leaned toward Thabeet, that the more we got into it but we sent four people, I believe it was four people, over to Spain to watch Rubio that last series personally that Rubio played in the Spanish league. We had our international guy, who's seen him play almost every game, come in and even he started swing toward Thabeet so it was unanimous. Everybody wanted Thabeet ahead of Rubio so that is how it came out.

I loved all the comments I am getting because the point is, and I would ask some people - that will remain nameless - I asked if they had seen Rubio play? How many games have you seen? How many tapes have you watched? The answer? Virtually none! [They would say] I do remember the Olympics. Well their recollection of what happened in that Olympic game is extremely faulty.

So quite bluntly I think everyone including newspaper reporters, fans, everybody should be voicing their opinions at the draft time. I think it is healthy. It is great support but in the end we have to make the choice based on the professionals that are spending a big portion of their lives doing nothing but looking at these players. So that's how it goes. 

Now you have to remember, these guys coming out are going to be rookies. Thabeet has played 6 years of basketball. He's coming along. He's got an incredible instinctive defensive capability and we are already working with him with coaches, etc.  We'll have people coaching him before the summer league and to not only work on his defense but concentrate highly on working on his offensive capability. He's a good athlete. He's got great quick feet. He's got good lift. He's got great reflexes and there's no reason he can't be like Patrick Ewing. 

Now I happened to go to Georgetown and my son went to school with Patrick Ewing and when he was at Georgetown he was a defensive specialist. In the NBA he became an offensive specialist. There's no reason a great player can't switch. I honestly I believe there is no reason he can't be as good offensively as somebody like Bill Russell who was also a predominantly defensive player. 

3SOB: Obviously that was the marquee pick but you had two more...

MH: That's right and quite frankly in the nine years I've been here if you judge a draft by the way I judge it, it isn't who did you get with your first pick but how did you do with the picks you had. We had three picks and the first pick we got who we wanted with Griffin being out of the picture so that was done. 

The 2nd pick - that was 27th - we tried to move up because we thought there was some good players up there and we got the pick we would have made if we had moved up to 16th or something like that. We got that player at 27 with Carroll. Then with Sam Young we had him pegged to be picked in the first 20 and we got him with the 36th pick. 

So from our perspective, and I don't mean to say that all of our players are great, but from our perspective we got a lot more than we ever expected from those three picks.

3SOB: Absolutely. A rumor was started that the Grizzlies gave a promise to DeMarre Carroll to take him with your pick?   

MH: No. As a matter of fact when the DeMarre Carroll pick came down there was a huge discussion within the group. You can ask anyone who was in the draft room. There were huge discussions as to who we would take with that pick. I mean there were questions about Carroll and we spent a lot of time discussing that pick before we actually made that selection. 

And that is also true of Sam Young. So anybody that says we made a commitment to them early is nuts.

3SOB: Good because I wrote in the blog I felt that was the case.

MH: We thought he would be gone long before 27! How could we make a commitment to him? I mean neither one of those guys expected to be around at 27 much less 27 and 36 so how could we make a promise to them? 

If you talk to them you will find that Sam was somewhat upset that he went in the 2nd round. I was shocked Blair was around at 36, too.

3SOB: Did the Grizzlies have concern about Blair's health or was it something else? What went into that selection?  

MH: We were concerned about his knees but the big concern was that he's a great rebounder but he's not offensive. We felt that if we had Thabeet on the floor with Blair we could not give up that much offensively. In other words it would be difficult to have two rebounding guys on the floor without real offensive capability on the floor. It would be hard to play them together and that probably carried as much as the knees did.

If we had picked Rubio I think we might have picked Blair when we picked Young. By the way, I think Rubio is going to be a great player in the NBA. I don't think people are wrong about their opinions on Rubio. I know there is some question, and there has always been a question, as to whether he would come or not come [to the NBA] and I think that is why you see a lot of people contacting Minnesota to try to trade for that pick.

3SOB: Well especially with his not showing up for the press conference and his father's comments after the draft about him staying in Europe, there's a lot of things going on there.   

MH: Yeah there is and we have to remember that he has to pay a $6 million buyout as it is right now to pay off his contract over there. We can't offer anything like that as compensation in the NBA. 

3SOB: Basically where he was picked it's two years of playing for free to pay off that buyout. That's tough for anyone to do.  

MH: Now I'm not saying he won't come. I still think he will come and I still think he will be a good player if not a great player in the NBA. He's a great talent. I think he will develop a shot and that time will come. I just felt that we needed, if we were going to take a risk, that we needed to take a risk with a great defensive shot blocker that could basically shore up our defense which was one of the worst in the NBA. 

3SOB: I understand the reasoning for taking Thabeet and Carroll and Young are both considered excellent defensive players as well.

MH: That is exactly right.

3SOB: When Thabeet is on the court do you see that as an opportunity for the Grizzlies to play tougher on the perimeter than we've played in the past?

MH: I don't think we played poorly on the perimeter because Thabeet wasn't there. Nor do I believe he's going to make it easier for the guys to play tougher. I think our perimeter players need to play better defense. Our perimeter players have to play better defense. I don't think there is any doubt about that.

And I think that just like in Boston when Garnett went there, to a team that didn't have a history of being defensive, that people suddenly bought into the system and they were very, very good defensively. When Garnett was hurt this year in the playoffs it was very obvious that Boston was a mediocre defensive team. They had the same coach, the same system, the same players except for Garnett. Well they didn't have Posey but they had most of the same players except that they didn't have Garnett and I think he set the tone. 

3SOB: Who do you think right now is the leader on the team, on the court, for the Grizzlies? Is there someone like a Garnett or a player of that stature?

MH:  Well the problem you've got is ... let me ask you a question back. If I asked you to describe to me what is Boston the nice way to put it is that they are a veteran team, but the point is Boston's top three players are all over 30 years of age. If you looked at us last year our most experienced player in the starting lineup had been in the NBA three years. So I think there is no question that that role needs to be developed within the team. 

The management can't come out and say 'hey, you are the team leader in the locker room.' That's got to more or less find their way through. Hopefully we'll get veteran players who can step up and maybe take that leadership role but I can tell you right now that Mayo and Rudy are both showing more and more capability like that. It's got to be a good player and its got to be someone everyone can look up to.

3SOB: Did you get a chance to hear the crowds’ reaction when the Thabeet pick was made?

MH: No I did not.

3SOB: I was out on the floor and I didn't hardly hear a single boo. I heard nothing but cheers. It was very loud and very positive at the Forum to the Thabeet pick.  

MH: I think the point is and like I keep saying to the fans: we have to win the fan support by winning more games. Thabeet's got to win the fans’ support by playing well. The bottom line is that it doesn't make any difference who you pick. If he doesn't play well he's going to be chastised for it pretty severely. So he's going to have a lot of pressure on him to perform and that's tough for a young guy. It's especially tough for a young big guy because that's a much tougher position. Those guys come along a lot slower. 

And when you've got a guy with as little experience as he has he's going to be doing a lot of learning over the next couple of years. Hopefully he'll get off to a good enough start that the fans will get behind him and support him all the way through. He's going to need the fans' support. I hope to God if he starts out making some dumb mistakes hopefully people won't start to boo him. 

3SOB: I had this beautiful question lined up for you about here we are now after the draft and where do you think we will be at the end of summer but there is this thing that may happen July 8th hanging out there.

MH: Well if everything goes well and if things go down, the trade goes down, I think we will be a very, very improved team. I think that people will begin to see that at least what I have been talking about with the three year program. I think they will see that at least it has some merit.  

That concluded the reportable part of the interview. There will be more coming as soon as the rumored trade takes place dealing with Zack Randolph and how he fits on the team, his injury history but unfortunately that can't be included at this time. We expect to have that up on the 8th. We thank Mr. Heisley taking time away from his business and family to talk with us.  

UPDATE: When this interview was conducted rumors were only beginning to circle about Allen Iverson and the Grizzlies interest. If you would like to read Michael Heisley's comments about AI then go to David Aldridge's interview at NBA.com.