NEW YORK — When David Stern went to the podium to announce the Memphis Grizzlies’ 28th pick, John Calipari sat in the green room clinching his left fist and yelled out, “C’mon Memphis!”

It was not hard to figure out what Calipari was rooting for. Clearly, the Tigers’ coach was hoping the Grizzlies would take Chris Douglas-Roberts, who worked out with them yesterday and would have clearly been the best PR pick available. When he declared after the Tigers’ season ended, CDR was projected to be anywhere from 10-25 and suddenly here he was in the Grizzlies’ lap if they wanted him.

Even after the Grizzlies passed on him, however, Calipari felt that he might go to Boston at No. 30. After they picked J.R. Giddens, it was not a lot of fun watching Calipari mill around for the next several minutes, typing furiously on his Blackberry while Leon Rose, CDR’s agent, was working the phones and likewise looking a bit nervous. After CDR finally got taken by the Nets at 40, Calipari and Rose left Madison Square Garden pretty quickly, obviously disappointed at how the night unfolded.

The question that will now be asked for a long time to come is whether Douglas-Roberts made a mistake by leaving Memphis a year early. I find it hard to second-guess him, since every single person in the basketball business felt his stock was at its peak coming off a season in which he was a first-team All American and led the Tigers to the NCAA title game. The only reason to stay is that next year’s draft would have been weaker, but there didn’t seem to be much risk that he would slip out of the first round. It seemed like a safe move.

The reality is, Chris just didn’t perform well in workouts, and obviously teams put a lot of stock into those workouts. I find it remarkable that a player like J.R. Giddens, with a spotty personal history and only one effective season at the college level, would be selected ahead of CDR. I find it even more remarkable that Walter Sharpe, a complete head case who washed out of Mississippi State and UAB, would go ahead of CDR and Joey Dorsey. CDR won’t get the guaranteed money, but he’ll have a chance to make a team. Time will tell whether the NBA executives who passed on him were right or wrong.