Going Commando

Top 3 sounds good. We don't need to pick first overall in this class because there is no consensus top player. From what I'm reading in this thread, everyone has a different player they life for us. I mean, depending on how you feel about Blatche, we're pretty open at the 3 and 4 positions and it probably wouldn't hurt to find another quality 2 although I think Nick Young can be a good starting 2 on a Eastern Conference contender. So given the fact that we need forwards and there are a lot of good ones in this class, everyone will probably have their own favorite. I like Barnes and Sullinger personally. But I can see different cases being made for Perry Jones, Terrence Jones, Derrick Williams, or even a big like Kanter. I also really like watching Josh Selby play and I think Brandon Knight could be an undersized 2.

Two steps forward, one and a half steps back is to be expected with a rebuilding team. It's frustrating now but I'm not worried about it. This time two years from now we'll be watching a good team and the only thing we'll remember about this season is how it ended up getting us Harrison Barnes or Jared Sullinger .

What now? Nick Young isn't a starter? Also what happened to the "nothing but a catastrophic John Wall injury can bring me down this year" attitude? We won this game fellas.

I don't see how a 2 guard who averages 20 points a game (when he starts) and plays good defense isn't a starter. It's not like we've got Kobe Bryant ahead of him on the depth chart. Young is a good player. I don't see why that's so hard to accept. He looks like a different man on both sides of the floor this season.

Brandon Knight is a beast. Louisville was able to keep the pressure on Terrence Jones today but that just left things open for Knight. I think he made something like 4 three pointers today. The kid can really shoot. If Nick Young hadn't come on so strong this season, I'd say we could look hard at drafting Knight and moving him in as an undersized shooting guard much like O.J. Mayo or Eric Gordon. He's bigger than Josh Selby is. The main problem I see though--can he defend guys like Kobe Bryant and Tyreke Evans?

I wouldn't trade him either. Who are we going to pick up that's better? Nobody any time soon that's for damn sure. If we want a better center, we'll have to draft one and wait years for him to develop. There won't be a better athlete coming out any time soon. Enes Kanter could be a good option this season but he's about 6'9 without shoes. Andre Drummond will be a better prospect than McGee, but lord know when he'll be available, I think he's only 17 or 18. And he'll definitely require a first overall pick. There isn't anyone on the roster already I'd play ahead of McGee. **** no to Yi and Armstrong. N'Diaye is also older and far less polished/talented. We can't afford to trade McGee unless we get something incredible in return for him.

Contraction is a good idea. The league should go back to 28 teams like it was in my NBA Jam Tournament Edition on the Sega Genesis. Would anyone care at all if we lost the Raptors and the Grizzlies? I'm not sure why that article cites the Nets and the T-Wolves. The Nets have been around since the 70's. If anyone is curious, the NBA had 23 franchises in the Golden Age that Lebron referred to. In the late 80's they expanded by four teams: Charlotte Hornets, Miami Heat, Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Orlando Magic. The Grizzlies and Raptors came into the league about 6 years after them. The Bobcats are the most recent expansion team. I wonder which two teams had to move to the Western Conference after they added 3 Eastern teams. Anyone know? EDIT: I just looked up the answer to my own question. No teams switched conference initially. The East went from having 11 teams in '87 to 14 in '89. The West went from having 12 teams to having 13. The Hornets moved to the Western Conference when they moved to NOLA. The Bobcats replaced them, evening out the conferences for the first time in a long time.

McGee's shotblocking isn't what's hurting us. It's the fact that we get no ****ing defensive presence from our PF spot that's making this an issue. The time honored formula is for your bigs to work together. One guy plays the ball, the other plays the basket. With McGee's ability to play above the rim at an elite level, our PF should be KILLING it on rebounds, piling up 15-20 a game. Instead we get Blatche, who only rebounds when he wants to, which is almost never. The guy just doesn't have what it takes. He's a scorer and that's it. He needs a change of scenery. His head is ****ed now from being booed and he never had much heart to begin with. We need to find a PF who is an elite rebounder a la Kevin Love. Bigs work much better when you've got two good ones. To that end, I think Jared Sullinger makes a lot of sense. He doesn't have the athletic ability to play defense like McGee. But he piles up rebounds because he's so freaking big (280ish, boxes everyone out with that fat ass of his) and he's got an elite basketball IQ so he understands positioning and is constantly in the right place at the right time. So without a ton of defensive potential, you have him troll around the rim and cherry pick rebounds and just unleash McGee to leap around without worrying about rebounding.

The typical response of a Redskins fan when faced with how ****ty the franchise has become: cling to the glory of the 80's. We're talking about where the teams are at right now. Projecting where they will be for the next decade. The simple fact is that the Redskins currently look like **** and probably won't be any better for a long time. At least the Wizards and Nats have enough young talent to give fans some hope. The Redskins have next to nothing and an incompetent owner. Also, the Caps are clearly the best franchise in town right now. I don't know how anyone can argue against that. Besides, the Redskins have been around forever and when you take out the 40's and the 80's, all of that history we have starts to look like **** too. I'm a much bigger Redskins fan than any other pro or college team in any sport. Our legacy of incompetence over the past 20 years is soul crushing. The team doesn't deserve your defense.

Love got the same kind of HS recruiting hype that Sullinger did and had a great freshman season. He fell pretty far on draft day for the same reasons Sullinger will. Sullinger is even shorter and less athletic than Love is and he's not as good a passer or defender as Love was. Guys like Sullinger--Scola, Love, Milsap, Jefferson--they are good players but they don't get picked early. I'd actually be a bit surprised to see Sullinger go top 4. The rest of the class would really have to suck for that to happen. Taking Sullinger so high when he's going to struggle to score against long, athletic bigs (already gets his shot blocked often) and when he gives you very little defensive potential at the 4 is not the conventional move. Convention says that Irving will be the first pick based on the fact that he was playing even better than Wall did before his freak injury. If he comes back in time for the workouts then I doubt his stock will take too big a hit. I could also see Perry Jones going first overall, or even Barnes if he has a strong stretch run. Jones has the best body and potential in the class and he's already got a great handle and perimeter game. Scouts aren't going to care much about his numbers this year because he's being played out of position at the 4 and 5 at Baylor to make room for Quincy Acy when he'll almost certainly be a 3 in the NBA. Everyone already penciled Barnes in as the first overall pick before the season, so all it will take is a good tournament from him to reclaim that spot. Also I wouldn't discount Josh Selby. If he shows strong passing and defensive skills over the remainder of the season, he's got the pedigree to go first or second overall too. He's a phenomenal athlete with great quicks and a strong handle as well as a superb shot. He's going to have a big time year and he'll probably make a name for himself in March. Brandon Knight could too if he were a better passer.

Definitely top 5 in the East at least. Wall, McGee, and Young will all be good, All-Star caliber players for a long time. We'll also probably get a top 5 pick this year and come away with a nice forward to add to the mix. We've got role players too. Blatche can score in bunches when he plays well. Seraphin and Booker being beef to the front court. It's one of the most talented young cores in the entire league. Plus the Wizards' roster makes good financial sense. They'll have massive amounts of cap room right as this team begins its window of contention. It'll be interesting to see how the cap gets defined in a new CBA. If the status quo is maintained, we could be looking at a situation where we'll be able to extend our stars without any problems whatsoever once their deals are up. And then once Rashard's contract enters it's final year, our guys will just be entering their primes and he'll become a powerful trade chip for adding a max deal type player if we want. The Redskins have a whole lot of Josh Howards and Rashard Lewis's if you know what I mean. The only thing they've got that's really worth a damn in the long term is a nice young LT, OLB, a good pair of receiving TEs, and SS that may or may not have serious Achilles problems. Everyone else is entirely replaceable. As far as I'm concerned, the Redskins are nowhere near as close to contending as the other three DC franchises. If anything, they moved backward last offseason while everyone else took huge strides forward. ---------- Post added December-25th-2010 at 09:57 PM ---------- +1,000,000. Sullinger would be a rich man's Blatche when you get down to it. His post game is much better, he's got a great motor, and gets a ton of rebounds. Plus his basketball IQ seems to be much higher. The athletic profile for Sullinger doesn't blow you away and I don't think he brings much of a game above the rim. Plus I doubt he'll be able to run the floor as well as Blatche does. Those are my reservations with him. He's a heavy guy who's going to have a high body fat % and will probably only measure in around 6'8 without shoes. But the kid is very obviously a great basketball player and I would ignore those measurables and take him first overall if I had the pick--pending an Andray Blatche trade... I could see Sullinger's ceiling being a lot like Kevin Love's. He's definitely not the passer and not the rebounder that Love is right now. But he's much more offensively gifted IMO and I think he's stronger than Love is. He's also got a 7'1 wingspan so the length is adequate. And he's got that same insatiable motor and gift of situational awareness that Love has (drawing fouls, shooting high percentage shots, finding his open teammates, putting himself in the right place at the right time for constant rebounds). He'd give us a nice half court offense with a legit low post scoring option. That'd be good in our current system (although it doesn't look like Flip is going to stay). The post game polish and the rebounding alone makes him a great pick for us. Lord knows we need both. Defensively, he lets Javale play the ball without worrying about the rebound because Sullinger can come down with them. But we wouldn't get value out of Sullinger unless we traded Blatche first or immediately after picking him. There is just such a logjam at PF on our roster in the longterm that picking a PF high isn't the best plan for roster management. Blatche is only 24, Seraphin is young and has a high level of upside. Booker can't play the 3 until he gets a better handle and outside shot. If Yi is in our longterm plans, that's another PF type who's too soft to play the pivot consistently. Sullinger doesn't run or handle the ball well enough to be a good option at the 3. IMO he's a short 4 in the NBA with a respectable perimeter shot. Besides Blatche, who do we have that's worth a damn in a trade aside from Young/Wall/McGee? I'm asking this because I wish we could actually get a pair of top 6 picks this year like Minnesota had in '09. If we could do that, we'd probably be able to get both Sullinger and Barnes and set our team for the long term. I could see the draft playing out like this: 1 Sacramento - Perry Jones 2 Minnesota - Kyrie Irving 3 Washington - Harrison Barnes 4 Washington (via Clippers) - Jarred Sullinger 5 Cleveland - Terrence Jones 6 New Jersey - Derrick Williams I wouldn't count Josh Selby and Brandon Knight out of the mix. Or any of the foreign bigs either. But those guys look like the top 6 prospects early on. It'd be fantastic if we could find a way to get the third and fourth picks in the class and get both Barnes and Sullinger. Then you'd have the perfect mix on the offensive side of the ball and pretty strong defenders aside from Sullinger. Plus the great thing about Barnes and Sullinger is that we'd go from a dumb, lazy team to a highly intelligent, hustle team by adding them. Both Sullinger and Barnes are team first guys who would have no problem deferring to our dynamic back court scorers like Young and Wall. I'm not worried about Sullinger's lack of athleticism in the paint because McGee has enough for both of them and brings all of the defensive potential we need there. Barnes can shoot and play good defense so he takes nothing away from the table at all and carries a good deal of offensive potential in his own right. Man that would be an awesome starting five.

I'm all for tanking to get a high pick in theory. But man is it hard to stomach in practice. That loss to Miami wiped me out. I wanted that one bad and it felt terrible to lose. They knew they stole one there at the end, celebrating like a bunch of 15 year olds after beating the worst team in the league by one point. It hurt worse because it happened right after we found out we're losing Arenas. Especially since the compensation seemingly sucks. The only thing I could feel good about from that game was Nick Young's shooting. And knowing that we should have beaten one of the "elite" teams of the NBA even though we didn't have our two best players.

Drafting seems to be the one thing Ernie does really well. You're absolutely right, Young, Blatche, and McGee were great picks in the middle to late parts of the first and second and they are the reason our rebuild wasn't as daunting as it was for say, the Clippers or Timberwolves. We won't need 5 top 5 picks to get back on track like they do/did. But hopefully the lottery will make Ernie's job easier this offseason and we can just have our pick of the top forwards in the class: Sullinger, Jones, Jones, Barnes. BTW, did anyone else see how good Barnes played yesterday? The kid is really coming out of his shell. His effort was lost because UNC lost and the other freshman like Selby and Sullinger had freaking monstrous days. But Barnes had a good game and his shot is there now. He shot well from the floor and nailed his FTs and also hit a clutch 3 pointer that gave his team a chance at the game at the end. Perry Jones also looked excellent and he's got a nice long range jumper. I finally got to watch him yesterday and see him with my own eyes this year. One thing you don't appreciate until you see him is just how huge he is. He looks like a college center and he's got NBA muscle tone already. He's impressive. I really want either him or Barnes. As it stands, we probably won't need the first overall pick to get a great 3. I think Sullinger might be cementing himself as the top pick and if Josh Selby keeps it up, he and Kyrie Irving could go 2 and 3. We might see Barnes and Jones slip to slots 4 and 5 or lower unless a team like us is picking in the top 3 (no need for a PG, lesser need for a PF).

Bosh isn't the one who fouled him (although there was contact from him too), it was the second defender. It was most definitely a foul. ---------- Post added December-19th-2010 at 02:37 PM ---------- Yeah enough of this sixth man crap. Young has proven that he deserves to start alongside Wall as our backcourt of the future. If nothing else, that Arenas trade will be a good move if it clears the way for Young to star.

Man this is a sad day. I knew it had to happen eventually but I never really coped with the thought of losing Arenas before now. It's like having to break up with a girl you really loved because your careers forced you to different places. Now that it's happened it feels like ugh ****, he really is gone now. It's going to ****ing suck seeing him play for the Magic. I hope I never have to feel this way about John Wall. **** you Cleveland fans, you don't monopolize fan pain.

My head hurts trying to work all of this out. The bottom line for me is this: --We needed to move on from Arenas and this might have been our only other option outside of a buyout --We moved laterally at best acquiring Lewis, but at least his deal is shorter --Lewis is 31 year old soft combo forward who's skills are in decline, but is hopefully a better starting option than Al Thornton --I HOPE making this deal doesn't preclude us from looking for a SF at the top of this year's draft. I don't think it will since it's not like Leonsis will want to build around Lewis. It's also not like having Gil stopped us from taking Wall. I also really hope this deal doesn't make us think we're free to trade our lottery pick this year like we did the year before last.

That's the saddest part of all. And for such crap compensation. Why couldn't they have thrown in a draft pick at least?

Did anyone see Josh Selby's debut? The kid is phenomenal. He's going to be a star some day. Why can't he be three inches taller? He'd be the perfect 2 guard for us if he was. Ugh.

I'd rather have their first rounder, even if it's late 20s. We can build this team our way if we get another first and Carter's contract.

That's an interesting point. But Irving will probably slip because of his injury. Sullinger has had a dominant year so far, but he's a little hefty and lacks the athletic potential #1 picks usually carry. Otherwise I would say he's the best bet to go first if Irving's injury keeps him out the entire year. I agree though, I'd be happy with Barnes or either Jones. Barnes is the one I want, but I think each could become valuable starters on a contender. The foreign bigs are supposed to be good too.

I got a bad case of shin splints in high school from wearing Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars at tennis practice for a week or two. One wonders how in the **** people used to play basketball in those horrible shoes. I was stupid and lazy and didn't bring proper court shoes to practice because I was so fricking fast I could have played barefoot and still run everything down. I played in boat shoes some days just because I could. My hubris resulted in the aforementioned shin splints and that cooled my jets. Every day for a couple of months it hurt to walk. It really hurt to run and change directions. It definitely slowed me and subconsciously limited my effectiveness because I tried to get by on the court moving as little as possible. But I lived and still played and never missed a damn practice and I kept winning. I understand Wall's game is predicated on his speed and he's a multi-million dollar investment for our franchise. But you've got to hope he's tougher than he seems...

We'll have Harrison Barnes if we want him. Buck up everybody. Things won't stay bad forever. Wall will come back. Young will still kick ass. We'll get a great player in this class. Booker and Seraphin will knock heads. And McGee will throw down highlight dunks all day because that's the only shooting he'll ever have to do.

Curry plays out of position at PG. The kid is a natural 2 who would probably be best as the primary shooter instead of facilitator. He's also stronger than he looks. I agree he'd struggle to defend the big 2s of the league, but his offensive value would be such that none of us would really care. We shouldn't have made that trade period, even if we hadn't taken Curry. I'd take Demar DeRozan over what we got in return for that deal. ---------- Post added December-16th-2010 at 05:05 PM ---------- Chandler would probably be part of any deal for Melo. I don't know that he's available to us unless we get ourselves mixed up in a 3 team deal. When you get down to it, there really aren't that many good, available 2s in the league. That's what I'd want out of any veteran acquisition. There are so many good 3s in this year's top 6 of the draft that we can find our long term solution there. Look at the landscape of the league and you've got a ton of great PGs, a ton of great SFs, and a ton of great PFs. What happened to all of the 2s? ---------- Post added December-16th-2010 at 05:17 PM ---------- Good job missing the point there. The point is that we both built around three specific players drafted--a stud PG, a long, athletic C, and a big time scoring wing. And you're wrong about Rose. He's an elite scorer because his team used to suck and required him to be. He's a much better passer than given credit for. He's averaging 8.4 assists this season which is .4 less than Jason Kidd. Wall and Rose came out of very similar backgrounds: Super quick slasher with elite size and defensive potential for the position and a shaky jump shot. The only big differences I see are that Wall has a bit more of a reputation as a pass first guy, is longer, and he's not as strong or tough as Rose is. Other than that, they're playing styles are extremely similar. Also, I didn't say Seraphin was Carlos Boozer because obviously they are different. He's not nearly as skilled as Boozer in any way shape or form, but he's a much better athlete. I merely wondered whether Seraphin could one day fulfill a similar role to Boozer's on our team.

I was thinking about it. We're constructed much like the Bulls are when you get down to it. Wall is to Rose only with a higher ceiling and better floor vision. Javale is to Noah with better athleticism and offensive potential but with worse toughness/IQ/rebounding ability. Young is to Deng only he's shorter and not as strong but he's faster and a better shooter. Could Kevin Seraphin develop into our Carlos Boozer? We'd be a good team if he did. He'd certainly help McGee out if he became an elite defender so McGee could focus on playing his defense around and above the rim.

How ridiculous. A goddamn shoe deal gets in the way of the game. Ugh whatever at least they've isolated the problem.