The Official Washington Basketball Thread: Wizards, Mystics etc

[CRobi21]

I think Wall has more fractures in his hand/wrist than Kyrie has assists in the playoffs.

Edited May 16, 2015 by STBonecrusher21

[Fergasun]

Mike Antoni because he doesnt coach d.

GM is bigger problem... Wiz better get a stretch 4/5 this offseason. Too many wasted draft picks. Gooden had flashes, but Atlanta top to bottom has more talent.

Even having to play Pierce heavy minutes...

But hey everyone - still at Disneyland!

[GOSKINS_08]

Man, me and everyone else in the arena went from jumping up and down cheering when Pierce hit the 3 to just total heartbreak when it was overturned. Sad just sad. I'm sick. We had our chances.

[TheItalianStallion]

Honestly it's possible that Beal could've continued his play from last year's playoffs had it not been for the injury. He came back from it early in the year, had some games where he was aggressively looking for his shot, including some 20+ point games, then he gets hurt again around the AS break. He comes back again shakes off the rust, then has a lengthy string of 15+ point games going into the playoffs, including some 20+ pointers. If he can stay healthy I think he'll be an AS next year.

 

These playoffs made it painfully obvious that we need to upgrade the 4, preferably with a stretch who can run the floor. Unfortunately, given the current contract situation of the team, I have doubts as to how much can be done this offseason.

 

I can live with Wittman in the short term if he continues to play Porter a lot and runs plenty of PnRs with Gortat. And starts playing Humphries and Seraphin more when Nene and Gortat start sucking in certain games (I think we're stuck with both for at least one more year).

Edited May 16, 2015 by TheItalianStallion

[StillUnknown]

John WallVerified account
‏@JohnWall
Love this city man !!

[CrypticVillain]

I missed the game tonight. Looks like the Hawks won another game they shouldn't have. I hope Cleveland waxes them.

Good season by the Wizards, excellent post-season for what I was expecting.

With Wall/Beal we're going to be better. Otto going to be better next year. If only we can get a serviceable PF that can consistently ball.

[Popeman38]

Finally home. So depressed. When Pierce hit the shot, that place was bedlam. Loudest I've heard the phone booth for Wiz when we took the lead and Beal slammed it home.

Then the shot. Brutal. Heartbreak. Rocket Bar time.

Good season. No broken hand, we are playing for a Finals trip.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Popeman38

[No Excuses]

I have nothing against LeBron anymore and I hope he destroys the Hawks. **** Jeff Teague, fake Rondo and that whole team full of bammas.

Edited May 16, 2015 by No Excuses

[Burgold]

I missed the game tonight. Looks like the Hawks won another game they shouldn't have. I hope Cleveland waxes them.

Watched this one. Others may disagree, but I thought the Hawks were the better team all night. More hustle, better ball movement, and held the lead for almost the entire game. Wiz kept it close enough to steal it in the end if it had not been for bad free throw shooting and Pierce shooting .01 seconds quicker, they might have.

 

Still, got kind of frustrated with the Wiz on offense. Looked like only the guy with the ball ever moved. Maybe him and one other cutter, but really they made themselves pretty easy to defend.

 

Note: I know football better than basketball and could be off.

[ixcuincle]

RT @ngreenberg Per @EliasSports: Wizards now lost each of last 7 games it has played when facing playoff elimination at home. Longest streak in NBA history

[spjunkies]

RT @ngreenberg Per @EliasSports: Wizards now lost each of last 7 games it has played when facing playoff elimination at home. Longest streak in NBA history

 

I think their MCI center brothers also have some awful game 7 streak going.

[Gamebreaker]

Things that should happen in the off-season:

 

1. Trading Nene away from this team. 

2. Firing Randy Wittman and hiring a coach who can take advantage of Wall, Beal and Porter's strengths. 

3. Firing Ernie Grunfield. 

 

Things that will happen in the off-season:

 

1. Nene will go to Brazil, destroy his failing body even further, and come back too tired to even give the weak ass effort he gave us this season and playoffs. He will not be traded, he'll play like **** and only give any effort when we play Chicago. 

2. Randy Wittman will get extended for four more seasons. Resulting in Kevin Durant removing us from his short list of teams he'll consider going to. 

3. Ernie Grunfield will be retained, and continue to ignore backup PG and a stretch PF this off-season, and draft some unknown Euro with a 5 year contract he can't get out of. 

Edited May 16, 2015 by Gamebreaker

[Destino]

They went as far as they could go with this coach and these players. Two years now with the same story because they've hit their ceiling. Beal and Wall will get better, but the aging front court will get worse... and game six made it plain that the back court can't overcome the lack of bigs capable of neither defending nor scoring.

I still don't think Ernie believes that this team can attract players or can be more than it is. He's the king of good enough, and he's ridden that philosophy to a long tenure. He doesn't have the stones, or the motivation, to make some big time decisions because right now he's safer just nodding his head and telling a complacent owner that all we need is time.

What this team needs is another big name and a better coach. Wall needs a consistent talent to share the court with him and a system that doesn't force him to crash through the paint on every possession in order to get a decent shot up.

[Kosher Ham]

Which big name coach would you suggest or think is available ?

[Destino]

Which big name coach would you suggest or think is available ?

Teds not paying a big name coach, they'd have to take a chance on someone waiting for a chance from a good tree. A good GM might be able to find one.

[Going Commando]

Watched this one. Others may disagree, but I thought the Hawks were the better team all night. More hustle, better ball movement, and held the lead for almost the entire game. Wiz kept it close enough to steal it in the end if it had not been for bad free throw shooting and Pierce shooting .01 seconds quicker, they might have.

 

Still, got kind of frustrated with the Wiz on offense. Looked like only the guy with the ball ever moved. Maybe him and one other cutter, but really they made themselves pretty easy to defend.

 

Note: I know football better than basketball and could be off.

No, you're right. They did outplay us. The only reason it was close was because our two young stars played like stars and that covers up a lot of problems in team execution by giving you a huge margin for error. The metaphor for it is a Wall/Beal chase down block after they turn it over. BTW, in retrospect, it's actually crazy how often they do that.

We can screw up our offensive sets all night and they'll still find ways to make shots and produce easy looks for teammates. And they pretty much dominated Atlanta's backcourt on defense and made Teague/Korver/Schroeder nonfactors.

Atlanta played harder and smarter than us and executed better, especially down the stretch. We missed wide open looks, missed FTs, and gave up open lay ups at the rim. If you do that in crunch time of a close game, you don't deserve to win.

[Going Commando]

It's actually a relief that Gortat was sick and that's why he couldn't go last night. I was scared that he might not have the heart to rely on during the playoffs. Knowing he had the flu, I'm impressed he tried to play at all. The timing of the illness is extremely unfortunate, but it's far better than him being just checking out on the team like Roy Hibbert.

Probably the same flu that made Millsap miss game three.

[Popeman38]

It's actually a relief that Gortat was sick and that's why he couldn't go last night. I was scared that he might not have the heart to rely on during the playoffs. Knowing he had the flu, I'm impressed he tried to play at all. The timing of the illness is extremely unfortunate, but it's far better than him being just checking out on the team like Roy Hibbert.

Probably the same flu that made Millsap miss game three.

Food poisoning is what I heard. No flu

[Going Commando]

They went as far as they could go with this coach and these players. Two years now with the same story because they've hit their ceiling. Beal and Wall will get better, but the aging front court will get worse... and game six made it plain that the back court can't overcome the lack of bigs capable of neither defending nor scoring.

I still don't think Ernie believes that this team can attract players or can be more than it is. He's the king of good enough, and he's ridden that philosophy to a long tenure. He doesn't have the stones, or the motivation, to make some big time decisions because right now he's safer just nodding his head and telling a complacent owner that all we need is time.

What this team needs is another big name and a better coach. Wall needs a consistent talent to share the court with him and a system that doesn't force him to crash through the paint on every possession in order to get a decent shot up.

Eh, Pierce's performance level is probably pretty stable and so is Gortat's. Gortat played a little better this season and is probably in the midst of his prime years. Porter is also a legit boost to the aging front court. Given the way he played during the postseason, you have to figure we will finally take him out of the box next season. I hope... I'm going to be depressed if Randy goes back to not using him again.

Wall is going to keep getting better, and that alone would improve the team despite the decline of our aging players. I think he steadily progresses to an MVP caliber level of play by his mid to late 20s.

Beal is a candidate for a major jump. I didn't see that happening this season because the track record of wings being legitimate All Stars at age 21 is not good. The only recent ones that were: LeBron, Durant, Melo, Kobe. And that was Kobe's 4th year. You're a little more likely to see a jump in the level of play in the age 22 season in star wings. It's still on the early side. Age 23 is really the big year where we should expect a true jump from Beal, similar to what we got from Wall. But Beal's performance during the playoffs suggests he is a precocious talent. He flat out dominated Atlanta, and three of those performances were without Wall and he had to put the team on his back. And that's huge, because it means we could survive a Wall injury next season and not have everything fall apart.

My gut prediction is that Beal is a fringe AS next season that gets in as a reserve. ****, he's way more deserving of it than Korver. Beal pretty much proved he's wholly superior to him.

Humphries should be about the same next season. Gooden is done. He's only giving you iffy spot up shooting and energy on the offensive boards at this point. Awful defense and no inside scoring presence make him an end of bench play that we only relied on because we have so little shooting at the PF position aside from him.

Also, we're probably going to lose Seraphin. He really produced for us this year and you are going to have to find a replacement for his production somewhere. It ain't coming from DeJuan Blair's fat ass.

Nene is the only major source of decline. He can't give us 1500 quality minutes any more and he is basically useless by the time the second round arrived. We barely got 1500 quality minutes from him this season... He's an 18-20 MPG backup big at this stage. Making 13 million dollars. I would trade his expiring just to bring in fresh blood but we can only move him for other expirings. We need his contract to make room for a run at Durant.

So, figure in a loss of contribution from Gooden, Nene, Butler, and Seraphin and maybe a slight decline in contribution from Pierce. Then figure in a major bump from Beal and Porter and a smaller bump from Wall. I think we easily come out ahead. If Beal is a second All Star, this team should win 50+ games even factoring in the Wittman handicap.

So then I guess you have to figure out what the rest of the EC is going to look like to see where that puts us.

[Going Commando]

My predictions for the rest of the East:

1.) Atlanta peaked this season, but they should be another 50+ win team again next year so long as Horford and Millsap don't miss too much time.

2.) Cleveland should make a big jump unless Love walks out on them. They'll have a year of chemistry together and LeBron won't start majorly declining yet. Irving should make a jump and Tristan Thompson should continue to improve. Mozgov and Dellevedova and JR Smith should all stay about the same. Varejao might come back and give them a minor boost. They need to add some perimeter shooting, but they should have options in FA.

Kevin Love is the real question mark. He should get better and more comfortable if he stays. And I think he'd be crazy to leave this summer. He'll have an inside track to the Finals in Cleveland and he needs to wait until the summer of 2016 to sign a long term deal anyway because of the cap jump.

3.) I think Toronto takes a major step back as they get deconstructed. Still in contention to win their division, but winning the Atlantic only means they might be the eight best team in the conference...

4.) Chicago is going to take a major step back too. They'll be a late seed at most. Thibs's teams are major regular season overachievers and they're throwing that away. They won't get anywhere close to as good a year from Pau Gasol next season. Noah looks done and Gibson regressed big time. It's basically Jimmy Butler and Nikola Mirotic plus a question mark in Doug McDermott and then a bunch of guys a year or two past their prime. I think they struggle to reach .500.

5.) Milwaukee will get better but they're still years away from being a threat. They majorly overachieved this season despite getting nothing from Jabari Parker, benefited from a dropoff from Indy and a Detroit team that was in transition.

6.) Indy should make a major jump from getting George back, but they're never going to be as good as they were the two seasons before this one. David West is in major decline and it feels like they're ready to move on from Hibbert. They'll be in the playoff hunt as a mid seed but they won't be better than us.

7.) Miami should teeter around a late seed. Wade and Bosh can't be relied upon for a whole season and Deng is done.

8.) and 9.) Boston and Orlando will definitely improve, but they don't have very high ceilings unless Aaron Gordon and Marcus Smart end up being MUCH better than expected. Still, the Atlantic is the crappiest and most dysfunctional division in the NBA, so Boston could get a four seed just from winning it.

10.) Brooklyn will be a nonfactor.

11.) The Knicks might make some sort of improvement but, at most, it'll be going from the cellar to a late seed. They're probably in the lottery again next year.

12.) Philly will be one of the worst teams again.

13.) Detroit is a bit of a wild card. Still haven't washed off the stink of dysfunction yet and Andre Drummond is in no way ready to lead a power. They'll be in the playoff mix, probably fighting for mid-late seeds with Chicago, Indy, and Milwaukee. Drummond is a franchise caliber talent to build upon, but his game is too limited to carry a team to the playoffs yet. Doesn't have the offensive game for it. I think they're a late seed if they make it.

14.) Charlotte will also probably be a nonfactor. They are in a similar boat with Boston and Orlando IMO. They've got a bunch of appealing young role players but no foundation pieces that they've built upon. It's really hard to get that to come together into a great team. Atlanta managed to do it, but all of their key players are in their primes and Budenholzer is one of the league's best coaches. Boston has the coach for it but Orlando and Charlotte don't.

So that puts us in the top three with Cleveland and Atlanta IMO. I like our chances in another postseason series with Atlanta next year. I think we'll be competing with Cleveland to win the East.

[Destino]

If Bosh didn't have a major medical issue Miami was easily in the playoffs IMO.  Also are they not holding on to Goran?  Goran, Bosh, and an often injured Wade isn't the worst core in the East.  Also they have Pat Riley, I wouldn't count on them not making a move to improve. 

 

Also with Cleveland, Lebron is magnet for Talent.  If love leaves they'll have money to spend on someone else and I doubt very much that no star takes the opportunity to play with Lebron. 

[Renegade7]

I was entertained, and am very proud of this team, really am : )

I, too, don't feel Randy is going anywhere now, no matter how I feel about it. I guess I can live with them adding another assistant coach who can specializes in offense, particularly what's going on in today's NBA.

I brought it up to my dad not too long ago about the concern of Nene saying he wanted his minutes limited. In my eyes, he's done, and we need to address the PF position from the standpoint of being able to matchup for the Milsaps of the NBA; the only answer we had for him all series was watching him catch the flu.

Wall and Beal are probably already the best backcourt in the East, and I could tell by the way they manhandled the backcourts of Toronto and Atlanta game after game. With the emergence of Porter, we really need replacements for Butler and Webster (basically guys off the bench that when Wall finds them open and hit open shots).

As long as we keep up the defense and continue to dominant backcourt matchups, we're going to be a problem in the East for years to come. There's a difference between what I want and what I can live with, and I can live with addressing athleticism at PF and getting bench players that can hit open shots.

Also, please keep Seraphin. He gets a lot of love, even on the national level, and a lot of times deservedly so.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Renegade7

[StillUnknown]

Also, please keep Seraphin. He gets a lot of love, even on the national level, and a lot of times deservedly so.

 

J. Michael thinks he's gone.

 

http://www.csnwashington.com/basketball-washington-wizards/talk/free-agents-player-options-and-major-expiring-deal-await-wizards

 

 

Kevin Seraphin: He's not returning. The center scored a career playoff high 13 points in Game 6. He wants playing time and a chance to start, and with Marcin Gortat entering the second year of a five-year deal that pays him an average of $12 million per, Seraphin will have to go elsewhere. He'll command more money in the open market than what the Wizards would be willing to offer him as a backup.

I wouldn't mind keeping Seraphin, but not at the price he could probably get on the open market.

[Destino]

Seeing him close out and recover on defense makes me wonder why Randy didn't give him more time at PF.  This being the same coach that didn't give Otto any burn only to have him turn out to be a hell of a player in the playoffs makes me suspect his reasons were "I make the decisons, not you!" 

[Sticksboi05]

Fire Randy.