The Official Washington Basketball Thread: Wizards, Mystics etc

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

 

[Going Commando]

We need a vet bench small forward.  Only 2 deep at the position once again.  Need a shooter.  Kelly isn't reliable yet

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

 

[Bozo the kKklown]

9 hours ago, RonArtest15 said:

No doubt that the Wizards match BK, but I really believe that Otto will be dealt by Feb. 

I don't see it.

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

 

[Going Commando]

Trading Otto is not the move we need to make before the deadline.  We need to deal Gortat and Mahinmi.  Maybe Morris too.

 

We have four centers on the roster.  Two making starter money and a third stringer making back up money and then another end of bench body.  Three of the centers have zero ability to play PF (Gortat, Ochefu, Mahinmi) and thus can not share the floor.  The fourth is not a great option at PF because he can't defend the position (Smith).  We also have a 6'10 PF who can play small ball center in Keef Morris.

 

No team in the league should be carrying four centers in this era, much less three who can't share the floor.  Especially when they've got a fifth guy at PF who can play the position.  If Mahinmi and Gortat could have partnered for a true time share, then maybe they could have justified the money spent at the position.  But Mahinmi's injuries are an issue and Gortat is declining.  And in any case, we don't then need Jason Smith as well.

 

And if we can get a center like DeMarcus Cousins, he changes the paradigm of our roster and our offense.  You don't need anything but a dirt cheap, marginal back up if you have him.  He'll play 36+ minutes a night at the position.

 

So yeah, we need to be dumping Gortat and Mahinmi ASAP.  We'll be able to trade Jason Smith too since he's a good rotation player on a good deal.  But I'd prefer to keep him as the back up C precisely because he's good and well priced.  But he also has a player option for the '18/'19 season, so the decision is likely out of our hands anyway.

 

Also we need to cut Ochefu and go with someone like Jahleel Roberts for the end of the bench.  Ochefu brings nothing to the table.

[Rocky21]

23 hours ago, StillUnknown said:

 

 

Despite Woj calling him a guard, Mike Scott is a stretch four who will hopefully see his 3 point shooting percentage go up playing minutes with John Wall.

[Going Commando]

Our cap situation for the summer of 2018 is this:

 

Beal - 25.4

Otto - ~25

Wall - 19.2

Mahinmi - 15.9

Gortat - 13.6

Morris - 8.6

Smith - 5.4 (player option)

Meeks - 3.5

Oubre - 3.2 (team option)

Sato - 3.1

McCullough - 2.2 (team option)

Frazier - 3.8 (hold)

Mac - 1.7 (hold)

Scott - 1.5 (hold)

Ochefu - 1.5 (non guaranteed)

Webster - .8 (dead cap)

 

Some of those numbers are still up in the air until we see some finalized contracts.  But the estimates should be close.

 

15 players + 1 dead cap commitment = 134.4 million.  Cap projection is currently 103 with a tax line at 125.

 

So, right off the bat we can cut salary by renouncing the holds, cutting ochefu, and declining the option on McCullough.  Save 10.7 million that way and get to 123.7.  The next move is to deal Jason Smith if he doesn't renounce his option outright, which gets us to 118.3.  Those are the easy savings.

 

Gortat and Morris are the next easiest and most logical places to save money.  They go into the 2018/2019 season as expiring contracts connected to good players on reasonable dollar amounts.  They'll be easy to trade.  Dropping Gortat for an expiring this season gets us to 104.7.  Trading Keef is a tougher call to make since it leaves us without any starting caliber PF, but if we have to make the move, then we can.  And dumping his salary gets us to 96.1.

 

Then the next and most difficult step is dumping Mahinmi for expirings.  He'll have two years left on his deal, so unless he plays well this year, he'll be negative value in a trade.  If we pull off a Mahinmi salary dump, then we're sitting at 80.2.  And we'd have roughly 20-21 million in cap space, which gets us close to DeMarcus Cousins territory.

 

There are other cap considerations.  Meeks's second year could be non or only partially guaranteed.  Otto's cap hit could be different from the projected 4 year max.  And of course the cap could rise more than the meager 4% increase they're currently projecting.  It's been somewhere between a 7-11% increase over the past several years, excluding the crazy ass offseason where it jumped 34.5%.  A conservative yet realistic increase estimate of 7% would put the cap at 106 and give us a few more million.  Couple that with dumping Meeks and/or Otto having a more cap friendly deal and we probably get the rest of the way to max room.  And then the final option is to deal Sato.

 

But the best move of all is to trade for Cousins this season.  If New Orleans sucks again, then he'll go on the block and then it wouldn't matter what our salary situation looks like.  We could use Bird Rights to extend him.  That way we wouldn't have to trade off good players like Morris and renounce our holds and decline options on interesting young guys like Mac, McCullough, and Frazier.  We could just get rid of Mahinmi and Gortat and enact a few other easy cost saving measures to lessen our tax burden and have a filled out roster.

[Warhead36]

So lets hope the Pelicans suck to motivate them to trade Cousins.

 

 

[TradeTheBeal!]

4 minutes ago, Warhead36 said:

So lets hope the Pelicans suck to motivate them to trade Cousins.

 

 

 

Not too difficult to imagine a scenario where NO sees Otto/Davis as a better fit than Boogie/Davis.

[Warhead36]

If we did trade Porter for Cousins though, we'd have to bank on Oubre blossoming into a starting caliber 3 and D SF. I like his talent but his offensive game needs a lot of work, although he did seem to hit a few more 3s this year.

 

Then again acquiring Cousins means we could dump Gortat and use that cap space to shore up other spots I guess.

[Going Commando]

Considering Paul George just got traded for Victor Oladipo and a draft bust, Butler just got traded for a kid with a torn ACL, a draft bust, and a mid lotto pick, and Cousins himself got traded for Buddy Hield and a ham sandwich, I'm not trading Otto Porter for A DeMarcus Cousins who will be under contract for three months and is unlikely to stay in New Orleans anyway.

[Llevron]

2 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

Considering Paul George just got traded for Victor Oladipo and a draft bust, Butler just got traded for a kid with a torn ACL, a draft bust, and a mid lotto pick, and Cousins himself got traded for Buddy Hield and a ham sandwich, I'm not trading Otto Porter for A DeMarcus Cousins who will be under contract for three months and is unlikely to stay in New Orleans anyway.

 

If we can hold off a year and end up with Otto AND Cousins we win the east. 

[TradeTheBeal!]

3 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

Considering Paul George just got traded for Victor Oladipo and a draft bust, Butler just got traded for a kid with a torn ACL, a draft bust, and a mid lotto pick, and Cousins himself got traded for Buddy Hield and a ham sandwich, I'm not trading Otto Porter for A DeMarcus Cousins who will be under contract for three months and is unlikely to stay in New Orleans anyway.

 

So you'd walk away from that deal?

[Going Commando]

2 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said:

 

So you'd walk away from that deal?

 

Definitely.  Not going to pay full price for an expiring star we can get in free agency.  The whole point of trading for Cousins instead of waiting until he hits the market is to easily sign him after extending Otto.

 

Nobody is giving up anything that's close to as good as Otto in these trades.  I'm offering Gortat or Mahinmi and Sato and maybe a future first.  If they say no then I say oh well and start clearing salary.

[Warhead36]

Yeah but Grunfeld is never the GM that rips others off. He's the one that gets ripped off.

[Forehead]

Is there an actual workable scenario (not a pipe dream) where we can roll out Wall-Beal-Porter-Cousins in two years and have a bench that's worth anything?  I'm not a huge basketball fan, and definitely not a cap guy, so I'm not familiar with the tricks to work around luxury tax, etc. like in football.

[TradeTheBeal!]

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

Definitely.  Not going to pay full price for an expiring star we can get in free agency.  The whole point of trading for Cousins instead of waiting until he hits the market is to easily sign him after extending Otto.

 

Nobody is giving up anything that's close to as good as Otto in these trades.  I'm offering Gortat or Mahinmi and Sato and maybe a future first.  If they say no then I say oh well and start clearing salary.

 

Let me paraphrase this:

 

I enjoyed getting absolutely ignored by Durant last year and would gladly entertain the process of competing against Miami and Chicago and Los Angeles for Boogie.  Such fun!!!  Plus it's really our best option because the Pacers GM is a moron and other various reasons...

56 minutes ago, Warhead36 said:

Yeah but Grunfeld is never the GM that rips others off. He's the one that gets ripped off.

 

He's the guy that traded Kwame Brown for Caron Butler.  Just sayin...

[Going Commando]

1 hour ago, Forehead said:

Is there an actual workable scenario (not a pipe dream) where we can roll out Wall-Beal-Porter-Cousins in two years and have a bench that's worth anything?  I'm not a huge basketball fan, and definitely not a cap guy, so I'm not familiar with the tricks to work around luxury tax, etc. like in football.

 

If you've got a 100 million cap and four guys making about 25 million each, then you won't really have money for a bench.  But that's OK.  When you've already got bench guys on your payroll, you can go over the cap to keep them.  And the other big thing is getting guys to take discounts to play for a winner.  Omri Casspi just signed a min contract to play in Golden State.  That's a pretty ridiculous bargain, Casspi is good.

 

If we secured a Wall/Beal/Porter/Cousins foundation, that's the cream of the East.  We'd be getting ring chasers who want to get to the Finals and can't get on Golden State's roster.

 

Bottom line, in the NBA you always take paper over coins.  The teams that field a starting five full of expensive All Stars have won most of the championships going back a long time.  But most recently, the Big 3 era in Boston, Kobe's expensive back to back championship teams with Gasol and Bynum, the Heatles, the Warriors, and the Cavs have all been top heavy champions that have had to go way into the luxury tax to build their teams.  If we can get Cousins without losing Porter, then we need to make it happen and figure out the bench later.

1 hour ago, TryTheBeal! said:

I enjoyed getting absolutely ignored by Durant last year and would gladly entertain the process of competing against Miami and Chicago and Los Angeles for Boogie.  Such fun!!!  Plus it's really our best option because the Pacers GM is a moron and other various reasons...

 

You're really worried about competing with Miami, Chicago, and LA for Boogie?

[StillUnknown]

1 hour ago, TryTheBeal! said:

 

 Plus it's really our best option because the Pacers GM is a moron and other various reasons...

 

smart enough to walk away from Mahinmi, unlike somebody I know and detest

[TradeTheBeal!]

11 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

 

You're really worried about competing with Miami, Chicago, and LA for Boogie?

 

Is Wall/Beal/Cousins a core that can't compete without Porter?

 

Can you provide an example of the Washington Wizards being an attractive FA destination?

7 minutes ago, StillUnknown said:

 

smart enough to walk away from Mahinmi, unlike somebody I know and detest

 

If Mahinmi stays healthy, he'll be just fine at 16M.  Don't be such a Debbie Downer.

[justice98]

11 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

If you've got a 100 million cap and four guys making about 25 million each, then you won't really have money for a bench.  But that's OK.  When you've already got bench guys on your payroll, you can go over the cap to keep them.  And the other big thing is getting guys to take discounts to play for a winner.  Omri Casspi just signed a min contract to play in Golden State.  That's a pretty ridiculous bargain, Casspi is good.

 

If we secured a Wall/Beal/Porter/Cousins foundation, that's the cream of the East.  We'd be getting ring chasers who want to get to the Finals and can't get on Golden State's roster.

 

 

I think we'd have to actually WIN first.  I dont think people start taking discounts on an idea, without playing with a proven winner enticing people, like Lebron. 

 

The first year might be scraping things together until they prove they're a legit title contender.  Then folks might wanna take less to get on board.  I dont think they're gonna go from barely cracking 50 next year (if they even do) to prime free agent destination for ring chasers overnight.

[CRobi21]

 

[Going Commando]

22 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said:

Is Wall/Beal/Cousins a core that can't compete without Porter?

 

Can you provide an example of the Washington Wizards being an attractive FA destination?

 

We're far better with Porter in that core than without him.

 

The Wizards will be an attractive destination to DeMarcus Cousins by virtue of having the player that Cousins has wanted to play with for the last seven years.

 

And at any rate, those aren't the teams I'm worried about.  Houston and San Antonio are.

 

You'd really be willing to pay about a thousand percent more for Cousins than New Orleans did?  We know beyond all doubt that this guy's trade value is not Otto Porter.  Especially not for three months of control instead of a year and a half.

15 minutes ago, justice98 said:

 

I think we'd have to actually WIN first.  I dont think people start taking discounts on an idea, without playing with a proven winner enticing people, like Lebron. 

 

The first year might be scraping things together until they prove they're a legit title contender.  Then folks might wanna take less to get on board.  I dont think they're gonna go from barely cracking 50 next year (if they even do) to prime free agent destination for ring chasers overnight.

 

Sure.  But we'd win.  The Cavs are about a year away from getting broken up and Wall/Cousins/Beal/Porter is better than Thomas/Hayward/Horford.

[CRobi21]