The Official Washington Basketball Thread: Wizards, Mystics etc

[Destino]

Good win, but that Beal injury did not look good at all. Doubtful it's a sprain if he couldn't put any pressure on it at all. Darn.

He didnt try to walk on it and sprains hurt like mad in the moments after they happen. I have a swollen right foot and ankle as I type this so its all fresh in my head. It could be all sorts of things though so they won't know for sure until after X-rays confirm nothing is broken and the swelling/bruising speaks towards the severity of the injury.

Also, why don't they have a folding wheel chair courtside? I see guys carrying teammates all the time which looks like a bad idea to me. Ankle and knee injuries are goingto happen in basketball regularly, being prepared isn't going to bankrupt any owner.

[Going Commando]

You know the fan base would freak out if they saw a player get wheeled off in a wheel chair.

[Going Commando]

Wall takes heat for his bad games and he gets raise for good ones. He was big at the very end and won this game for us.

Yeah, like others said, hopefully this game was a confidence builder for John. Same for Jan. He had a nice little game tonight, played some defense, made a contribution on offense. Strength is a major issue for him, he really struggles to maintain his position and gets boxed out by the offensive players on rebounds. But his quickness and fluidity can be a major attribute for him.

Feels like Ves is still years away from being a regular contributor because of his strength level. Years away from showing us what he's going to be as an NBA player. Pretty discouraging for drafting Zeller, Noel, Len, Austin, etc. You're talking about years from today before those guys are developed. We want to be in the playoffs next year.

[Destino]

Did you watch the scouting video for Noel on draft express? The weakness portion is hard to watch. He gets dominated physically on both sides of the court and they follow it up by questioning his hands.

http://www.draftexpress.com/article/NBA-Draft-Prospect-of-the-Week-Nerlens-Noel-4086/

[Going Commando]

Did you watch the scouting video for Noel on draft express? The weakness portion is hard to watch. He gets dominated physically on both sides of the court and they follow it up by questioning his hands.

http://www.draftexpress.com/article/NBA-Draft-Prospect-of-the-Week-Nerlens-Noel-4086/

I think his hands have to be pretty great in order to be as good at getting steals and blocking shots as he is. He's probably an even better shot blocker than Anthony Davis was.

I also think the video and article don't account for how rapidly Nerlens was improving on the offensive end before he got hurt. He had almost no offensive role for the first half of the season but there was a turning point a few weeks before he got hurt where he actually started getting the ball and scoring. Producing off the dribble and scoring with his back to the basket. I suspect his offensive game is actually a lot better than people realize and his offensive potential is greater than he's typically given credit for.

[Destino]

I think his hands have to be pretty great in order to be as good at getting steals and blocking shots as he is. He's probably an even better shot blocker than Anthony Davis was.

I also think the video and article don't account for how rapidly Nerlens was improving on the offensive end before he got hurt. He had almost no offensive role for the first half of the season but there was a turning point a few weeks before he got hurt where he actually started getting the ball and scoring. Producing off the dribble and scoring with his back to the basket. I suspect his offensive game is actually a lot better than people realize and his offensive potential is greater than he's typically given credit for.

The video did credit him with straight line drives and showed him getting the ball quite a bit. The hands weakness was due to his fumbling many passes that hit him in the hands, same criticism Vesely received going into the draft.

[Thinking Skins]

I know he's had some bad games recently with very little points, but it seems that John Wall has found his spot on that jumper. I'm not confusing him with Bradley Beal or even Martel Webster or anything, but when he shoots it from that elbow it seems to have a nice arc on it and normally goes in or if it doesn't he at least gets the rim.

[RonArtest15]

Let's say we finish with around 30 wins and end up drafting between 8-13. Who is on our draft radar then?

[StillUnknown]

[Rocky21]

I only watched a few minutes of the game but I saw Okafor had a 12 / 16 night and was +11. Nice.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Bucks going 8-20 is very realistic...I'm not sure if we can get to 20-8 though. I see us going more like 18-10.

Wizards are now 10.5 behind the Bucks.

[Going Commando]

Let's say we finish with around 30 wins and end up drafting between 8-13. Who is on our draft radar then?

Only 24 games left, that's 11-13 down the strecth. Possible, but a little unlikely. 13 would be very unlikely with just 30 wins too. That would mean almost every other team behind of us in the lottery absolutely imploded or else we end up picking 11th and got leap frogged by two teams behind us, something that has a .001 % chance of happening.

To pick 13th, we could finish no earlier than 11th from last in the standings. I just don't see that happening. I see basically no chance that we finish with more wins than Dallas, Portland, Philadelphia, Toronto, Detroit, and the one of Houston, Utah, Golden State, and LA that gets left out of the playoffs.

I think our worst realistic scenario is finishing 7th from last in wins, which means we would pick no later than 9th and almost certainly pick 7th or 8th, probably 7th. We'd have an 85.3% chance of picking 7th or 8th, and our chances of picking first, second, or third would actually be greater than our chance of picking 9th.

So I look at picking 8th as our realistic floor. In that range, I'd go with Porter, Bennett, or maybe Oladipo, ranked 11th, 7th, and 8th according to DX. According to Chad Ford's rankings, I would go with Zeller, Shabazz, and Len in that order, ranked 9th, 8th, and 7th respectively. According to NBAdraft.net's rankings I go Porter, then Len, then Oladipo, ranked 7th, 8th, and 25th respectively.

Basically the group I would choose from at 7 or 8 is about the same as the group I'd choose from picking 3-6: Porter & the big men and maybe Bennett. Maybe a swing man like Shabazz or Dipo. With there not being a ton of separation between the top 7 or 8 guys in the class, I think almost anyone but McLemore and Noel could be available as late as 7th or 8th. I don't think picking in that range is going to hurt too bad.

[Gator Bait]

Wizards are now 10.5 behind the Bucks.

We can't win without Beal/Nene/Wall. Nene misses two games and we lose them both....we are done. Hopefully we can get Otto Porter in the draft.

[SuperBash]

I don't think anyone realistically thought we had an outside chance at a playoff spot after the 5-28 start. The best case scenario for the rest of the season is, continue playing 500 ball while still finishing with a top 5-7 draft pick.

[Thinking Skins]

I don't think anyone realistically thought we had an outside chance at a playoff spot after the 5-28 start. The best case scenario for the rest of the season is, continue playing 500 ball while still finishing with a top 5-7 draft pick.

I will say that it does give me hope for this team though. Not saying I see a number 1 seed in the future, but I think we can legitimately compete night in and night out. The problem with this team though is that we don't have depth. Maybe thats not the word because we have bodies that were drafted high and are guys we like Singleton, Booker, Ariza, Seraphin, maybe Vesely. But I don't want any of those guys starting even for a game. And thats really where our problem comes in. I mean without Wall, Nene, Okafur, Beal or Webster we're a bottom barrel team. And that's what sucks.

But I have a good feeling about this upcoming draft. I don't think we'll get a superstar, but I don't think we need one. I was hoping (expecting) that Beal would turn into that - so much so that I was afraid to say so for fear of a jinx. Now, I'd like somebody to rotate in at the 2 and 3, or 4 and 5. That's basically Ariza and Okafur's roles and I'm not saying we should get rid of them, just that we need more bodies there that can be a part of a legit team. Because going forward, I don't think we need to be keeping all the same role players we have who have nothing like a shot outside of 16 ft.

[SuperBash]

Quality depth is a concern for next year. If only we could convince some useful vets to sign one year deals with us next year...or at least cheap vets that are still useful to us.

[RonArtest15]

Quality depth is a concern for next year. If only we could convince some useful vets to sign one year deals with us next year...or at least cheap vets that are still useful to us.

That's my concern as well.

It's amazing how much this team suffers when either Wall/Nene are out of the lineup. Depth is something that needs to be addressed.

---------- Post added March-4th-2013 at 01:13 PM ----------

Only 24 games left, that's 11-13 down the strecth. Possible, but a little unlikely. 13 would be very unlikely with just 30 wins too. That would mean almost every other team behind of us in the lottery absolutely imploded or else we end up picking 11th and got leap frogged by two teams behind us, something that has a .001 % chance of happening.

To pick 13th, we could finish no earlier than 11th from last in the standings. I just don't see that happening. I see basically no chance that we finish with more wins than Dallas, Portland, Philadelphia, Toronto, Detroit, and the one of Houston, Utah, Golden State, and LA that gets left out of the playoffs.

I think our worst realistic scenario is finishing 7th from last in wins, which means we would pick no later than 9th and almost certainly pick 7th or 8th, probably 7th. We'd have an 85.3% chance of picking 7th or 8th, and our chances of picking first, second, or third would actually be greater than our chance of picking 9th.

So I look at picking 8th as our realistic floor. In that range, I'd go with Porter, Bennett, or maybe Oladipo, ranked 11th, 7th, and 8th according to DX. According to Chad Ford's rankings, I would go with Zeller, Shabazz, and Len in that order, ranked 9th, 8th, and 7th respectively. According to NBAdraft.net's rankings I go Porter, then Len, then Oladipo, ranked 7th, 8th, and 25th respectively.

Basically the group I would choose from at 7 or 8 is about the same as the group I'd choose from picking 3-6: Porter & the big men and maybe Bennett. Maybe a swing man like Shabazz or Dipo. With there not being a ton of separation between the top 7 or 8 guys in the class, I think almost anyone but McLemore and Noel could be available as late as 7th or 8th. I don't think picking in that range is going to hurt too bad.

I think there will be a quality player to be had around #8 - if that's where we pick. I don't think there is a player in the country who has helped their draft stock more than Otto Porter. IMO, he'll be long gone before we draft (if we're at 8). Bennett, Austin, and Oladipo intrigue me and all three should be there by the time we pick.

*I wonder if there's a chance that Cody Zeller stays in Bloomington? I know he has a MUCH higher upside than his brother...but he stayed at UNC for 4 years.

*Here's another question...are there any players we want the Wizards to stay away from?

1. Alex Len

2. JM McAdoo

[nuposse87]

Teams like CHA might be willing to trade back in this draft. Pick swap+Seraphin/somebody would absolutely be worth if they were to offer us a chance at Noel/Porter.

Maybe even the wolves would, as I think we'll probably supplant them eventually as well.

[Going Commando]

Quality depth is a concern for next year. If only we could convince some useful vets to sign one year deals with us next year...or at least cheap vets that are still useful to us.

We probably can. We did for Webster and Price. And we were nowhere near as promising last offseason as we are now.

Depth is certainly an issue. We're a 6 or 7 man team really. The seventh man being which ever of the young group of Seraphin/Vesely/Booker/Singleton or Price that actually plays well that night. But that's a whole lot better than we were last year, when we were a one or two man team.

Our long term problem is keeping the six man group of pretty good players that we've got in place and filling our starting SF and C positions with good players long term. As we know, Martell is a UFA this summer and Ariza has a player option for next year and Okafor is a UFA after next summer. Pretty sure we won't have full bird rights on any of those guys. Which means we'll have to use other exceptions like Early Bird exception and the MLE or be under the cap to sign them.

I think Ariza almost certainly picks up his option for next year. 7+ million in your pocket is hard to pass up in a financially uncertain summer where teams are probably going to be wanting to shed salary.

I don't think we're going to be able to extend all three of Okafor/Ariza/Webster after they hit FA, TBH.

This summer is going to be a bit screwy for the FA market making Webster's value hard to predict. On the one hand, it's a somewhat bare FA class bereft of stars soaking up all the FA money that could increase Webster's value. On the other there are very few teams with FA money to spend this summer anyway, negating that effect.

Ultimately, I think the SG/SF shooter crop is decent enough this summer that Webster won't really be in hot demand. Or if he is, we could let him go and find a FA replacement. Look at this list:

- Manu Ginobli

- Kevin Martin

- Kyle Korver

- Martell Webster

- Randy Foye

- Tony Allen

- J.J. Redick

- Carlos Delfino

- JR Smith

- Nick Young

- Ronnie Brewer

- Rip Hamilton

- Marquise Daniels

- Anthony Morrow

- Raja Bell

- Leandro Barbosa

- Wesley Johnson

- Marco Belinelli

- Mike Dunleavey

- Dahntay Jones

- Keith Bogans

- Roger Mason

- Stephen Jackson

- Dorrell Wright

- Chase Budinger

- Corey Brewer

- Josh Howard

- Corey Maggette

- Matt Barnes

- Demarre Carroll

- Sam Young

- Luke Babbitt

- Francisco Garcia

- Cartier Martin

- Jerry Stackhouse

- Luke Walton

- Hedo Turkoglu

- Al Harrington

Those are all FA wings who either have team options that won't get picked up, player options they won't pick up, non guaranteed contracts likely to get them traded and cut, or are UFAs outright. In short, that's probably most of the available veteran options we have to fill Martell's spot this summer. Yes, I realize some of those guys are PG/SG types rather than SG/SF types like Martell.

It's a huge list and Martell's position is probably the easiest to fill with an adequate player in the NBA. There's not a ton of money to shuffle around this summer and a lot of those guys are going to have to sign for vet min exceptions.

Bottom line: we should be able to replace Martell with a decent FA for the vet min or just a bit more.

My top choice would be to keep Martell. We know he works well for us, he's still young, and he's a glue guy. But we don't need to break the bank to keep him. Next year we are on the hook for ~59 million dollars in salary against the cap with 9 players under contract. Assuming Ariza picks up his option. That's over the cap but well below the tax line. Figure we'll have a top ten rookie scale contract on the roster as a 10th contract unless we trade the pick. Figure we can also probably use our second rounders or Satoransky and min contract players to fill out the other bench spots, our 12-15 spots. Then hopefully we can sign our 3rd guard or backup PG for cheap, maybe a slice of MLE money or a vet min extension. That means we should have most of the MLE to spend on Webster if we wanted to keep him and we hopefully should be able to stay just under the luxury tax line.

And Webster really should not cost the full MLE. We're overvaluing him if he does cost that much because there is no reason we can't roll with someone like Raja Bell or Kyle Korver for a bargain deal instead. There will be bargain deals for wing shooters out there into August. There are every summer.

Bottom line, I think we can realistically keep Webster this summer if we're willing to use the MLE. I don't think signing him for just the vet FA exception (120% of this year's salary) get's the job done considering how much of a bargain his contract this season has been.

--------------------------

Wall has an extension coming up the same season Okafor and Ariza hit UFA. If we are smart, we'll negotiate his extension before the year starts. We've nothing to gain by waiting until the summer he hits the open market. His value isn't likely to get lower and it's obvious we have to move forward with him as our PG unless we stumble onto a better long term option this summer. Waiting puts us at risk of getting stuck in a ****ty situation like the Bucks have with Brandon Jennings. Negotiating the extension a year early this summer like Denver did with Lawson, and GS did with Steph Curry is our only sensible option. It means we are so much more likely to get a bargain deal with Wall. His bargaining position is not going to be max money strong this summer. I think we could get him for about the 10-11 million annual deal that Lawson and Curry got. He's worth that IMO. And that way we insulate ourselves against the chance he blows up next year and actually commands max money in UFA. That's saving at least 4 or 5 million annually, or heaven forbid he wins an MVP and then we'd save at least 8 or 9 million annually and John's contract would be the most valuable deal in the league.

But John's extension also means we're simply unable to sign Okafor and Ariza at anything close to the level of their previous contracts. We won't be using those vet FA exceptions to sign them. I think they'd probably be eligible for Early Bird rights, but I'm not certain they are, and I'm not certain we'd want to use that exception to keep them.

Would they stay for a huge pay cut? Who knows? But I'm thinking Ariza and especially Oak will still command some FA value and Oak will probably sign for a decent sized deal if he has another season next year like the one he's had this year. Chris Kaman got 8 million dollars this summer. I'd speculate Oak's next deal would be around that much per anum, probably only one or two years at a time from here on out in his career. He's a pretty good starting center.

My gut says we'll probably be best off trading Oak's expiring in the long run, particularly if we draft a big man this year. We'll have a lot of cap space even after a sizable Wall extension so you could potentially bring Oak back for 7 or 8 million a year for one or two years. We'd have flexibility due to the fact Beal and this year's draft pick would (hopefully) be key players on rookie scale deals.

When we're potentially going to get cash strapped is further down the road when Beal comes up for an extension and costs us < 6 year vet max of about 13 or 14 million to start for 5 years with annual raises built in. Or if he gets an MVP or gets two AS appearances as a starter before his rookie deal ends, the Derrick Rose exception kicks in and he's eligible for the dang 16-18 million dollars annual max extension. So we're in the odd position of hoping that Paul George and Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, and Kyrie Irving all take up the starting guard spots on the AS teams until Beal's rookie deal is over. Otherwise, it could be difficult to keep this year's draft pick if we hit a home run with it like we did with Beal. That's so far down the line though, not much point in trying to crunch the numbers today. Nene's deal will be off the books by then.

[StillUnknown]

Kyle Weidie

‏@Truth_About_It

Flip Saunders, via radio, said was proponent from Day 1 on changing #Wizards "knucklehead" atmosphere. Also told Leonsis in exit interview.

Kyle Weidie

‏@Truth_About_It

Flip Saunders (on ESPN 980) also alluded to being overruled by team MGMT. (Leonsis) in terms of his dealings with / support of Blatche.

Kyle Weidie

‏@Truth_About_It

Essentially, on 3/23/2010, Flip Saunders benched Andray Blatche b/c of this bull****: http://www.truthaboutit.net/2010/03/the-play-that-got-andray-blatche-benched.html … ...

Kyle Weidie

‏@Truth_About_It

Ppl were surprised when Blatche didn't get suspended 4 next game. Per Flip, seems that Leonsis/MGMT overruled. Great way 2 run an org, Ted.

[Destino]

Did he say Leonsis or just management because that could have been Ernie right?

[SuperBash]

We get to play in Brazil next year and face the Bulls. Nene will probably sit out with back spasms.

[StillUnknown]

We get to play in Brazil next year and face the Bulls. Nene will probably sit out with back spasms.

Nene's foot could be amputated, he'll find a way to play in Brazil.

[the burgundy and gold]

Just listened to Beal on 980, he really is impressive for a 19 year old. Sounds like a 10 year vet during interviews.

[Gator Bait]

Just listened to Beal on 980, he really is impressive for a 19 year old. Sounds like a 10 year vet during interviews.

have you ever heard an interview with Martell Webster? I really like Beal as well, but Martell has to be one of the best spoken/smartest NBA player I've ever listened to. I'm a big fan of Martell's play on the court and the presence he brings to the locker room. This team seems to be cancer-less now