The Official Washington Basketball Thread: Wizards, Mystics etc

[Destino]

One thing to note about Lewis' deal versus Okariza. Lewis' final year was only partially guaranteed so in addition to clearing 20+ million in space the following year it also granted immediate savings. Neither Okafor or Ariza have that, instead they have early termination and player options for next year both fully guaranteed. That makes the contracts we took on significantly less valuable than what we gave up. That is why Lewis is playing in Miami under a brand new deal and the Hornets started on their team without him already. We will have no such option.

The trade will define the wizards until at least next years trade dealing IMO unless one of them, likely Ariza, can produce enough to make some team think he could help them in, or in getting to, the postseason. No one is going to take Okafor's 14 million a year contract, its pure poison, considering how far his play has fallen.

The reason this matters is that it makes coming here less appealing to a GM and there is no prone coach that would consider this job after what Wittmen is saying about the roster.

[StillUnknown]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wizards-vs-pacers-washington-sets-franchise-record-with-ninth-straight-loss/2012/11/19/c51918aa-32bb-11e2-92f0-496af208bf23_story_1.html

“I don’t know what to say anymore, to be honest. Probably look at my previous statement. Cut and paste, at this point,” said Emeka Okafor, who had just one point and one rebound and failed to play in the fourth quarter for the fifth time this season.

That trade is quickly rivaling the Miller + Foye debacle.

[Burgold]

Wonder if Witman will be fired winless. He seems out of ideas and without the ability to inspire. If nine games in, players are pretty openly throwing in the towel... that's about as bad as you can get.

[@DCGoldPants]

I don't know what would have an impact.....if either.

@tedleonsis getting peppered with demands that he says/does something now because the season is already lost.

or

Nobody saying anything.......anywhere. No more talking about the Wizards. No more acknowledging them as the NBA team in Washington. Basically acting like they folded or he moved them to another town.

Too bad there aren't blackout rules here....because I'd prefer this squad not get on TV in this town.

Who thought when Ted finally took control of this team, it would go like this? Not me.

[Thinking Skins]

that should fix that confidence problem. lol

He's in a lose lose situation, and I realize that, but he's not a good coach. They should force Ernie to do a press conference after every loss. That way he gets to sweat instead of sit back and point to the latest scape goat.

But you realize that Wittman gives Ernie ANOTHER excuse. Now he can say that we're only losing because of the coach he hired.

[GoCommiesGo]

I can't for the life of me understand what is going on with this team, The coach is set-up to fail because the roster would struggle in the d league as it is now. The owner appears to be content with the abysmal direction they are headed and the general manager doesn't ever have to answer for his mistakes.

The whole structure looks to be a direct reflection of the owner and if that is true then honestly this team is hopeless going forward.

I don't follow the capitals so if anyone is willing to chime in and explain to me what Ted does I would greatly appreciate it, the "Stay the course" mantra is ringing hollow.

[Renegade7]

Ted needs to pull a Snyder and get a real GM to clean up this mess the right way. We don't even look like a rebuilding team anymore, we look like we just suck...

[GoCommiesGo]

But you realize that Wittman gives Ernie ANOTHER excuse. Now he can say that we're only losing because of the coach he hired.

If Randy is fired you have to fire Ernie, no if ands or buts. You can't punish one man for being put in a bad situation and reward another for creating both the poor hire and bad situation.

[Burgold]

I can't for the life of me understand what is going on with this team, The coach is set-up to fail because the roster would struggle in the d league as it is now. The owner appears to be content with the abysmal direction they are headed and the general manager doesn't ever have to answer for his mistakes.

The whole structure looks to be a direct reflection of the owner and if that is true then honestly this team is hopeless going forward.

I don't follow the capitals so if anyone is willing to chime in and explain to me what Ted does I would greatly appreciate it, the "Stay the course" mantra is ringing hollow.

I think Leonsis is more of a hockey guy who bought the Wizards because A) it was expected, he could, and C) he thought an NBA team would be a cash cow to fund everything else he enjoys. His heart never seemed into it the way it was the Caps.

[No Excuses]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wizards-vs-pacers-washington-sets-franchise-record-with-ninth-straight-loss/2012/11/19/c51918aa-32bb-11e2-92f0-496af208bf23_story_1.html

That trade is quickly rivaling the Miller + Foye debacle.

Surprise surprise.

Remember all the support this trade had? I doubt those people who supported this still understand what a valuable commodity Shard's contract was. We essentially let NO rebuild and dump their **** on to us for practically nothing.

We should have gotten their #10 overall pick. Now we end up with two turds instead of just one, and these two have longer contracts.

Edited November 20, 2012 by No Excuses

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Remember all the support this trade had? I doubt those people who supported this still understand what a valuable commodity Shard's contract was. We essentially let NO rebuild and dump their **** on to us for practically nothing.

I never understood how anyone could support that trade. Somehow, an incredibly valuable expiring was turned into two mediocre veterans with crippling long-term deals. I hated the Nene deal too.

The fundamental problem with Ernie is that he does not seem to realize how the NBA works now. You want roster flexibility above nearly all else. Everyone knows how much I hated the Harden deal, but at least Presti was seeking the right thing - flexibility.

Ernie seems to think that he is running an MLB club where you want each roster slot to be "solid." There is nothing wrong with having Nene, Ariza, and Okafor on your roster in theory. All are good guys. All are legit NBA players. In a capless world, they would be decent pieces. But it's not a capless world, and all they do is take away your ability to do anything at all.

---------- Post added November-20th-2012 at 10:21 AM ----------

By the way....the thing I'm most surprised about is that the Wizards have never gone 0-9 before.

[pjfootballer]

We could have had Rich Cho, an up and coming GM. He's here in Charlotte. They were raving about him when Jordan hired him. Look what he's done with their roster in less than 6 months. At least the Bobcats play hard.

[Going Commando]

The roster isn't good but it's not as awful as people make out.

The problem is the culture.

Our FO lacks the ability to build a culture of success in this organization. That's their #1 job! And they are failures. And so we are failures.

Losing close games like last night where a superior, veteran team closes it out i n winning time is expected. Our veteran players blow. The youngest players on the team are clearly our best players. Young guys don't know how to handle winning time like vets do. But again, our vets blow, so we can't get anything out of them at any point. We're just going to have to take our lumps here and hope we start strong enough some nights to have a 4th qtr lead.

What we need to be doing is just considering the Ariza/Okafor trade a sunk cost. Bury them on the depth chart and then deal them off is something comes along. Ariza doesn't care to be here and Okafor can't play any more. Go with a rotation of your young, hungry players that have been here a few years and give them PT. that's your primary 6--four front gourt players and two guards. Mix Webster, Livingston, and Price into the rotation since they've earned PT. Cartier Martin is your 10th man. No one else need play:

PG: Crawf/Livingston/Price

SG: Beal/Crawf/Livingston

SF: Singleton/Ves/Webster

PF: Booker/Ves/Singleton

C: Seraphin/Booker

Why not?

[Thinking Skins]

What we need to be doing is just considering the Ariza/Okafor trade a sunk cost. Bury them on the depth chart and then deal them off is something comes along. Ariza doesn't care to be here and Okafor can't play any more. Go with a rotation of your young, hungry players that have been here a few years and give them PT. that's your primary 6--four front gourt players and two guards. Mix Webster, Livingston, and Price into the rotation since they've earned PT. Cartier Martin is your 10th man. No one else need play:

PG: Crawf/Livingston/Price

SG: Beal/Crawf/Livingston

SF: Singleton/Ves/Webster

PF: Booker/Ves/Singleton

C: Seraphin/Booker

Why not?

We ended the season on a 6 game winning streak with a core of young players playing together and building chemistry.

We start off this season with 5 new guys who have never played together and expect to continue the winning streak?

And we still can't get our young guys any time. Why is Okafur playing over Seraphin? Why is Ariza playing over Singleton? Why is Price playing over Crawford? What have these guys proven? What does this organization owe to them?

At least if the young guys were playing we'd be talking about them growing and such. Now its just watching players who couldn't compete on others get playing time over our future.

And I'll admit that I wasn't so down on the trade because I thought that we'd use Okafur and Ariza differently - say as guys off the bench and not getting in the way of our starters. Singleton's CLEARLY made significant improvement from last year. Ariza is a bum. He has moments, but belongs coming off the bench. Same with Okafur.

[Kosher Ham]

Same cycle for this team for the better part of 30 years.

They play sloppy and lazy. That's why teams lose games to teams they should dominate.

I gotta give you die hard fans credit. I would just watch the games and not care if my team tried to pull the wool over my eyes for that long. Crappy coaches and weak rosters over and over. You get a star and either trade him or he walks. You get a star and don't build around him.

That's absurd.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

I can't for the life of me understand what is going on with this team, The coach is set-up to fail because the roster would struggle in the d league as it is now. The owner appears to be content with the abysmal direction they are headed and the general manager doesn't ever have to answer for his mistakes.

The whole structure looks to be a direct reflection of the owner and if that is true then honestly this team is hopeless going forward.

I don't follow the capitals so if anyone is willing to chime in and explain to me what Ted does I would greatly appreciate it, the "Stay the course" mantra is ringing hollow.

I never understood how anyone could support that trade. Somehow' date=' an incredibly valuable expiring was turned into two mediocre veterans with crippling long-term deals. I hated the Nene deal too.

The fundamental problem with Ernie is that he does not seem to realize how the NBA works now. You want roster flexibility above nearly all else. Everyone knows how much I hated the Harden deal, but at least Presti was seeking the right thing - flexibility.

Ernie seems to think that he is running an MLB club where you want each roster slot to be "solid." There is nothing wrong with having Nene, Ariza, and Okafor on your roster in theory. All are good guys. All are legit NBA players. In a capless world, they would be decent pieces. But it's not a capless world, and all they do is take away your ability to do anything at all.[/quote']

a lot of people on here are just homers who want to believe in something. I get it.

The Nene trade, even though he was injury prone and had a bad contract, I was ok with because dude is a good big man with positive experience. I was ok with that trade even though I never thought it would make us into a playoff contender like some were saying.

The Okafor/Ariza deal for Lewis' expiring should have gotten Ernie fired. I could not understand how anyone could think trading for 2 guys who were on a team as bad as ours would somehow make us contenders for a playoff spot.

I understood people wanting to be positive, but that trade was such a disaster just on paper.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

The roster isn't good but it's not as awful as people make out.

The problem is the culture.

Our FO lacks the ability to build a culture of success in this organization. That's their #1 job! And they are failures. And so we are failures.

Losing close games like last night where a superior, veteran team closes it out i n winning time is expected. Our veteran players blow. The youngest players on the team are clearly our best players. Young guys don't know how to handle winning time like vets do. But again, our vets blow, so we can't get anything out of them at any point. We're just going to have to take our lumps here and hope we start strong enough some nights to have a 4th qtr lead.

What we need to be doing is just considering the Ariza/Okafor trade a sunk cost. Bury them on the depth chart and then deal them off is something comes along. Ariza doesn't care to be here and Okafor can't play any more. Go with a rotation of your young, hungry players that have been here a few years and give them PT. that's your primary 6--four front gourt players and two guards. Mix Webster, Livingston, and Price into the rotation since they've earned PT. Cartier Martin is your 10th man. No one else need play:

PG: Crawf/Livingston/Price

SG: Beal/Crawf/Livingston

SF: Singleton/Ves/Webster

PF: Booker/Ves/Singleton

C: Seraphin/Booker

Why not?

You kind of answered your own question. Playing that team makes you the Chicago Bulls of the late 90s and early 00s. You roll out a team of college-aged guys, they get crushed night after night, and they learn how to lose. You need to have a few vets in the rotation just to prevent it from becoming an And 1 team.

The problem is this team has the wrong vets.

The only team that has ever really just sent out a bunch of kids and had it work was OKC.

(There is a way to do what you want and have it work and that's to showcase the young guys, have them improve quickly, and maybe trade a few of them for parts that fit better. Right now, this team is lacking in assets more than anything).

Edited November 20, 2012 by Lombardi's_kid_brother

[Renegade7]

The roster isn't good but it's not as awful as people make out.

The problem is the culture.

Our FO lacks the ability to build a culture of success in this organization. That's their #1 job! And they are failures. And so we are failures.

Losing close games like last night where a superior, veteran team closes it out i n winning time is expected. Our veteran players blow. The youngest players on the team are clearly our best players. Young guys don't know how to handle winning time like vets do. But again, our vets blow, so we can't get anything out of them at any point. We're just going to have to take our lumps here and hope we start strong enough some nights to have a 4th qtr lead.

What we need to be doing is just considering the Ariza/Okafor trade a sunk cost. Bury them on the depth chart and then deal them off is something comes along. Ariza doesn't care to be here and Okafor can't play any more. Go with a rotation of your young, hungry players that have been here a few years and give them PT. that's your primary 6--four front gourt players and two guards. Mix Webster, Livingston, and Price into the rotation since they've earned PT. Cartier Martin is your 10th man. No one else need play:

PG: Crawf/Livingston/Price

SG: Beal/Crawf/Livingston

SF: Singleton/Ves/Webster

PF: Booker/Ves/Singleton

C: Seraphin/Booker

Why not?

That's kinda what I thought we were going to do with Ariza and Okafor coming off the bench. I don't understand how we can be 0-9 and still giving older players that couldn't make it on other teams more minutes then players we are trying to develop. We can't even lose correctly right now, don't lose and leave your future on the f'n bench.

Throw Wall in there and I can live with us having a rotation like that, even if we aren't winning right away. Right now, it's like we have absolutely no idea what we're trying to do, and other teams are just playing us, getting the win, and getting on with there season. Times I see the wizards try to do something, but then they turn around and just look so unprofessional.

We're having to many busted draft picks, bad trades and free agent additions, and hiring incompetent coaches. At some point, are fans going to start going after Ernie during the games? I wish I could, but I'm in Norfolk right now...

[StillUnknown]

http://sulia.com/channel/basketball/f/51caacbc-9546-4e06-ae8d-9c0d2545ddf7/?source=twitter

Look for Nene to make season debut on Wednesday

Nene went through a full two-hour workout today and while it remains to be seen how he responds tomorrow, there's a good chance he could go vs. the Hawks. Happy Thanksgiving to the Wizards, indeed.

[Sticksboi05]

Great, now we'll win two games and Ted will think everything is okay.

[StillUnknown]

Great, now we'll win two games and Ted will think everything is okay.

Those were my first thoughts.

[Sticksboi05]

I will have zero excitement about this franchise until I wake up to Grunfeld's dismissal.

[StillUnknown]

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/blog/eye-on-basketball/21072642/wizards-coach-randy-wittman-is-searching-for-consistency

After Dwane Casey was fired in Minnesota in the 2006-07 season, Wittman moved down the bench and was given a chance to try his head coaching pants on once again. It didn't work out. The team went 12-30 the rest of the season, 22-60 the next season when he was allowed to continue, and he was fired after the Wolves began the 2008-09 season 4-15.

During that 2008-09 season, Wittman told his rookie big man Kevin Love that he wasn't allowed to shoot 3-pointers. How does that strategy look in today's NBA? (You know... when Love isn't breaking his hand.)

Wittman has often been the cheap replacement for failed coaches around the league. Owners and management move him down the bench and he's a stopgap until they can figure out where to go. For some reason, it happened in again in Washington despite a career winning percentage of 32.5 percent heading into his Wizards' stint.

[Renegade7]

http://sulia.com/channel/basketball/f/51caacbc-9546-4e06-ae8d-9c0d2545ddf7/?source=twitter

That will be interesting. Hoepfully he's actually healthy and not trying to rush back to salvage the season. Hopefully it helps on the boards and finishing in the paint.

[StillUnknown]

That will be interesting. Hoepfully he's actually healthy and not trying to rush back to salvage the season. Hopefully it helps on the boards and finishing in the paint.

The beat reporters seemed kinda shocked by the news, the fact that Bucher got the scoop before them doesn't exactly make me feel better about Nene's health.