The Official Washington Basketball Thread: Wizards, Mystics etc

[pjfootballer]

I hear you, but it should be pointed out that was Wade's second year in the league and this is Harden's 4th. And that's a pretty big difference in playing style they showed.

The main difference between them, and the reason Harden will never be as good as Wade, is Harden is a pretty average athlete and Wade is a transcendent athlete.

I won't be convinced by Harden unless he leads the Rockets to the playoffs and the team really looks damn good with him as their best player, similar to the way the Bulls made a leap with Derrick Rose in 2010. Right now they're stuck in the exact same place they were last year. That's on Harden IMO. He's the franchise there. It's on him to power them to the next level.

I just don't get you. You just don't want to admit you are wrong. Who the **** else do the Rockets have? He was a 6th man coming off OKC's bench and now he's been asked to be "the man" in Houston and is doing it and carrying them. The Rockets have NOBODY to compliment him. We'd at least have Harden AND Wall. We'd then be one player away (a big man) from having OUR "Big 3".

---------- Post added December-13th-2012 at 08:13 AM ----------

are you serious?

this is a guard's league. If you have a good back court you will win more than not. 2 guys that can create for themselves and others and get to the free throw line? That is a 50 win team for the first time since 78 for this franchise.

so you dont think Wall is going to be a franchise player?

Parker/Ginoblli, Rondo/Pierce, (to a certain exent- James and Wade), Nash (when healthy) and Kobe, Westbrook/Durant, and on and on. I agree. I'm sure there are more examples.

[RonArtest15]

I hear you, but it should be pointed out that was Wade's second year in the league and this is Harden's 4th. And that's a pretty big difference in playing style they showed.

The main difference between them, and the reason Harden will never be as good as Wade, is Harden is a pretty average athlete and Wade is a transcendent athlete.

I won't be convinced by Harden unless he leads the Rockets to the playoffs and the team really looks damn good with him as their best player, similar to the way the Bulls made a leap with Derrick Rose in 2010. Right now they're stuck in the exact same place they were last year. That's on Harden IMO. He's the franchise there. It's on him to power them to the next level.

Two things....

1) Wade had 3 years of college ball and Harden played 1. So therefore I put a little more stock in their #'s being very similar at the same age.

2) What makes Wade a transcendent athlete?

*FWIW, Harden tested off the charts at the combine back in '09. He is nowhere near being an "average" athlete.

Edited December 13, 2012 by RonArtest15

[Going Commando]

I just don't get you. You just don't want to admit you are wrong. Who the **** else do the Rockets have? He was a 6th man coming off OKC's bench and now he's been asked to be "the man" in Houston and is doing it and carrying them. The Rockets have NOBODY to compliment him. We'd at least have Harden AND Wall. We'd then be one player away (a big man) from having OUR "Big 3".

Yeah Big 3 would be going nowhere.

That's my point.

I'm not wrong about Harden because he's not a franchise player. We make the trade for Harden and shell out a max contract to him and that's it. We're going full speed ahead with him, Wall, and Nene and we have no more flexibility to make any significant changes from here on out. That would be our shot and it is in no way shape or form good enough to contend.

Harden is the flavor of the month right now. He's the devil you kind of don't know about. But in a year or two, the Rockets will still be going nowhere and the shine will wear off on him just like it's starting to do for Kevin Love and has done for every flawed max contract type that wasn't good enough to be a franchise guy. People will make excuses for Harden saying he doesn't have anybody else to play with just like they did for Kevin Love nevermind the fact the Rockets are in exactly the same place hovering around .500 that they were last season. The team was already a .500 outfit before he got there.

I'll admit I'm wrong about Harden if he actually elevates his team like real franchise players do.

But I think most of you all know what I said before is exactly how it's going to play out. You're just pissed at how bad the Wiz suck right now and have grass is greener mentality and are clinging to the desperate "what might have been" scenario of 45 win seasons and first round losses we could have gotten out of a Harden/Wall/Nene big 3.

Parker/Ginoblli, Rondo/Pierce, (to a certain exent- James and Wade), Nash (when healthy) and Kobe, Westbrook/Durant, and on and on. I agree. I'm sure there are more examples.

Pierce, Durant, and LeBron are all forwards. Nash/Kobe has done nothing and shown know signs of being compatible whatsoever, and that team is going to be built around Dwight if they extend him. The Spurs are built around Tim Duncan.

There is no good PG/SG primary construction where those two players are the best guys on the team and they are max type players. That's what we would have been trying to build with Wall & Harden.

Jennings and Ellis is one, but I'm not sure I'd call that construction good nor would I call them both max type players yet. DWill & Joe Johnson is the only one of actual max players that comes to mind and it's not a good construction at all.

[The Robert Griffin Experience]

Especially in light of the disasterous OkAriza trade, this is easily the worst single move (or non-move?) by any DC sports franchise in the last 20 years. C-Webb for Richmond? Not even close (It was at least marginally defensible at the time). Anything Vinny's ever done? Not even close. Beal as a prospect isn't even really close to Harden as a prospect (the Ray Allen projections were wildly optimistic to start with). Harden may never be a superstar, but he's good enough that you can build a 50-55 win team around him and at least be in the ECF mix.

Ted Leonsis and Ernie Grunfeld are now officially the worst GM/owner combo in sports. And what makes it worse is the self-fellation, they're constantly wanking their "cleverness" and "savvy" while spouting ignorant talking points. At least Vinny didn't blog about how damn "smart" he was.

As for contract flexibility, that ship sailed when we traded for Nene, then Okafor and Ariza. We should have tried to get value for McGee, instead of taking on an aging, injury-prone big man. We should have released Lewis instead of trading him for overpaid rotation guys. THAT was when we should have worried about financial flexibility, not in trading for a guy who will be a perennial all-star and make a few 3rd and 2nd team All-NBAs.

And at the end of the day, it takes luck to build a title contender, especially because you can't tank your way to a stud reliably. In the last 4 drafts, there have been what, 3 franchise-changing talents at the top 5? Anthony Davis probably, Blake Griffin, Kyrie Irving probably. Sometimes you just have to settle for being a 45-50 win team and hope some disgruntled star wants to get out of their situation. At that point, you've hopefully packaged some assets, like Houston did, and can go out and trade for that guy.

Edited December 13, 2012 by The Robert Griffin Experience

[Going Commando]

Especially in light of the disasterous OkAriza trade, this is easily the worst single move (or non-move?) by any DC sports franchise in the last 20 years. C-Webb for Richmond? Not even close (It was at least marginally defensible at the time). Anything Vinny's ever done? Not even close. Beal as a prospect isn't even really close to Harden as a prospect (the Ray Allen projections were wildly optimistic to start with). Harden may never be a superstar, but he's good enough that you can build a 50-55 win team around him and at least be in the ECF mix.

Ted Leonsis and Ernie Grunfeld are now officially the worst GM/owner combo in sports. And what makes it worse is the self-fellation, they're constantly wanking their "cleverness" and "savvy" while spouting ignorant talking points. At least Vinny didn't blog about how damn "smart" he was.

Harden is absolutely not good enough to build a 50-55 win team around. You need a LeBron/Rose/CP3/Dirk/Durant/KG/Duncan type player to build that kind of elite team around.

Be honest with yourself. Do you truly believe Harden would have made the difference and gotten this team to contention?

I don't believe for a minute we'd have been able to make any other significant moves after signing Harden and we would have HAD to go forward with him, Wall, and Nene. Who is going to take Nene's contract? Who would give us a better player than Wall in return for Wall?

---------- Post added December-13th-2012 at 09:03 AM ----------

For those that believe the Harden deal would have been worth it, you MUST hold some of these premises:

- Wall is a franchise player

- Harden is a franchise player

- We'd have had the ability to make significant moves to upgrade the team after Harden

- One player coming here could make the difference and/or our FO would not have gotten in the way of making this work

- OR I'm willing to settle for what the Hawks got for the next five + years before we have to start this thing over again.

[The Robert Griffin Experience]

Title contention? No. But could we win 50 games with a healthy Wall, Harden and Nene? Maybe.

And then, what else do we do? Wish upon a star that Beal can put up 25 ppg on .580 TS%? Hope that somehow someone better than Harden is up for trade in 2 years when Ariza and Okafor are expirings? Hope that we get Wiggins or one of the other studs in this draft? For all we know, we could end up with the 6th pick again.

Think of it this way, the Grizzlies won 46 games two years ago, and were on a 50 win pace last year, and they don't have a single player on that roster better than Harden. And it's not like Harden is a particularly old player either. And the Rockets are around .500 because they thought that getting the Asian fanbase was more important than winning, and they lost most of their good players in the offseason. Right now the Rockets are 22nd in DRTG and 11th in ORTG. The Wizards are 12th in DRTG and 30th in ORTG. And that Houston team has shockingly little talent around Harden - their second best player is either Chandler Parsons or Omer Asik. A healthy Nene is better than every non-Harden player on that team. Hell, Seraphin might be better than every non-Harden player on that team. Better defensively to be sure. Wall is definitely better than every non-Harden player on that team.

Yes, the trade probably puts a hard ceiling on our win total, unless Harden takes even more of a step forward, but in a league with so few true superstar players, that's the best you might be able to get.

Edited December 13, 2012 by The Robert Griffin Experience

[pjfootballer]

Yeah Big 3 would be going nowhere.

That's my point.

I'm not wrong about Harden because he's not a franchise player. I'll admit I'm wrong about Harden if he actually elevates his team like real franchise players do.

But I think most of you all know what I said before is exactly how it's going to play out. You're just pissed at how bad the Wiz suck right now and have grass is greener mentality and are clinging to the desperate "what might have been" scenario of 45 win seasons and first round losses we could have gotten out of a Harden/Wall/Nene big 3.

Yeah, we ARE pissed. Some of us have been pissed for years. So far nobody has agreed with your assessment. I'm not sure you are even looking at our side. You just keep looking at 3 years into the future. Nobody gives a **** about 3 years from now. As Redskin fans, have any of us EVER worried about the cap, despite the Redskins being in supposed "cap hell"? Stop thinking about 2016. We want to win now. I mean, you say all we'll get out of a Harden/Wall teamup is 45-50 wins....HELLO! Isn't that a whole lot better than 15-25 wins a year? Us being in the lottery year after year after year after year has done ZERO to improve us.

Do I want a 50 win team that competes for titles year in and year out? Of course I do. But at least put a team that can do 45-50 wins and we'll see where we go once we get in the playoffs. How do the Lakers, Heat, Celtics, Bulls, Spurs, etc. keep churning out superstars and max contracts year after year and never have an cap problems? How do they keep competing when picking in the 20s every year? I mean, you keep talking about the damn contracts, yet teams find ways out of them.

NO free agents want to come here. Harden was as good as it was going to get. The only way we will get anyone to come play for us, is to trade for them and force them to put on a Wizards uniform. If we had Harden, I guarantee we'd at least be 8-9 or 9-8 which is pretty damn good until Wall gets back. Win 45-50 games and suddenly free agents will want to come here. But nobody wants to come to DC because they know it's a team that will win no more than 30 games a year. They know DC is the new Clippers.

Who cares if Harden is NOT a franchise player. The man can play. He's averaging 24 ppg on a team much like ours. Take him off Houston and they are a 3-14 team. Damn dude, I just can't figure out why you are so hell bent on the damn contract ramifications. I mean, we're already in CAP HELL now for taking on Nene, Okafor and Ariza. I'd rather have McGee back. I hated that trade. Just like alwasy the Wizards do 2 things. Trade big for small (Webber for Richmond) and young for old (McGee for Nene or Webber for Richmond). Wall, McGee, Harden, Seraphin, Singleton, Booker....etc. We'd be 11-7 right now. Bank on it.

---------- Post added December-13th-2012 at 09:10 AM ----------

Be honest with yourself. Do you truly believe Harden would have made the difference and gotten this team to contention? I don't

YES. The East is WEAK. Yes, we'd be a 4 or 5 seed in this conference.

[No Excuses]

The writing was on the wall for the trades the minute they were made. We took on contracts from teams who absolutely wanted to get rid of these players one way or the other.

I've come around to Nene because he's good when he's out there. Although exactly what most people feared seems to be the case for him.

The Okafor/Ariza trade was a complete disaster. We SHOULD have gotten the #10 pick from NO. That would have made the trade worthwhile. How in the world we gave away the best expiring contract in the NBA for two ****ty washed up players and there wasn't a huge outcry about it boggles my mind.

With a savvy GM and owner with some kind of guts, we could have flipped Beal for Harden and still gotten a good prospect with the #10 pick.

I'm fully convinced now that Ted is a cheap ass. He has no plan, for the Wizards or the Capitals. The entire "draft" talk is total horsecrap. He wants to spend as little money as possible. **** him to the millionth degree. I remember we talked about almost the same exact deal for Harden before draft time. The fact that it was actually on the table and we didn't execute it is the final blow for me. I'm done with this team and the NBA. Watching LeBron win it all last year was bad enough. I can't deal with the fact that tweedle dee and tweedle dum are running this already sorry franchise into the ground. When we drafted Wall, I thought we'd be enjoying quality basketball by now. But we're in a much worse situation as of now then we were back then.

[Thinking Skins]

I'll admit, I'm kinda salty about Harden. Especially considering what we got instead. Lets just hope Beal becomes some kind of superplayer.

[The Robert Griffin Experience]

Honestly, could LeBron get that Houston team to 50 wins? That team outside Harden is about as bad as the teams Kobe in his prime had to work with. I doubt prime Dirk could. Maybe KD could? CP3 had sub 50 win seasons with better teams than that. KG got 50 wins out of awful talent but those Rockets don't even have anybody as good as Szcerbiak. Didn't Wade have a 15 win season?

I'd say the only guys I can think of in the last decade that could win a lot of games with the talent Houston has is current LeBron, maybe prime KG, prime Duncan, and maybe prime Kobe depending on the strength of the conference.

I'm done with this team and the NBA. Watching LeBron win it all last year was bad enough. I can't deal with the fact that tweedle dee and tweedle dum are running this already sorry franchise into the ground. When we drafted Wall, I thought we'd be enjoying quality basketball by now. But we're in a much worse situation as of now then we were back then.

I've gotten over my hate for LeBron, but I just can't care about the NBA anymore. All the crappy super-teams, the fact that this country's system of basketball training and development is broken to the nth degree (even the crappiest NFL and MLB teams have star players, I mean, even in 2009 we still had Fletch and Rak) , the utter lack of parity in the NBA (5 teams need to be contracted to be quite honest so that there's more talent to go around) and the broken salary structure, and the fact that the Wizards are plagued by management worse than anything we've had ever, and it's just hard to care.

If only Arenas hadn't gotten hurt.

Edited December 13, 2012 by The Robert Griffin Experience

[Thinking Skins]

Speaking of which, Beal shooting 42% in his last 6 with almost a 16 points per game average.

[Going Commando]

PJ and TRGE, I appreciate you being straight. What your posts essentially boil down to is that you're tired of being a laughing stock and would be OK with improvement to second tier status in the NBA.

I totally understand. Sometimes I feel the same way. Sometimes I don't care if I ever see a championship I just want to see good basketball and feel good about some regular season wins and get excited about a playoff series even if I know we aren't going to win it. It ****ing sucks losing this much and it's hard to stomach year after year. But this is the NBA. It's what you have to go through just to ever have a chance at making it to the very top.

Flexibility is the most valuable thing a non-title team in the NBA can have. Having lots of flexibility means you're probably going to be completely awful. The worst part is we're completely awful and we're not even totally flexible because we're handicapped by a bad FO and we still have to deal with Nene's contract long term.

[Sticksboi05]

steve - 100% agree. I don't give a **** that we've sucked. You build to win rings,not to get 45 wins. What a pathetic franchise goal to try to achieve...Harden for $80 mill is not worth it. The Skins didn't draft RGIII to get 11-5 seasons, they drafted him to get us a Super Bowl.

---------- Post added December-13th-2012 at 09:37 AM ----------

More pathetic is they tried to do this with the Ariza/Okafor/Nene deals and now we don't even have a 45 win team, we have a maybe 20 win team at best. God, with the NHL lockout it's going to REALLY suck if the Skins don't make the playoffs.

[Going Commando]

The writing was on the wall for the trades the minute they were made. We took on contracts from teams who absolutely wanted to get rid of these players one way or the other.

I've come around to Nene because he's good when he's out there. Although exactly what most people feared seems to be the case for him.

The Okafor/Ariza trade was a complete disaster. We SHOULD have gotten the #10 pick from NO. That would have made the trade worthwhile. How in the world we gave away the best expiring contract in the NBA for two ****ty washed up players and there wasn't a huge outcry about it boggles my mind.

With a savvy GM and owner with some kind of guts, we could have flipped Beal for Harden and still gotten a good prospect with the #10 pick.

I liked the Nene trade at the time because I was desperate for some professionalism. Irony of ironies, the Nene trade is exactly why I don't think we should have made the Harden deal.

JaVale couldn't stay. But in hindsight we should have let him walk and not taken on Nene's contract. Nene would have been the least valuable and dependable member of that big 3 and he would have been the hardest to move by far. His deal would have been what kept us from having the flexibility to make one other significant addition that could have actually gotten us over the hump.

His deal blocking the Harden deal makes the case for flexibility over settling for modest gains and short term improvement.

Stick to your guns, it's looking like you were right about the Nene deal. The next time you argue that it's better to keep flexibility and someone goes, "LOLOL!! Flexibility for what?" just point to this sequence of events.

[The Robert Griffin Experience]

PJ and TRGE, I appreciate you being straight. What your posts essentially boil down to is that you're tired of being a laughing stock and would be OK with improvement to second tier status in the NBA.

More or less. It's so hard to get to first tier, it's almost pure luck. Unlike in the NFL, where you can become a contending franchise just by making one balls of steeI move like trading a 3 first round draft picks for a guy who you think will revolutionize the NFL, or by drafting a stud QB with your top pick and building an effective system around him, or even just by drafting really well in every round and building a beastly defense with a game manager QB, doing it in the NBA is so up to chance that it's impossible to really plan.

What if the Clips don't win the lottery and can't get Blake? What if the Thunder DO win the lottery and pick Oden? The Bulls had a ~1% chance of getting Derrick Rose. What if the Lakers weren't the marquee franchise of the NBA and couldn't get Shaq (and allegedly Kobe) just by being where they were? Yes, skill is involved, but the skill is really maximizing the impact of your luck. In our case, we had a chance to build a title contender when we had Gilbert Arenas, who was a bonafide first tier superstar talent-wise but we never invested the resources to work around his flaws or the coaching to correct them.

Sure you can be like the Celtics and trade for all your stars, but that was really a once in a decade opportunity.

If we make this move, our ceiling is 50 wins and maybe an ECF once in a while. Wall would be a solid 18/11 PG with above-average, sometimes excellent D, Harden would be a 23-25ppg lead scorer, and we'd have a solid frontcourt and good role players. I'll take that.

I will be fair, this is exactly the kind of deal you keep your cap flexibility for, but that's not what we're arguing.

Edited December 13, 2012 by The Robert Griffin Experience

[Skin'emAlive]

For those that believe the Harden deal would have been worth it, you MUST hold some of these premises:

- Wall is a franchise player

- Harden is a franchise player

- We'd have had the ability to make significant moves to upgrade the team after Harden

- One player coming here could make the difference and/or our FO would not have gotten in the way of making this work

- OR I'm willing to settle for what the Hawks got for the next five + years before we have to start this thing over again.

- Wall, whether he is a franchise player or not, will be signed back to this team as the franchise player unless his knees explodes. And even then, there is a possibility that Washington could give him a max deal as we have all witnessed already.

- Harden is absolutely a franchise player, whether you like him or not. Even if he lost all his abilities inexplicably, he is still one of the most marketable players in the league (see Lin's marketability, and why he is beneficial for the team for monetary reasons even if he isnt that great).

- Our FO is going to get in the way of making anything work regardless. This was gift-wrapped and we turned it down. And as of right now, the FO doesnt seem to be going anywhere any time soon, so dont expect anything better in the near future.

- What the Hawks had was better than what we had for the last 30+ years. So, yea i would be ok with that. Atleast i could root for that. Now my only consolation is seeing the total points vs. fouls Ves picks up over the course of the season.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Skin'emAlive

[Going Commando]

steve - 100% agree. I don't give a **** that we've sucked. You build to win rings,not to get 45 wins. What a pathetic franchise goal to try to achieve...Harden for $80 mill is not worth it. The Skins didn't draft RGIII to get 11-5 seasons, they drafted him to get us a Super Bowl.

---------- Post added December-13th-2012 at 09:37 AM ----------

More pathetic is they tried to do this with the Ariza/Okafor/Nene deals and now we don't even have a 45 win team, we have a maybe 20 win team at best. God, with the NHL lockout it's going to REALLY suck if the Skins don't make the playoffs.

The thing that makes me almost completely despair is the FO.

We can do everything right, completely clear the deck to a blank slate and start a rebuild over again from the ground up with no crap holding us back--and we would still have one hand tied behind our back because the FO is so bad and incapable of instilling a culture of success you have to have to make anything work.

We've been drafting good prospects, the basketball world agreed with our picks and other teams wanted our players for themselves. And we can't develop them at all. Sometimes we make them worse. How did Wall's jumper actually get worse since leaving college? How has Vesely completely totally useless to the point where he can even get on the floor? Why does every NBA vet who comes here seem to devolve and then get injured and then check out for the rest of the season. Why do so many seem to thrive as soon as they get out of here.

Sometimes I wonder if we could get a CP3/LeBron/Duncan in their primes big 3 to work.

Ernie has got to be fired this offseason. Ted you have got to do it.

[Samuels]

This organization and team is a complete joke I can't even watch the car wreck anymore.

[RonArtest15]

steve - 100% agree. I don't give a **** that we've sucked. You build to win rings,not to get 45 wins. What a pathetic franchise goal to try to achieve...Harden for $80 mill is not worth it. The Skins didn't draft RGIII to get 11-5 seasons, they drafted him to get us a Super Bowl.

---------- Post added December-13th-2012 at 09:37 AM ----------

More pathetic is they tried to do this with the Ariza/Okafor/Nene deals and now we don't even have a 45 win team, we have a maybe 20 win team at best. God, with the NHL lockout it's going to REALLY suck if the Skins don't make the playoffs.

RGIII is a transcendent player. Outside of 4/5 players in the NBA, there is NO ONE else who has that moniker.

Harden would have been a key piece to the puzzle - if the FO had their heads out of their butts. Not the final piece, but a KEY piece. He is absolutely worth the 80mil he got from the Rockets. Having him and Wall would have been a start and would have most likely shown that this team is serious about building something special here in DC. You're forgeting...harden is ONLY 23. Not even close to scratching his potential or being in his prime. It's beating a dead horse, but the Wizards royally messed up by not pulling the trigger on the trade.

[No Excuses]

Stick to your guns, it's looking like you were right about the Nene deal. The next time you argue that it's better to keep flexibility and someone goes, "LOLOL!! Flexibility for what?" just point to this sequence of events.

I know I took a lot of heat from people when the trades happened about my negativity but this is exactly what I feared. Part of me really wanted to come in here and rub it in everyones face how right I was about both stupid trades. But reading this thread just depresses me. We all want the same thing; to have a good Washington basketball team. All of us diehards who post in this thread just want to watch good basketball. I can't even watch other good teams now. Just makes me realize just how absolutely hopeless the state of this team is.

This might be the worst I've ever felt about a sports team I like, and this includes bottoming out with Zorn/Vinny in 2009.

[Going Commando]

More or less. It's so hard to get to first tier, it's almost pure luck. Unlike in the NFL, where you can become a contending franchise just by making one balls of steeI move like trading a 3 first round draft picks for a guy who you think will revolutionize the NFL, or by drafting a stud QB with your top pick and building an effective system around him, or even just by drafting really well in every round and building a beastly defense with a game manager QB, doing it in the NBA is so up to chance that it's impossible to really plan.

What if the Clips don't win the lottery and can't get Blake? What if the Thunder DO win the lottery and pick Oden? The Bulls had a ~1% chance of getting Derrick Rose. What if the Lakers weren't the marquee franchise of the NBA and couldn't get Shaq (and allegedly Kobe) just by being where they were? Yes, skill is involved, but the skill is really maximizing the impact of your luck. In our case, we had a chance to build a title contender when we had Gilbert Arenas, who was a bonafide first tier superstar talent-wise but we never invested the resources to work around his flaws or the coaching to correct them.

Sure you can be like the Celtics and trade for all your stars, but that was really a once in a decade opportunity.

If we make this move, our ceiling is 50 wins and maybe an ECF once in a while. Wall would be a solid 18/11 PG with above-average, sometimes excellent D, Harden would be a 23-25ppg lead scorer, and we'd have a solid frontcourt and good role players. I'll take that.

I will be fair, this is exactly the kind of deal you keep your cap flexibility for, but that's not what we're arguing.

It is absolutely about luck. You have to get lucky the draft breaks your way in the few years there is a franchise player in the class. Or you have to get lucky having just the right situation and trade chips for a team to unload their disgruntled franchise player to you. Or you have to get lucky like Miami and have draft just the right guy with the right personal relationships to lure in other superstars (plus the cap room to sign him).

There are not enough franchise players for probably even half the league to have one now that they've started consciously teaming up with each other.

The only thing you can do is keep the flexibility to swing at an opportunity your way should it come along. You could be terrible for God knows how long waiting on a chance. That's why the NBA is unfair and it's why I think some franchises, like Houston and Utah, are unwilling to go through that process and they forge ahead making moves designed to keep them in that second tier.

Make no mistake, keeping this kind of big picture flexibility is not what I think we consciously tried to do here. Our FO is inept and we do not have the kind of flexibility we should for being so bad. They probably didn't make the trade because they didn't want to pay a ton of luxury tax after ****ing up so bad with the Nene and Okariza trades.

[pjfootballer]

PJ and TRGE, I appreciate you being straight. What your posts essentially boil down to is that you're tired of being a laughing stock and would be OK with improvement to second tier status in the NBA.

I totally understand. Sometimes I feel the same way. Sometimes I don't care if I ever see a championship I just want to see good basketball and feel good about some regular season wins and get excited about a playoff series even if I know we aren't going to win it. It ****ing sucks losing this much and it's hard to stomach year after year. But this is the NBA. It's what you have to go through just to ever have a chance at making it to the very top.

Flexibility is the most valuable thing a non-title team in the NBA can have. Having lots of flexibility means you're probably going to be completely awful. The worst part is we're completely awful and we're not even totally flexible because we're handicapped by a bad FO and we still have to deal with Nene's contract long term.

Well, I'm glad you at least see our side and that was all I was trying to do. I wasn't tying to be a jackass towards you as I respect your basketball knowledge that is far more extensive than mine. It's like the Redskins 2 years ago. We almost feel like we've tried "everything" and nothing has worked. With football winding down and not having at least hockey to watch has me on edge with this team.

[RonArtest15]

Sounds weird, but I think even a simple apology would go a long way with some people in this fanbase. At the very least, ACKNOWLEDGING that you've made mistakes. What I don't like are the false premises as to where the FO thinks this team is headed with the current roster. We've been rebuilding going on 3 years now. Enough is enough.

Fire EG now

Apologize to the fans

Get **** right

[Going Commando]

RGIII is a transcendent player. Outside of 4/5 players in the NBA, there is NO ONE else who has that moniker.

Harden would have been a key piece to the puzzle - if the FO had their heads out of their butts. Not the final piece, but a KEY piece. He is absolutely worth the 80mil he got from the Rockets. Having him and Wall would have been a start and would have most likely shown that this team is serious about building something special here in DC. You're forgeting...harden is ONLY 23. Not even close to scratching his potential or being in his prime. It's beating a dead horse, but the Wizards royally messed up by not pulling the trigger on the trade.

But how do we get that final piece? That's the rub for me. We'd be drafting too late for that to be a difference maker. How do we move Nene? How do we upgrade Wall? I don't see realistic avenues for improvement.

I don't think Harden is going to be as good as you think he will. He doesn't have that one thing that's so special and makes him one of the franchise guys. Dirk has his height and shooting. KG has his athleticism and size. Same for Duncan. Same for Lebron. Wade has his speed and hands and length and body control. Rose has his speed and body control. Kobe has his size and he used to have that athleticism. Durant has his size and athleticism. CP3 has his speed and his strength. Blake has his strength and athleticism. The list goes on. I don't see a quality like that in Harden. Maybe length? He's not that big though.

I think we'd have to hope for drastic improvement from guys like Ves and Singleton to fill in the gaps and for Wall to make a huge leap to be a contender after making that deal. Those are not bets I'd be willing to take any more.

Edited December 13, 2012 by stevemcqueen1

[ixcuincle]

Kornheiser on radio saying Wizards would have won had they had Harden