The Official Washington Wizards Thread

[stevemcqueen1]

I've been pretty bald in both my criticism and praise for Wall. I've got no strong agenda with him. I honestly think he can be great, but I'm not blind to his flaws. Whether you realize it or not Vishal, you have a hatred for Ernie Grunfeld that drives you to criticize or support whatever player suits your bottom line hatred for EG at the time.

[Fight4RGIII]

Hell yeah, we are brining Cartier Martin back!

[NotSoSuper]

Hell yeah, we are brining Cartier Martin back!

What is the hype with this guy?

[Fight4RGIII]

What is the hype with this guy?

The man can step up in the 4th!

[No Excuses]

I've been pretty bald in both my criticism and praise for Wall. I've got no strong agenda with him. I honestly think he can be great, but I'm not blind to his flaws. Whether you realize it or not Vishal, you have a hatred for Ernie Grunfeld that drives you to criticize or support whatever player suits your bottom line hatred for EG at the time.

I criticize whoever I feel deserves it. I've criticized every single player on this team, including McGee and Young.

I can't say the same for some of you though, (and this is nothing personal btw, I don't want to come across as a dick). I personally find a pattern where people selectively hold some players to a much higher regard than others, when this shouldn't be happening.

[MonkFan8]

You don't need a crystal ball to understand that years and years of crap management has put us in this situation.

Way to completely ignore the rest of the post.

Your posts are so tired and completely not representative of what's going on with the team. You never even argue peoples points. Instead you rely on platitudes that, as far as I can tell, rarely apply to anyone on the board.

[No Excuses]

Your posts are so tired and completely not representative of what's going on with the team.

This team is 1-4 since the trade. Now the 2nd worst team in the league.

Moral victories are for losers.

[Destino]

It all depends on what you mean by pure point guard. To me that's Chris Paul / Steve Nash and Wall isn't anything like them. They have the handles to weave around and linger in traffic demanding attention before either passing or shooting from anywhere on the court. Wall doesn't seem to have great ball control or the ability to function in traffic, he starts on the perimeter and charges in... That's his move. Nash and Paul go under the basket weave back out and around all while keeping their dribble alive.

Walls movement is like Wesbrooks but with far less physicality at the rim but better passing and vision. They are both players that lean forward and fly but get in trouble when slowed before getting to the rim.

What's hurting him is the culture of no accountability here. Why not play charity ball when you can't shoot? Practice free throws and add some new moves? I doubt anyone on the team even suggests that running into triple teams on solo fast breaks isn't a great idea. It took a coach with nothing to lose to bench Blatche for lack of conditioning. It's not a coincidence that Arenas and others were playing with guns in the locker room and celebrating it on the court. That's how things work here.

[MonkFan8]

This team is 1-4 since the trade. Now the 2nd worst team in the league.

Moral victories are for losers.

They're actually 2-8, basically in line with how they've been the entire season. The trade isn't going to suddenly put them in playoff contention. You won't find anyone here claiming that (you'll still believe it, though).

Furthermore, as I posted last night, that stretch of games came with 2 back to backs as well as a back-to-back-to-back stretch of games AND against 5 playoff teams. We were competitive in all but 2 games.

I really don't understand what you're even arguing. The point of the trade wasn't to make us better in the short term, it was addition by subtraction that also netted us a very good center. Moral victory or not this is a bad team and no single trade can change that. Too bad Ernie didn't realize you can't win with a core of dumb players sooner.

[No Excuses]

I really don't understand what you're even arguing. The point of the trade wasn't to make us better in the short term, it was addition by subtraction that also netted us a very good center. Moral victory or not this is a bad team and no single trade can change that. Too bad Ernie didn't realize you can't win with a core of dumb players sooner.

Read everything written by Ted and everything said by Ernie. You can think this trade was not done to improve the team short term, but it absolutely was. You don't bring in 60 million in salary of an aging player and not expect the team to get better.

This trade was done for two reasons:

1. Short sighted improvement.
2. Ernie had to do something about a completely pathetic team that he built so he found the two easiest targets on the team to ship away (he tried Blatche as well but nobody wants him). The only problem is that Young and McGee (unlike Blatche) can contribute in their own ways to an NBA team. It's entirely possible that we could have brought in outside help, while keeping both on the team and shifting them to roles better suited for them. We shipped out one player for basically crap, and the other for a big contract.

Now I understand that they didn't want Javale on the team anymore. Fine. Let him walk in FA. It's not hard to play out 30 more games. But bringing in Nene and his big contract means that they thought they are bringing in a player who will help this team short term. Except that he really won't and in a short amount of time, he'll start declining. Once big men start declining, it's usually pretty rapid.

At the same time, and you can bump this post up in two years, McGee will be a productive NBA center and Nene will not be playing up to his contract. I'll gladly eat crow if I'm wrong. I see this trade in the same light as almost every move Ernie makes; short sighted, knee jerk reactionary, almost always a consequence of his own past stupidity.

[stevemcqueen1]

It all depends on what you mean by pure point guard. To me that's Chris Paul / Steve Nash and Wall isn't anything like them. They have the handles to weave around and linger in traffic demanding attention before either passing or shooting from anywhere on the court. Wall doesn't seem to have great ball control or the ability to function in traffic, he starts on the perimeter and charges in... That's his move. Nash and Paul go under the basket weave back out and around all while keeping their dribble alive.

Walls movement is like Wesbrooks but with far less physicality at the rim but better passing and vision. They are both players that lean forward and fly but get in trouble when slowed before getting to the rim.

Paul and Nash, are very different scorers in and of themselves. To me, Nash is a pure shooter who gets his points from mid range and behind the three point line.

Paul has always been more of a slasher who gets into the lane and has a command of a wide variety of advanced finishing moves to score with either hand. He came into the league a great ball handler with a superb offensive range but has gotten much better over time. Plus Paul became a good shooter in his third season--but the three pointer and mid range game were not part of his game initially.

I see Wall as somewhere in between the Paul school and the Westbrook school. He's more finesse than Westbrook, more physical than Paul, and is somewhere between them in passing ability.

[Skin'emAlive]

He's immature and didn't take his position here seriously. He was unmotivated to put in the work to be able to carry a bad team night in and night out with high quality individual play.

McGee was never going to turn the lightswitch on here, maybe he does somewhere else with strong veteran leadership to bring him in hand, but it was never happening here. He was the veteran leadership for us... hence why we were terrible and couldn't improve. The only hope for keeping him and having him turn the corner was if we somehow minimized his role by surrounding him with several good players. That wasn't going to happen.

Ok, i agree with most of everything you post here. Most of it is quite well thought out and has tangible points. But here you are pointing out exactly what i was saying but with an entirely different perspective. McGee was putting up quality play night in and night out. He just so happened to have dumb plays here and there that everyone wanted to point out and say " HAHA look how dumb he is!" Nobody look at the fact that he is a young center who is second in the league in blocks, and is averaging a double double on a team that cant score.

Why is it that we will never have a strong veteran leadership here? This is a HUGE flaw with the management of the team, not mcgee himself. If a team has trouble with immaturity issues, and character flaws, usually that team will go out and get some veteran leaders to help steer them in the right direction. We went out and got Mo Evans ( benched, never plays), Turiaf ( injured, traded) , Roger Mason Jr ( benched most of the season ). The rest of the kids are young and stupid for the most part. That is not McGee's fault. That is the management. Who were our great veterans last year? What would OKC be without Collison/Perkins last year? You can have a young team, but you need some leadership from somewhere.

[stevemcqueen1]

Trade deadline trades are never really intended to be a short term fix. Trade deadline trades basically never have an immediate impact on wins and losses. That's true for the top organizations on down to the bottom ones.

The trade got a quality starting center out of two players who were going to walk for nothing in the offseason. Nene's big contract doesn't really bother me because we have nothing else to spend that kind of money on for the first several seasons of his deal. We don't have players of our own up for extension that are worth large contracts and we have no hope of bringing in upper tier free agents.

As a bad team, our fate is to overpay on our own free agent signings or miss out. An FA the caliber of Nene wouldn't sign here--his contract only ensures that we have a good starting center locked up long term when our only other feasible option was paying similar money to JaVale or moving forward with no starting caliber Center. Both are worse options. JaVale's impending RFA status forced our hand.

We needed a Center, we got a better player who is better for the locker room out of two players who were going to walk this offseason. We essentially got something good out of nothing. Who do you think we need to ear mark Nene's cap room for that this deal is such a burden?

[Skin'emAlive]

I will go on record to say that if we dont make some serious moves this offseason (beyond getting rid of grunfeild), Wall will never succeed here; culture change or not. This does not count our (probable 5th) pick in the draft. We need to do something with the dead weight on this team. Blatche, Lewis, Evans all should be gone. We need atleast one other quality starter on this team. If we replace those 3 with the likes of Cook, or draft picks, im going to hurl. That is throwing in the towel for the season right there. Crawford, Singleton, Vesely, and Seraphin are not starters nor will they ever be. They are only great off the bench at best.

---------- Post added March-27th-2012 at 11:02 PM ----------

Who do you think we need to ear mark Nene's cap room for that this deal is such a burden?

I really wanted us to go after Josh Smith next season with that money. That combined with our new draft pick in the offseason and McGee and Wall, or Seraphin/Turiaf and Wall would have competed.

[No Excuses]

Who do you think we need to ear mark Nene's cap room for that this deal is such a burden?

Don't know, and you never do in these situations. Opportunities to make an impact signing/trade can be quite random in the NBA. You think the Clippers (the freakin Clippers btw) imagined that they'd be able to have Chris Paul pair up with Blake Griffin? No, but the opportunity came up and they did it.

It's better to be prepared rather than making short sighted reactionary trades.

And I'll say this again, this is nothing new for Ernie. He bails himself out every single time his job is in jeopardy by making a short sighted move. People and local media take the bait every single time.