The Official Washington Wizards Thread

[RonArtest15]

They are extremely different. Irving is almost more of a 2 guard truth be told. His team absolutely relies on him for scoring, not passing. Good lord, Anderson Varajao can run point .

The Wizards and Cavs will always use Irving and Wall in entirely different ways throughout their career too. If they're smart that is. Don't put a square peg into a round hole in trying to make Kyrie a passer Cleveland, and don't do the same to Wall by trying to make him a slow it down, half court jump shooting guard.

Physically, I see a lot more similarity between CP3 and Irving than Rose and Irving RA15. Not as strong as CP3 is, but about the same height, and has that similar level of quickness. His scoring array is also really similar to CP3's. CP3 is world's better as a passer and defender and rebounder though. Rose is more physically similar to the John Wall/Russell Westbrook type and his game is a little more inside dominant than Kyrie's, plus he too is a lot better passer than Kyrie.

Kyrie is going to be an amazing scorer his whole career. But I wonder about pairing him with Waiters. I think they should have found more of a facilitator to play in the back court with him. Maybe they can get that at the 3 instead.

Exactly - and this is what kills me when people get caught up in the scoring that Irving does and say thing like "I'd trade Wall right now for him." They are two COMPLETELY different players. Irving can get buckets - with ease. However, he's not even in the same stratosphere as Wall as far as playmaking is concerned. He has way less responsibility with the ball in his hands than John Wall does. ****, if Irving was here, people would probably be ready to run him out of town for not being as good of a "true" PG as some other guys around the league. When Cleveland gets more pieces, it will be interesting to see how Irving develops as a PG. Right now, I see him mostly as a scoring guard. IMO, I think he compares favorably to Derrick Rose in the scoring department, but I'm not seeing him be on the level of a CP3 in terms of how he'd run an offense. Also, Irving doesn't play a lick of defense. He's only 20, and will get much better as the years go by. He's fun to watch.

[stevemcqueen1]

Exactly - and this is what kills me when people get caught up in the scoring that Irving does and say thing like "I'd trade Wall right now for him." They are two COMPLETELY different players. Irving can get buckets - with ease. However, he's not even in the same stratosphere as Wall as far as playmaking is concerned. He has way less responsibility with the ball in his hands than John Wall does. ****, if Irving was here, people would probably be ready to run him out of town for not being as good of a "true" PG as some other guys around the league. When Cleveland gets more pieces, it will be interesting to see how Irving develops as a PG. Right now, I see him mostly as a scoring guard. IMO, I think he compares favorably to Derrick Rose in the scoring department, but I'm not seeing him be on the level of a CP3 in terms of how he'd run an offense. Also, Irving doesn't play a lick of defense. He's only 20, and will get much better as the years go by. He's fun to watch.

I see Kyrie's defense as more of an issue than his passing personally.

I don't mind a scoring PG because I think they can be a huge threat on offense. Tony Parker is really a scorer at heart and the Spurs never have trouble getting a ton of movement. The Bulls move the ball well, and while Rose is actually a pretty good facilitator for their offense, passing is not his forte. But the Bulls tailored their offense to him to make him effective with the types of passes and decisions he is asked to make and he actually has a really nice pure point rating because of it, even though the burden of scoring is still on him.

I see what you mean about CP3 and Kyrie being different in the way they run their offense. I was more talking about their just raw scoring skills. They've got similar inside/outside tools. CP3 is much more of a passer though, and he'll be the type to spend most of the game taking very few shots, get his teammates involved, and then taking over at the end of games as a scorer. I don't know if Kyrie could do that. But I do know he doesn't have the luxury of trying to do that. His team needs him to score a ton of buckets and take a lot of shots.

Kyrie is already a mavelous scorer and he's going to be a really good player. But he has got to improve defensively. I seriously think it's an issue of not caring. He doesn't fight through screens, he's not cognizant with his rotations, he takes dumb gambles for turnovers now and then but will get burned from it. In general, it looks like he just puts no effort into that side of the court. For him to be a top tier player, he needs to at least be competent and take pride in his defense. The dude has a huge basketball IQ judging from his offensive play, and he understands how scorers operate. He should be better.

[Destino]

Mike Prada, from BulletsForever.com, on Bradley Beal's first game

But a lot of this is on Beal too. He had two chances to go by Waiters and get to the rim on high pick and rolls, and Waiters stripped him both times. He did a lot of standing around in half-court sets instead of running into open space, and while the Wizards' current point guards aren't exactly adept at finding open guys, Beal could have done more to make their lives easier. Beal's defense on Waiters was also very bad, with lots of poor angles on pick and roll coverage and on closeouts, and that has nothing to do with how Wittman uses him.

It's just a bit disheartening because this was the knock on Beal in college. He has such a smooth game that he sometimes fades back when someone comes back at him. That has to change in the NBA, because nobody is going to do him any favors.

And with John Wall and Nene sidelined, there's no better time to go all out than right now.

Thomas Pruit weighs in on game 1

The Wizards' 26 assists on 32 made field goals in last night's 94-84 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers can be interpreted in a few ways. On the one hand, good ball movement is a sign that a team is "playing the right way" and getting as many points as possible off of high-percentage shots and extra passes. At the same time, the team's poor offensive performance in spite of that great ball movement (84 points off of 90 shots and 35 percent shooting from the field) speaks volumes about how bad the Wizards were at creating off of the dribble and attacking Cleveland in one-on-one matchups.

This, of course, is where the Wizards miss their injured players. John Wall, the team's best playmaker, is out for a month. Nene, one of the best passing big men in the league, is day to day. Kevin Seraphin, an emerging post threat who made 47 percent of his shots from 3 to 9 feet last year, is battling a calf injury. In short, Washington has no one to turn to when the offense breaks down right now, forcing players like Trevor Booker and Emeka Okafor to step out of their comfort zones and take the kinds of difficult shots they normally don't attempt.

[Thinking Skins]

Well we were getting a lot of open threes. Most were good shots. The ball was moving and Cleveland was doing a horrible job rotating to the ball for most of the game.

The shooters just missed the damn things, plus you had silliness like Booker being the one spotting up.

Also we had to settle for a lot of threes from burning the shot clock and then we started jacking threes at the end of the game to try and pull off a miracle. The PG play was subpar tonight. It was on the wings and bigs to keep the ball moving, and for the most part, I thought they did a pretty good job here.

I don't know if I agree with this line of thinking. The purpose of having an offense installed is so that we can get a lot of high percentage shots, and when over a third of our shots are going for three pointers, those are not high quality shots, I don't care if you've got Steve Kerr and Marc Price back there, let alone the guys we've got. The ball was getting passed around, but rarely going inside and what was annoying was that its like the offense was designed to look for the open three. There was no penetration until Crawford finally started driving it inside in the third (which led to our run). The threes at the end of the game are understandable to an extent (if you're talking 5 minutes left when it was still close then nah, I disagree), but once it started getting out of hand (under a minute) I was like whatever, its not likely that we'll get an 8 points in 10 seconds run type thing so whatever. But we weren't getting fouled (neither team was in the penalty in any quarter) and we only had 9 free throws by our guards, compared to 13 for Cleveland. Price took 9 of his 13 shots from 3 point range. And only made 2 of them. Beal, Ariza and Webster took half their shots from there. Its just not a formula for success. Its what a team like the Magic did and is that what we're striving to become? And at least they had three point shooters. Heck, if that was the gameplan, why not play Martin? He's the best three point shooter on the team.

[Destino]

No one at ESPN picks Beal as Rookie of the year

Results: Anthony Davis (20 votes), Damian Lillard (11), Andre Drummond (2), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (1), Jared Sullinger (1).

I'll go insane if Drummond ends up being that good.

[BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93]

damn...not one pick.

And it seemed like everyone employed by ESPN had a vote

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

I'll go insane if Drummond ends up being that good.

he had a really good preseason too.

[stevemcqueen1]

No one at ESPN picks Beal as Rookie of the year

Results: Anthony Davis (20 votes), Damian Lillard (11), Andre Drummond (2), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (1), Jared Sullinger (1).

I'll go insane if Drummond ends up being that good.

Davis is going to win it. I'm shocked anyone would pick anyone else. Lillard? Really?

Drummond isn't going to win it and it'll be a while before he's dominant, if ever.

Chuck likes Beal. That good enough for you?

---------- Post added October-31st-2012 at 09:06 PM ----------

I don't know if I agree with this line of thinking. The purpose of having an offense installed is so that we can get a lot of high percentage shots, and when over a third of our shots are going for three pointers, those are not high quality shots, I don't care if you've got Steve Kerr and Marc Price back there, let alone the guys we've got. The ball was getting passed around, but rarely going inside and what was annoying was that its like the offense was designed to look for the open three. There was no penetration until Crawford finally started driving it inside in the third (which led to our run). The threes at the end of the game are understandable to an extent (if you're talking 5 minutes left when it was still close then nah, I disagree), but once it started getting out of hand (under a minute) I was like whatever, its not likely that we'll get an 8 points in 10 seconds run type thing so whatever. But we weren't getting fouled (neither team was in the penalty in any quarter) and we only had 9 free throws by our guards, compared to 13 for Cleveland. Price took 9 of his 13 shots from 3 point range. And only made 2 of them. Beal, Ariza and Webster took half their shots from there. Its just not a formula for success. Its what a team like the Magic did and is that what we're striving to become? And at least they had three point shooters. Heck, if that was the gameplan, why not play Martin? He's the best three point shooter on the team.

I agree with you. Taking so many threes with weak three ball shooters is definitely a problem.

But taking open threes is not a bad shot. It's a really efficient shot, and in fact, the corner three is the most efficient shot in the NBA game.

Our problem wasn't that we were settling for open 3s IMO. The problem was that we weren't good enough to make them like a real NBA team should.

Working the ball inside is going to be difficult for this team without Nene and Seraphin to finish those shots and Wall to make those passes.

It's such a difference in quality of shooting watching us versus almost every other NBA team. We don't make open shots, we look like a college team.

I think we'll be a good defensive team and have pretty good ball movement. I think we'll struggle to make shots and rebound, and as such, we're going to lose a lot of games where we actually play well enough to win.

---------- Post added October-31st-2012 at 09:45 PM ----------

Kawhi Leonard is just killing it. Such an energetic player. In retrospect, San Antonio got him for a song. Gary Neal (which then allowed Dallas to get Darren Collison for a song).

You know, is there any way we could have beaten that offer? We had the 18th pick, it really shouldn't have been that hard IMO.

Kawhi Leonard is now basically what we're hoping Singleton will eventually be. Then again Leonard might be garbage too if he played for us instead of the Spurs.

What have the expectations for Singleton become? When he got him I was excited. I was hoping he'd be a LeBron guarder who was fast enough to guard little guards and strong and long and aggressive enough to guard big forwards.

He's been the most disappointing draft pick of the past three years for me.

[Destino]

Explain to me how Houston, with a **** roster featuring Lin as their best player (lol) gets Harden to sign long term but Grunfeld is telling us no one wants to come here? I swear everyday I hate that ****ing **** a little ****ing more.

[stevemcqueen1]

Clips vs Grizz is two teams that are actually doing a worse job shooting than we did.

I wonder where we would be if we'd kept Caron Butler.

[stevemcqueen1]

Clips vs Grizz is two teams that are actually doing a worse job shooting than we did.

I wonder where we would be if we'd kept Caron Butler.

---------- Post added October-31st-2012 at 11:10 PM ----------

Explain to me how Houston, with a **** roster featuring Lin as their best player (lol) gets Harden to sign long term but Grunfeld is telling us no one wants to come here? I swear everyday I hate that ****ing **** a little ****ing more.

Or how New Orleans in the first year of a rebuild got Ryan Anderson in a sign and trade for Gustavo Ayon...

Harden is an odd situation though. There was incentive for him to get a deal done quick because of today's deadline. Though if he didn't and stayed healthy and maintained his averages, he would have still gotten a max offer this summer. Plus he would have gotten an extra year right?

Though you can't bank on that. You have to take max money when it's on the table. I can't think of a single player who has turned down the rookie deal max extension.

[No Excuses]

Explain to me how Houston, with a **** roster featuring Lin as their best player (lol) gets Harden to sign long term but Grunfeld is telling us no one wants to come here? I swear everyday I hate that ****ing **** a little ****ing more.

This front office has come to accept the loser mentality which is really dangerous imo. The sad thing is that so has a good portion of the fan base and the local media.

[StillUnknown]

Explain to me how Houston, with a **** roster featuring Lin as their best player (lol) gets Harden to sign long term but Grunfeld is telling us no one wants to come here? I swear everyday I hate that ****ing **** a little ****ing more.

Sadly most a lot of fans have come to parrot that sentiment, Ted has them right where he wants them.

do not question THE PLAN

[stevemcqueen1]

In hindsight, it doesn't seem like it would have been that hard to beat Houston's offer for Harden without having to give up the third overall pick.

Houston pretty much gave up just Jeremy Lamb and taking back a few small contracts for him. Martin is a one year window dressing for the deal and those draft picks are worthless.

Would a future pick and Rashard's contract have been enough to get him if we'd made the deal two days before the start of the regular season? What if we had thrown in any of our recent draftees aside from Wall? Hell, what about for Nene?

We could have gut our team for Harden, kept Wall, kept #3 and be better off today than we are in reality.

And if you're OKC, wouldn't a deal that gave you Rashard's cap room, a future pick that's probably a lotto pick, and then some mix of young draftees like Seraphin, Booker, Singleton, Crawf, or Vesely be attractive? Or maybe even Nene, who gives you some low post scoring. Wouldn't that appeal to you more than the awful return they got from Houston?

All we had to do to put our names in the ring was not shoot our ammunition off on bad deals early in the summer.

Even if we loved Beal and were set on him, we could have still picked him and made a trade for Harden and come out awesome. Two shooting wings that can pass and offer versatility to play with Wall sounds amazing. And if you kept Vesely and Nene, that lineup is nice. Small ball is King.

---------- Post added October-31st-2012 at 11:55 PM ----------

Davis looked solid tonight. Had some flashes that made you think, yeah this kid is special. He got taken to school by Duncan several times, but that's inevitable.

He looks much more of a pure forward than I expected. Much better quicks than I had anticipated based on his Kentucky year. The former guard skill set is there, and he's got a refreshingly solid shooting stroke for a big man.

But all in all, you can't really say it was a great game when he and his unit got worked by San Antonio's starters. It's early, but winning might not be an instantaneous thing for NO like it has been for transcendent big men in the past.

That said, Davis is going to be pretty special. He can produce even playing on a bad team and without really knowing what he's doing.

[Skin'emAlive]

Explain to me how Houston, with a **** roster featuring Lin as their best player (lol) gets Harden to sign long term but Grunfeld is telling us no one wants to come here? I swear everyday I hate that ****ing **** a little ****ing more.

My sentiments exactly. And the worst part is that now Houston becomes an attractive place for a FA! Meanwhile we are still picking up the Price's and Pargo's of the league.