Ernest Rides Again

So it was announced tonight that Ernie Grunfeld will remain with as president of your Washington Wizards. As much as I thought there MAY be a change, and as surprised as I am that Ted Leonsis apparently not only didn't interview other candidates but TURNED DOWN requests to interview others, I cannot say that I am terribly shocked by this happening.

Surely the Nenê trade was a clue that Ernie being back was more than a possibility to occur. I would have been on board with a new GM, but I'm not broken up over it. He’s DEFINITELY made his share of mistakes, but I’d almost bet that many of them were under not too subtle orders from Abe Pollin (To be specific, I'm talking about re-signing Gilbert and Antawn, and trading the #5 pick in the 2009 Draft). I’m not even about defending the bad decisions but let’s just look at now.

You guys do know that these players that everyone’s excited about now were also brought in under his watch, right? Let’s not be completely one-sided here. All I’m saying is that while we’re quick to bash all of the mistakes, let’s remember that this 2010 draft class that we’re suddenly so amped about (Wall, Seraphin, Booker, and Crawford, who was also from that class) and the cap flexibility that we now have was his too. Many can and will discredit the John Wall pick as luck of the draw. Cool. Luck happens. As much as everybody slurps Sam Presti, he was still a tad lucky that he was left with Durant instead Oden in 2007. I just think we’ve gotten so enamored with hating Ernie that we COMPLETELY discredit any good that he’s done.

I said all of that to say here’s to a little more luck with the top pick in the lotto. Even if not the number one pick, a top five pick gives us the opportunity to bring in a long-term stud. Two second round picks, if used wisely, may also be helpful either by actually using them on useful players or by using the picks in trade (maybe to get back into the first round?). Blatche can be amnestied. The remainder of Rashard’s contract ($13.7M last I checked) can be paid off or it could be an asset in a trade. We have cap room. We, hopefully, can look forward to development in a legitimate offseason for Wall, Seraphin, Booker, Crawford, and Vesely. Things are looking up! And these positive vibes have also occurred under the watch of Ernest F. Grunfeld (I made the 'F' up. I used to love when Tony K did that with Donovan McNabb).

OK, I'm done. Back to your regularly scheduled Wizards-bashing.

Who Should the Wizards Draft? Version 1 - March 25, 2012

As we are witnessing in this year's NCAA Tournament, many of the prospects that the Wizards are in position to draft are on display. I currently have the 2012 NBA Draft top 5 for the Wizards as follows:

1. Anthony Davis - Just...I'm slightly fearful of another freakish athlete type, but you can't look at guys in a vacuum that way. Just appears to be a great kid who's still growing into his body. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the kid was a blossoming guard, who almost overnight had a dramatic growth spurt and is now learning to be a big man while still having some of the skillset of a guard. Oh..that IS what happened?
2. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist - My friend Hue RAVES about this guy. He has prototypical size for a 3, all the intangibles you want out of a player, and just seems to always be where he needs to be. An absolute hound on defense, and appears to have the work ethic and want to improve his jump shot.
3. Bradley Beal - Color me impressed with what little I've seen of him. He's a short 2, but when "Ray Allen meets Eric Gordon" is the description that Chad Ford gives him, I'm too excited to care.
4. Thomas Robinson - Local product, cold monster on the glass. Intent on learning and excelling at his craft. He and Davis are power forwards, which would compromise Booker, but I think you have to take the chance.
5. Harrison Barnes - Despite his horrible performance against Ohio, he still projects to be a 3 in the NBA that can put the ball in the hoop, which is by the way a glaring need for this team.

These all appear to be good kids, and their work ethic and desire have been among the superlatives attached to each at some point. This draft seems so loaded that you almost can't go wrong if you have a top 5 pick, which we project to have. Thought: Would you trade Booker for an additional lottery pick?

Does 1 - 2 = Positive?

I fought it until the bitter end. I did. I went all the way to the wire with JaVale McGee. As a fan, I can admit to being guilty of putting on blinders to things. Sometimes, even if we KNOW the truth, we deny it or keep ourselves from admitting it just because we WANT to believe otherwise. It started to get difficult. I definitely began to waver over the course of the season though, you HAVE to give me that. You know what? I'm not even going to get into it. Let's move forward.

Ranking the Wizards

So today has been an interesting day for Wizards fans. First, the Marc Stein report that the Wiz were among teams expressing strong interest in Andrew Bogut, which implies, as Mike Lee reported, that there is a willingness to trade JaVale McGee. Then the tweet by Mike Lee that the Wizards are so desperate to trade Andray Blatche that they'd be willing to trade anybody on the roster not named John Wall to get rid of him. Upon following this all day, and reading Bill Simmons' annual trade value column, I decided to group our roster categories based on my willingness to trade them.

These Questions Need Answers

Going into the season, most Wizards fans had humble expectations. Just show us SOME improvement, and hopefully find answers to some pertinent long-term questions. I'd say that there were a few basic questions that one way or another everybody had, with a couple of subquestions thrown in there. As we inch closer to the All-Star break, many of the same questions that I had going into the season still need to be answered, and some new ones have arisen. I'm going to use the questions below as the starting point to several subsequent columns on these topics.

Yourrrrrrrr Washington Wizards - February 4, 2012

Man, we F#*^%* SUCK. The end.

The Future of the Wizards and the Curious Case of JaVale McGee

What do you do with an enigmatic seven-footer with all the potential in the world and what sometimes seems like all the basketball sense of a pogo stick? He blows you away with his athleticism, his ability to block shots and send home an oop from anywhere, but in the same breath drives you nuts with his apparent obsession to make ESPN's Top Plays every night? His mom says he's "the future of the NBA". I just want to know if he's the future for the Wizards. He's a restricted free agent at the end of the season, and it has been rumored that he feels he is a near-max player. What do the Wizards do?

Yourrrrrrrr Washington Wizards - January 28, 2012

So a lot has happened over the last few days. A strange victory over Oklahoma City. JaVale's mama airs her greivances. Flip gets fired. Randy Wittman moves into the head spot as interim coach. Vesely starts! Two wins versus the Bobcats. A road victory! Let's get it!

Amar'e to the Wizards?

Moke Hamilton of SheridanHoops.com recently posted a column suggesting five trade proposals for Amar'e Stoudemire, one of which landed him in Washington.

If you would, indulge with me in the hyperbole that is this scenario. The trade would make us instantly credible, give us a star to pair with Wall, and would turn the 'rebuilding' process into a 'what do we need to be a major contender' process. Not sure how Amar'e and McGee would work defensively, but I could imagine not worse than things are with Blatche. While I'd love to get rid of Blatche and Young and end up getting an All-star in Amar'e, I'm a bit conflicted on this trade that will never happen. Maybe it's worth the risk, but I'm not a huge fan of the idea of the Wizards taking on the risk of Amar'e's uninsured contract, with his bad knees and all. And Marvin Williams is Atlanta's Andray Blatche.

In the short-term, the trade would be a disaster for Atlanta, but for a team in NBA purgatory that has a couple of bad contracts and is in no way a title contender, this gets them out of the woods. Even though he's a good player, that Joe Johnson contract is well on its way to becoming the worst in the league. This would offer them the chance to get rid of that cap-crippling deal, and a prospect in the hometown Shumpert. Not sure what Cleveland gets out of the trade. The Knicks would have a void at power forward with these swaps, but would get an upgrade at two other positions.

Would this be worth the risk for the Wizards? As much as I try to sound all rational and sensible about the pros and cons, if this trade were to actually occur, I would most likely be through the roof at our overnight return to relevance.

Yourrrrrrrr Washington Wizards - January 18, 2012

Man...we SUCK! It's frustrating when all I have to write about is losing.  Even I, a person that always tries to find the positive in things, am losing hope and interest.  Oh yeah, we did win a game this week, so to that I say...who the F#^! cares, we're 1-12! If I'm a bit ornery in this post, can you blame me? Anyway, my thoughts below the jump...

2011-12 NBA Playoff Power Rankings: Western Conference - v1

OK, I've put this off long enough. Let's get to it. With a couple of exceptions, the West is basically split into two factions (Uh, no not THOSE two factions): One group consists of teams with old legs, hoping that they can stick it out through this condensed grind of a regular season and get into the playoffs, where experience has historically offered a huge advantage. The other group consists of young teams that go 8-10 deep. Coaching may be more important than ever this season, as some teams with great talent may lose due to poor decision-making. Anyway, click below for my thoughts on the Western Conference to this point.

The 'OKC Model'

Let's be clear: The 'OKC model' is actually the "have the #2 pick in draft & #1 team doesn't pick transcendent player" model, or as I like to call it, the "team after Portland's pick" model.  Any model involving drafting Michael Jordan or Kevin Durant has a good shot of being a successful model. Nice work, Portland. OK, to be fair, Portland had the #2 pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, as Houston took Olajuwon with the top pick. Twitter

Yourrrrrrrr Washington Wizards - January 6, 2012

Happy New Year! When I last wrote, our favorite band of misfits had yet to win a game in the NBA season. Where are we a week later????? Oh.

We did get a couple of games where there was effort.  Still, two complete no-shows, two competitive losses, and one players-only meeting later, the Wizards stand at 0-7.  But like JaVale said earlier this week, "U lookin at the glass 99% empty! What about it being 1% full!" My observations to this point:

Seven feet of excuses. I didn't really get out my frustrations with Andray Blatche and his Twitter rant last week. He complained that he's not getting the ball in the post enough. That irked me for a number of reasons, but the biggest is that the tweet seems to continue a trend of cop outs and excuses. Why can't he adjust positioning so that he is in the post more when he's ready to receive the ball?  If he gets the ball out of the paint, why can't he just back his way down there?  Isn't he pretty much a face-up player?  What about rebounding?  What about defense? What about conditioning? What frustrates everyone so much about Blatche is that you can see that he has talent, but you can't help but think that he'll never mentally be there.  Maybe that's just in this organization, where losing and dysfunction happens. 

Rashard Lewis. If this wasn't clear last week, I don't understand why Rashard Lewis is getting minutes. He's done, man. I mean done. I'm running out of ways to play devil's advocate in rationalizing why he starts. I'm not going to even dignify the contract rationale, although that could very well be the reason.  Veteran leadership. C'mon. If he was displaying so much leadership, why did Mo Evans have to call the players-only meeting?  Frontcourt perimeter scoring. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: this ain't Rashard Lewis from the 2009 Playoffs. This is the post-suspension Rashard Lewis. I'm not accusing him of taking something.  That's not my place, and I'm in no position to speak on it. What I can say is that ever since that suspension to start the 2009-10 season, the guy has been a shell of what he was.  Is that a coincidence? I no longer see evidence of a consistent jumper. He's not a great defender. He's tall, but I don't see a lot of rebounding. I just see a guy keeping a younger, more energetic player(s) on the bench. We've come out lethargic in almost every game so far. and while I'm not blaming that on him, if things need to be shaken up, he needs to be the first guy that needs to be removed from the starting lineup.

Chris Singleton. CHRIS SINGLETON SHOULD BE STARTING! He just provides a spark out there. He has a lot of confidence and obviously has the confidence of the coaching staff, as he's been left on an island against Paul Pierce and Carmelo Anthony in the last week.  Yeah he's been torched a bit, but he's learning.  I don't know that he's the long-term answer at SF, but I like him. He brings energy.  And, in a stat that stunned me, he's brought much better long-range shooting than Lewis.  I know that seven games is a very small sample size, but Singleton is 7-13 from beyond the arc, while Lewis is 4-18.  Again, why are we starting Rashard?  The bigger question is why are we NOT starting Chris?

The Franchise. I had some extreme thoughts about our franchise player the other day, but I'm going to hang on to these thoughts for a while.  I don't know if I'm being irrational or not yet.

The Javalevator. Hey!  I see improvement!  He doesn't seem like a chicken with his head cut off out there.  All we can ask for is that he is trying to get better. I haven't seen any coast-to-coast dribbling exhibitions, and while it's still tough to watch, he has developed a couple of post moves. He's coming on and really starting to show some signs that he can be a part of the NBA's 'Really light-skinned, skinny, athletic, and very active centers" club (See Joakim Noah, Tyson Chandler, Marcus Camby. They're like a really tall Debarge).

The Brass. Same as last week. I think Flip needs to go. And even though I don't think he's been the worst GM ever, really starting to feel like Ernie should go too. My feeling on this isn't as strong as it is for Flip, but there are just too many 'projects' on this team. Stay tuned on this.

The Rest. Nick started hot, but has been chilly lately.  Seems like a funk, though.  I'm not going to kill him for it. Jordan Crawford is already elite at something: shooting too much. Oh, and taking minutes from Shelvin Mack. Booker T doesn't strike me as ever being a long-term starter, but there should at least be a threat to Blatche there. You see signs on occasion, but I don't think Seraphin is or ever will be very good.  Ready to see what Jan Vesely can do!