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.

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1. Will John Wall continue in developing what we thought were the seeds of stardom? To this point, I think we've seen that John Wall, although it started slowly, has the skillset and desire (and now motivation, thanks to Shaq and Barkley disrespecting him in the Rookie-Soph game) to develop into an all-start point guard.
2. Is Flip Saunders the right coach for this young team? Flip...yeah, let's keep going. Actually, as CRAZY as this sounds, we may have to ask if Randy Wittman is the right coach for this young team. I think the answer is no, but he's not as awful as I thought he would be. There seems to be some response in a new voice being at the helm.
3. Who are our core players? And within that:
• Can we determine once and for all whether or not Andray Blatche is committed to being a fixture on the team, or if he's just the lazy, lethargic, layer upon layer of dormant muscle that we think he is (thanks Couples Retreat, and @jeaparris)? I think hope Andray has sealed his fate as a Wizard.
• To keep or not to keep Nick Young? A fantastic question that I continue to go back and forth on. There will be a Nick Young column.
• Can JaVale harness his enormous potential and develop into someone we should sign as our long-term answer at center? I made an attempt at answering this question in a column a few weeks ago. My stance on it hasn't really changed. He makes you feel like this a lot, but you can't teach some of the things that he does, I do believe that he tries, and he wants to and will continue to improve. That's the essence of the culture that we want, right?
• Are any of our additional young players "keepers"?This is where a we need to start really looking at things. Going in, I think we felt like we had some nice high-energy guys to come off the bench and maybe fill specific roles. Jordan Crawford looked like he was best suited to come off the bench and be the Microwave reincarnate (I go back and forth on my current feelings on him on a nightly basis). But I didn't think we had any long-term starters in the mix here. Maybe Singleton? Many of us thought he was a steal at #18 and hoped he could develop into a decent 3 and D guy. Jan Vesely still isn't an NBA-caliber scorer, but he's shown an innate energy that is nice to see. Still don't know what his position is. I really like Shelvin Mack as a backup PG. Through all of that, the player that I will be paying SPECIFIC attention to for the rest of the season is TREVOR BOOKER. As a rookie, we thought he was a hard-working, undersized PF whose energy and hustle we fell in love with, because it had seemed so foreign to us. A great, off-the-bench big. This season, I clamored for Flip to start him, but simply as a punishment to Blatche and to give the message that the hardest working guys should be rewarded. But since Blatche went down with fat (I know that's not his injury, just go with it) and Trevor's been inserted into the starting lineup, he's making a major case for himself. In fact, I'm adding a question that needs to be answered.
• Is Trevor Booker our PF of the future? There WILL be a column, I'm already ahead of you. The answer to this question may suddenly be one of the biggest of all, as it will go a long way in determining who we target in the upcoming draft.
4. Is Ernie Grunfeld the right GM for this team? This DEFINITELY deserves an entire column. I've been answering this with an emphatic NO for the last month or so, but maybe it's not as obvious as I thought earlier.

So there you have it. My thoughts and emotions on the Wizards are as up and down as they are on a game-to-game basis. That's what being a fan is all about, I guess.