Trevor Ariza & Marcin Gortat (What to do with them?)

[Knighthonor]

Final call here.
Glad to see what happens.

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Nothing will happen, we'll lose Ariza and overpay Gortat. Our team will be awful forever. **** Ernie and Ted.

I am starting to come to that conclusion. But you left out the lost of the first round pick as well.

Back to rebuilding. Anybody want to skip along and make a 2015 tanking draft thread?

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[Upper Decker]

I'm not sure what my problem is, but I loathe Gortat. Not because he's a bad person, but because he represents everything I detest about Grunfeld. Trading good assets for a meddling player who doesn't do anything to contribute to a winning environment. Not just that, but he'll get classically overpaid and be an anvil to to the salary cap for another 4 years.

Think of it this way. Gortat is in his contract season, you'd think he'd be balling out right now, but no...he's been amazing blah. Once he get's paid like Webster he'll just coast along and become completely worthless.

[rockymac52]

Haven't posted on this board in forever since I've been so busy this season, but assuming no big trade in the next 24 hours, I think our approach has to be to re-sign Gortat, Ariza, Booker, and possibly Seraphin, in order of importance.

Losing Gortat is not even an option as far as I'm concerned due to our lack of depth down low and the lack of quality big men free agents this summer. Once we've signed Gortat, our remaining cap space is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, so we might as well sign Ariza, Booker, and possibly Seraphin, regardless of how you feel about them (I personally like Ariza and Booker a lot, and think Seraphin still brings some promising skills to the table - especially for a minimum salary contract).

At that point our roster looks like this:
Wall/Maynor
Beal/Webster/Rice
Ariza/Webster/Porter
Nene/Booker
Gortat/Seraphin

That's a very good starting 5, as we all know. Webster is a good 6th man who can play almost all of the backup SG and SF minutes (he basically does this already). Booker is a good big man off the bench. You'd probably prefer him to be your 4th best big man, as opposed to your 3rd, but he's not terrible for a team's 1st big man off the bench (plus I expect him to be fairly cheap). That gives us a very respectable top 7 players. Sure, you'd like to add another star player into the mix in order to really become title contenders, but that's just not realistic at this particular point in time.

Porter and Rice can split whatever minutes remain at SG and SF after Beal, Ariza, and Webster have got their playing time. If either of them steps up and proves they're ready for more playing time, then at that point we can look into trading one of our SGs or SFs to even out the rest of the lineup. But until then, just treat them as 3rd stringers, and if they turn out to be valuable players, then great, if not, oh well. I think Seraphin still has a lot of potential, and he's obviously a very skilled player, he just needs to continue to cut down on the mental mistakes and it will go a long way. Ideally he's our 5th big man, used mostly in garbage time or in the event of injuries, in which case, he's actually a reasonably talented player for that role. Maynor... don't get me started on Maynor.

Then we have the MLE and minimum contracts (and the 2nd round pick too, I suppose) to fill out the rest of the roster. The pressing needs are a backup PG (it would be nice if he could play some SG too, but that's just icing on the cake) and another big man to come off the bench (could be either PF or C, but I'd probably prefer C since I trust Booker a lot more than I do Seraphin.

The MLE is slightly above $5 million in year 1. We could spend it all on one player or split it between two guys. I think priority number 1 is acquiring a backup PG, since we currently have a black hole at that position. Looking at the upcoming free agents, it seems to me as though there are a TON of decent backup PG options available. Based on how the PG market worked out last summer, I hope we learned our lesson and choose to be patient and wait to see which PGs aren't immediately picked up by other teams, then bring them aboard for pennies (see: Nate Robinson, Mo Williams). Some guys I'd consider off the top of my head: Nate Robinson, Mo Williams, Jerryd Bayless, Devin Harris, Ramon Sessions, Steve Blake. Then again, those are probably the guys that get snatched up quickly, whereas the guys with warts are the ones who fall to us, but even the guys with warts are a hell of a lot better than Maynor has been for us. I'd welcome back AJ Price with open arms if it came to that. As for big men, off the top of my head, I know I really like Patrick Patterson, if the Raptors don't re-sign him. I'd also take a hard look at DeJuan Blair again, especially now that we can probably afford him.

If we could sign Blair for $3 million and any of those PGs, let's go with Jerryd Bayless for now, for $2 million, or some other combination to split the MLE, that'd be fantastic. I suspect it might not be quite that simple, and we might need to spend $4-5 million on one player, then find a free agency leftover (just like how we got Webster) on a minimum deal. So let's say Blair costs the full MLE, then we could have our pick of all of the leftover PGs to be our backup, but let's just say it's AJ Price to be safe, since I figure a player like him is fairly likely to be available for that amount then.

Wall/Price/Maynor
Beal/Webster/Rice
Ariza/Webster/Porter
Nene/Booker
Gortat/Blair/Seraphin

That's a damn good squad.

[TGW]

Wall/Price/Maynor
Beal/Webster/Rice
Ariza/Webster/Porter
Nene/Booker
Gortat/Blair/Seraphin

That's a damn good squad.

A damn good squad?

I'd have to disagree. Looks exactly like this same team, except with AJ Price and Dejuan Blair. Sorry, but I don't see Price and Blair upgrading this team at all. Even with Bayless, who's been trade fodder his entire career, this team would still be what it is. Those guys are just deck chairs on the titanic...none of them add wins to this current squad.

You also have to factor Nene and Gortat declining, and Ariza and Gortat not playing for a new contract. That will automatically make this team worse.

Right now, minor tweaks of the lineup will not help that much.

[rockymac52]

I realize that my final outcome in that last post is essentially the same exact team as this year, except for Blair and Price, and that might not seem like that big of a difference, but in my opinion, it really is.

The way I see it, this year's Washington Wizards are eerily similar to last year's Portland Trail Blazers. Last year the Blazers had a very good and balanced starting 5 (Lillard/Matthews/Batum/Aldridge/Hickson), but also one of the worst benches in the history of professional basketball (Maynor, Barton, Claver, Freeland, Leonard, Babbitt, Pavlovic, you get the point). A barren wasteland of a bench if I've ever seen one. Hell, Maynor very well could have been their best player on the entire bench, which should put this into context for you (although he wasn't as bad as he's been for us this year).

Then this past summer they replaced Hickson with Lopez, which was basically a wash in the grand scheme of things. However, the Blazers also made a series of small moves that have directly led to their overnight transformation into a contender. They drafted CJ McCollum in the late lottery (in a historically weak draft), and he has been very respectable for a rookie coming into the league with an injury. They traded for Thomas Robinson for future 2nd rounders, and while he still isn't a very good player, he looks much better than he did in his rookie season, and he's on his way to becoming an average backup (at least). They signed Dorell Wright for 2 years/$6 million. He barely plays these days, but he's been decent for them off the bench. They were patient in free agency and were awarded the leftover prize of Mo Williams for 2 years/$5.4 million. He's been a little worse than he was in the past, but still decent overall, albeit probably below average.

Basically they spent very little money to acquire below average backups at 4 positions, and the results have been phenomenal. Yes, a big part of their success has been Lillard's development, as well as a respectable jump in production from Matthews. But if they had the same crappy bench they had last year, they wouldn't be in the playoff picture in the West this season, IMO.

Bottom line: sometimes all it takes for a team to become a contender are a couple minor signings of average to below average backups. We're in a very similar position with our starters and core group. No need to overcomplicate this summer. Bring back Gortat, Ariza, Booker, and possibly Seraphin, sign a very cheap backup PG and maybe another similarly cheap backup PF/C, and this team could very well take another huge leap next season.