Let's Play: Revisionist Wizards

[Sluggerface]

You know, over the years, I've seen a lot of revisionist wizardy, but most of the time, it's just the "big" things, like not drafting Steph Curry, or drafting Jan Vesely instead of Kwahi Leonard. How about we try to construct a team based on a revision of small moves? The late draft picks. The marginal free agent signings.

Here are my proposed rules:

1) The revision has to be within reason. It can't be some crazy over the moon 20/20 hindsight swap (i.e. Curry/Klay/Leonard)
2) The revision has to have a small chance of actually impacting the overall draft order of the Wizards
3) The revision can't go over the luxury tax (basically the same cap we have now)

Here's mine:

2011 - Instead of drafting Chris Singleton, Washington drafts the rights to Nikola Mirotic
2013 - Instead of drafting Otto Porter, Washington drafts Nerlens Noel, DOES NOT RESIGN WEBSTER
2014 - Instead of signing Pierce, Washington resigns Ariza. DOES NOT SIGN Kris Humphries


2015/16 Roster and Cap

Wall/Sessions/Temple
Beal/Anderson/Neal
Ariza/Dudley/Oubre
Mirotic/Nene/Gooden
Gortat/Noel/Blair

Total team cap: 83.8 million, just under the luxury tax.

[Illmatic12]

Isn't this an offseason type thread? Lol

[Kanyewest]

^^ Or the Fire EG thread. Or after any trade is made. Or any draft thread.

[J-Ves]

09 Curry
10 Wall
11 Kawai, faried
12 Dummond
13 the freak
14,15 don't care. Championship already won.

Wall
Curry
Kawai
The freak, faried
Drummond

That was fun.
Edit. Oops didn't read the OP, still like that team though

Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[penbeast0]

Noel instead of Beal is a small 2nd round draft choice type move?

[closg00]

Nate has a good revisionist thread somewhere. The blown 2011 draft really hurt the Wizards, the Bulls drafted TWO starters outside of the lottery, Mirotic & Butler, we busted horribly with Vesely and Singleton.

There were guys on the board that wanted Drummond (a few), but there were a lot that wanted Noel.

[nate33]

Nate has a good revisionist thread somewhere. The blown 2011 draft really hurt the Wizards, the Bulls drafted TWO starters outside of the lottery, Mirotic & Butler, we busted horribly with Vesely and Singleton.

There were guys on the board that wanted Drummond (a few), but there were a lot that wanted Noel.

viewtopic.php?t=1379266

[fishercob]

I would have preferred Marcus Thornton or Gerald Green for the minimum over Gary Neal...

[closg00]

I was just thinking about this the other day. What if EG was fired and an actual, forward-thinking GM took over. Or maybe just a committee of RealGM members oversee EG's decisions with veto authority. Here's how I think it would have played out. This isn't a 20/20 hindsight pipe dream where we draft every quality player in every draft. This is just what I think the board consensus would have done over the past few years.

Leonsis took over in April of 2010. The team had just had its fire sale, dumping Jamison, Haywood and Butler and were in the process of tanking for the top pick. Our team was rebuilding around McGee, Blatche and Young at the time. Blatche had just had his best stretch of his career. Gungate had already taken place.

2010/11:
It's hard to know exactly what other deals were on the table at the time, so, for the purposes of this analysis, I'm mostly just revisiting decisions that were already on the table. I think most of EG's initial moves were pretty rational and I agreed with them. So let's assume we made all the moves just as Grunfeld did. So that would be:

• Draft Wall #1
• Draft day trade for the rights to Trevor Booker.
• Draft day trade to absorb Hinrich's salary for rights to Seraphin
• Dump Arenas' contract for Rashard Lewis.
• Extend Blatche. (A horrible decision in hindsight, but I'm trying to be realistic. Most except Nivek were on board with it.)

2011/12:
Here is the disastrous offseason that absolutely ruined the rebuild. I know my pick at the time was Kawhi Leonard and many on the board agreed. There was definite board consensus to take Faried when he was still on the board at #17. I won't be greedy and assume that we would have also taken Parsons in the 2nd round. I kinda liked Tyler Honeycutt at the time so let's assume we drafted that bust. I also liked the Hinrich for Crawford deal later in the season.

• Draft Kawhi Leonard at #6
• Draft Faried at #17
• Draft Honeycutt at #35

The season did not go well and I don't think the rookies Leonard and Faried would have made much difference. The problem was too many knuckleheads and a lack of leadership. Just like EG, I was in favor of the mid-season remedies to these problems:

• Trade Hinrich for Crawford
• Dump Nick Young
• Banish Blatche
• Trade McGee for Nene

2012/13:
With a little success late in the season, things are looking up. But let's also assume that our record was about the same and we still landed the #3 pick. I was in favor of Beal, but I would have handled the Rashard Lewis contract differently. Instead of trading it for Okafor and Ariza, I would have bought him out and used the cap room to absorb Ryan Anderson's S&T contract in a lopsided Trevor Booker swap. (Orlando traded Anderson for Quincy Acy so this is realistic, with Booker replacing Acy.) In the 2nd round, the board loved Crowder so I would have taken him. (I kinda liked Draymond Green too, but I won't be greedy.) So the offseason would have looked like this:

• Draft Beal at #3
• Buy out Rashard Lewis
• Trade Booker for Ryan Anderson
• Draft Jae Crowder
• Sign Webster (a great find for $1.75M)
• Sign A.J. Price
• Dump Crawford and his bad attitude mid-season

We would not have had Okafor and Ariza, but we would have had Leonard and Faried taking their place, which is roughly equivalent - perhaps a bit worse given their inexperience. Ryan Anderson would have helped quite a bit, at least on offense where his spacing would have helped with the development of Wall. Wall missed the first 33 games and Nene was hurt most of the year. I assume our record would have been the same due to a lack of a true center with Nene out. We had talent at forward, but it was inexperienced without Wall to hold it together.

2013/14:
I assume we ended up with the 8th pick and lucked out in the lottery to land the #3 pick. I would have drafted Noel (as would pretty much the entire board). We also would have had considerable cap room with Lewis' buyout coming off the books. Instead of trading Okafor's expiring contract and the 2014 1st for Gortat, we probably could have gotten Gortat for free just by absorbing his salary and those other expiring-contract bums. It would have made a ton of sense because even if he was only a 1-year rental, we knew Noel was going to miss his rookie season due to injury. In the second round, I would have stuck with Nate Walters instead of trading him for Rice. I would also be eyeing the contract situation going forward. Faried was playing well, but he's a bit superfluous on a front line with Gortat, Nene and Anderson (and Noel waiting in the wings) so I'd consider a trade for a future 1st or perhaps some backcourt help. I'd still be nervous about the perimeter shooting other than Beal, so I probably would have kept Webster. Let's assume the same contract, except a total team option on Year 4, not a 2.5M buyout. With Leonard on the roster, I think we would have had the leverage. So the moves would have been as follows:

• Draft Noel
• Trade cap space for Gortat
• Draft Nate Walters
• Resign Webster to 3-year MLE deal (TO on Year 4)
• Trade Faried for 1st, let's assume a pick in the teens in 2015 draft

I also liked the mid-season Andre Miller trade to give us a backcourt veteran.

2014/15:
I'd have resigned Gortat (still not knowing what we had in Noel) and extended Leonard for the max. With our pick, I'd be looking at backcourt help. Picking 20th or so, Jordan Adams is probably the guy I would have drafted. So our lineup would have looked like this:

PG Wall/Miller/Walters
SG Beal/Adams/Webster
SF Leonard/Crowder
PF Anderson/Nene/Seraphin
C Gortat/Noel


We'd also have our 2015 pick and the 2015 pick from the Faried trade as assets. I'd have jumped at the opportunity to grab Isaiah Thomas, giving up Miller and our 2015 pick. I'd have then pushed real hard to trade Gortat + Anderson for Kevin Love before they acquired Mozgov. That makes a ton of sense for both teams because it give us the ideal PF to play alongside Noel and Wall. From Cleveland's perspective, it looks like all Cleveland wants out of Love is for him to be Ryan Anderson, so why not trade him for the real Ryan Anderson and pick up a good two-way center in the process?

Now:
If I was running the show, our team right now would be:

PG Wall/Isaiah Thomas
SG Beal/Adams
SF Leonard/Crowder/Webster
PF Love/Nene
C Noel/Nene/Seraphin

Wall and Leonard are under max contracts that will look cheap in 2016. Isaiah Thomas is cheap. Adams and Noel are under rookie deals for a while. Nene is an expiring contract next year. Love gets a max contract in 2016. All-in-all, that's a very good young team that meshes well and the contracts are very reasonable. In 2016, we'd have Wall, Beal, Leonard, Noel, Thomas, Adams, the 2015 pick we got in the Faried trade, our 2016 pick, and about $45M in cap room and the ability to pay Love more than anybody else.