Poole & Bey to Pels for McCollum and Wizard-Killer

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

From June 27. 2025

Good point.

The Wizards do right by their player acquisitions. Porzingis has a championship ring. Daniel Gafford played well in the NBA Finals with Dallas and just re-signed for 3 years, $60M. Kuzma got his numbers and got the deal to a contender of his choice. Beal got just what he asked for Jared Butler is a great Karma story. Same with Juatin Champagnie.

The veterans on expiring contracts know they're in the spotlight for mid-season deals. They get to mentor. The Wizards have enthusiastic young guys eager to prove themselves.

Will Dawkins and company have done exceptional work changing the culture.

Six months later, December 1, 2025

How is the culture of this team?

They had a team-only meeting. Games later, they beat Atlanta and doubled their mighty win total. CJ dropped 46 that game. Khris Middleton facilitated 12 assists. Both have something left. It is only half way to mid season. The record is abysmal. Thoughts on the deconstruction? Is this team competing or is this a failing experiment?

Obviously, the Wizards direction is the right one. The whole point is to lose this year, so I don’t care that they are losing a lot. I actually think they’re ahead of schedule, given the abysmal place they started in.

I think people forget how dire the situation was. Because of how terrible the former owners were, by the time Beal was moved he had almost no value. As such, there was really no starting capital to jump-start the rebuild, other than Deni. At the time though, nobody thought much of Deni. Many analysts were low on him, and other teams who are paid millions of dollars to scout opposing teams players did not identify him as a valuable prospect. The Wizards certainly screwed that one up, but their process has been good. That’s the most important thing, because you can’t expect every move to be correct, but with the right process they don’t need to be.

They’ve rebuilt correctly. Sarr and George look promising. Coulibaly is still TBD, and I suspect Tre is a 6th man, but the Wizards got really unlucky in the lottery. They’ve got cap space to try and add more players, and they will hopefully have a top 4 pick next draft, which should be enough to net them a star. In the weak East, I could see the Wizards ready to hit the accelerator in 2027, if they get their next 2 draft picks and free agents right. It beats where the Wizards were before, which was a perennially hopeless franchise.