Arenas Traded for Rashard Lewis

[mhd]

so, um..... just thought of this now, but probably the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS TRADE: What on earth do I need to change my name to?

OBVIOUSLY GILBERTgoes05 isn't going to work. Anyone have any ideas? And how would one go about changing said name?

How about RoiderRashard? Funny how EG didn't mention that in his "press release". I consider a juiced athlete far worse off than what many thought of Gilbert.

[LyricalRico]

EG said Rashard can remind and defend!

I am in awe of your achievement in pinpointing and harping on the most mundane detail of the trade.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

I gotta say, the basketball IQ in this forum - except for a few posters - has gone to hell. You've really gone downhill, CCJ. Who would you have played at PG against Miami?

See page three of the game thread where I said start Kirk and Nick.

Keep reading where I say Kirk and Andray had a right to be tired.

Edited.

[willbcocks]

Gilbert'sGone2010 ???

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Deleted.

[leswizards]

I haven't quite decided how I feel about this trade.

While I agree with the many posters who have said that Gil is a better player than Rashard, I think there are other factors involved to mitigate that sentiment. For example, while the production that Gil provides as a PG is far superior to what Rashard provides, the production that Rashard provides as a player is far superior to production GIl provides as a SG (Gil has a below 9 per as a SG, and every rotation that has Gil as a SG has a negative on).

Consequently, all of Gil's value is as a PG, and he has no value as a SG. That presents two huge problems for the Wizards. The first problem is the Wizards three best players are all best when playing PG, and none of the three this year have shown any value playing SG. There are only 48 mpg at PG, and that is just not enough to make Gil, Kirk, and Wall productive when they have to play significant minutes at the 2. The next problem it presents is that there are only 2 top tier (i.e., playoff bound with legitimage NBA championship aspirations) NBA teams that don't have either a better PG than Gil (i.e., Chris Paul, Derrin Williams, Rajon Rondo, Steve Nash, etc) or a better $ value PG (Mike Bibby, Andre Miller, Chauncey Billups, etc). The only 2 top tier teams that Gil would be a huge upgrade for are the Heat and the Lakers. The problem is neither of those 2 teams could realistically absorb Gil's contract. That means Gil has almost zero value around the league.

The only value that Gil has if some other team has a bad contract that they want to unload, and are willing to take the risk that Gil might begin to provide value as a SG. Orlando seems to be that team.

Now to the merits of this trade, I actually think this trade makes the Wizards a better team. Gil had no value for the Wizards as a SG where the vast majority of his minutes would come from when Wall is healthy, while Rashard should be an upgrade over Yi, and this trade increases Nick Young's value (Nick is best as a SG, and this move increases his minutes at the 2 and decreases his minutes at the 3), and it increases Kirk's value by making him the sole back up PG.

So given all of that why am I ambivialent about this trade? Gil has been improving as a SG (his per was below 6 for awhile), and last season he was just as awful to begin the season as a SG, but eventully played well enough to be a decent 2. I kind of think that if the Wizards had been more patient, Gil might have been able to up his value as a 2 and hence his trade value.

But I am glad to see Gil Go.

[omegatronic3]

jeez talk about a glut of 3/4s...Lewis is basically the same as Yi, Blache, Howard, Thorpe

On the plus side he'll space the floor..

Grunfeld seems to love tweaners....he thinks hes getting versatility but actually he just gets players that can't match up on D with other teams.

Lewis is probably better than Yi and I would say that our best lineup is
Wall
Young
Howard
Lewis
Blach

I gotta think theres more moves to come because we basically have one shooting guard at this point. and
4 small forwards....Howard is definitely the best option there. Thorpe, Yi, Booker

[RickRoll_inDC]

Who's this Thorpe character?

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Deleted.

[LyricalRico]

I would say that our best lineup is
Wall
Young
Howard
Lewis
Blach

I agree on the lineup and the thought that we need to re-balance the roster. Packaging Yi and Thornton for a backup SG with an expiring contract is what I'd be hoping for.

[W. Unseld]

A. I am now going to lamely remind everyone that a few weeks ago I wanted to start an e-mail campaign to Ted to tell him not to trade Shard straight up for Gil and I thought that it warranted it's own anti-trade thread (there, my smug self-satisfaction is absolutely overwhelmed by the cr*ppiness of this trade)

B. I doubt this is pure Ernie. Unfortunately I think it's a clear signal that the owner (like the last owner) doesn't want to spend the big bucks

C. If, like me, part of you is trying to talk yourself into thinking this is a good trade, reflect on what you thought about these rumors several weeks ago, the rest is your self-preservation method kicking in

D. Is there anything worse than being a Wiz fan? (Yes, being a Skins fan) what happens when you combine the two? I'm chalking it up to seasonal depression

[AceDegenerate]

QUESTION: Did you see you see a trade happening eventually in Washington?
GILBERT ARENAS: ``I sensed something when I was coming off the bench. The excuse was that they needed scoring off the bench. My questions was, `Where’s the scoring from the starting five?’ I figured they were probably shipping me out because I was playing well and some people would probably have some interest in me.’’

[W. Unseld]

E. Before I forget, I partially blame the organization and I partially blame Stern (obviously in addition to Gil) for the whole gun incident. Gil gets 50 for unloaded guns for a law that months later gets struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court as being unconstitutional. Delonte West crosses state lines with loaded guns and anti-psychotics in his system. Delonte gets 10 games, Gil gets 50. FIFTY. Effing ridiculous. I'm not a big gun guy but it drives me up a wall to know that if this same incident happens in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and other places Gil gets off either scott free or with a 2-5 game suspension and a lot less bad press.

[willbcocks]

We might have a lifetime of interesting Gil quotes in the next couple days.

[Jimmy Recard]

QUESTION: Did you see you see a trade happening eventually in Washington?
GILBERT ARENAS: ``I sensed something when I was coming off the bench. The excuse was that they needed scoring off the bench. My questions was, `Where’s the scoring from the starting five?’ I figured they were probably shipping me out because I was playing well and some people would probably have some interest in me.’’

QUESTION: Did it ever dawn on you last June or the year before when you were here that you might want to someday play for the Magic?
GILBERT ARENAS: ``I used to complain to Otis when I was a free agent and the last six or seven years since he’s been here to, `Come and get me.’ Because this was my favorite team growing up.

[Ruzious]

Rough night.

[barelyawake]

1) My second favorite basketball player in history is no longer on my team... and for that today is a wistful day.

2) We had to tank. We had to trade Gil to do that. That has been obvious to several of us for some time. The trade helps us tank (and actually rashard's continued decline helps in that effort).

3) I still hate the trade. I know Gil's value was never going to rise to the point where he would have gotten us anything of substance in return. I was hoping for expirings.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Rough night.

Funny but I read it before you edited yours.

It has been rough. I am happy and sad at the same time. Happy for Gil and disgusted with the return on investment the GM got. It is so complicated that chemistry was great tonight but Rashard coming really makes things iffy due to the style Flip coaches.

I feel bad being a Wizard fan. I need to step away from the board and this team. Such a downer.

This is taking upbtoo much of my thoughts.

[Ruzious]

Rough night.

Funny but I read it before you edited yours.

It has been rough. I am happy and sad at the same time. Happy for Gil and disgusted with the return on investment the GM got. It is so complicated that chemistry was great tonight but Rashard coming really makes things iffy due to the style Flip coaches.

I feel bad being a Wizard fan. I need to step away from the board and this team. Such a downer.

This is taking upbtoo much of my thoughts.

I wrote it after reading the post you edited out. Cause/Effect

Perspective amigo. The problems are what happened long before today/last night. Today/last night is the result and not the problem. There was no chance they could have gotten something good for Gil. Cause/Effect

Who they got doesn't matter - except for his ability to help the other players develop. The team is rebuilding - this year and next year. Winning is secondary for this and next season. Sorry if people get angry when I say that. Barely had it right all along. We needed to see it played out, and we did. They had injuries as an excuse, but that excuse just can't be used every year. They've stunk this season. It was time.

[Hoopalotta]

A fair bit of stoopid wafting through these corridors.

I'm receptive to those who want to point out that we devalued Gil by not covering up the Gun-gate thing (assuming we could have reliably killed all the witnesses), but the rest of it, I mean, let's just say some of you guys might want to check any dried out spores in the corners of your cellars for psychedelic properties.

It was not by any means a "good" trade, but this is what was there. Some here were thinking a few months ago that Gil was this big asset that was going to steadily climb in value and they just refuse to acknowledge the evidence to the contrary. With the new CBA coming in and the owners wrangling for a hard cap, there market is just fundamentally compromised. Most teams that were seen as targets for Gil are just too scared to even think about taking him on with that sort of uncertainty, so there was only one sure thing of a buyer. If we waited and a single alternate buyer materialized after Orlando was satisfied with their roster, we'd have been in an even worse position if we were fully committed to moving Gil with the February deadline clamping down.

Thus, when Orlando was willing to strike, the club took a risk averse stance, both financially in relation to injuries and then also from a chemistry standpoint. We might have had the worst chemistry in the league up through now with a huge fall off from how we closed out last year. A pissed off Gil who doesn't want to be here playing on a gutter ball squad with a more frugal CBA coming down is just not at all likely to increase in value through patience.

The team just got to where they said:
"alright, we can handle this. It's here now and, if we pass, there well might not be any avenues to pursue for a deal down the road at all. The worst case here is way better than the worst case if we wait and the best case of waiting is a long shot."

Shart's guaranteed 2012 and 2013 salary adds up to a total of $31 million, or maybe a bit more if he plays well (news flash: we don't want Shart to play particularly well). Gil's financial commitments from 2013 to 2014 are over $62 million. So the money was hopefully cut in half. Half. I don't know what anyone was expecting here. By all realistic measures of the ledger, this is a plus. As big of a plus as some had hoped? No, but Gil's trade "value", or rather the extent of his "anti-value" was not realistically assessed (again, Krizko's argument that we had a hand in lowering that value is valid, so if anyone wants to complain about last December, I'm not going to offer any counter points as it appears that was indeed a colossal flub-up).

And despite the chirping around here, we were not in a particularly robust or flexible position from a cap standpoint either, as we were most likely hovering somewhere better than MLE money under the cap in the next CBA, but with the resulting obligation to basically run a skeleton crew operation if we had wanted to maintain the space.

But as to the fundamentals, if there is a hard cap, there's also a fair chance that there would be some sort of a turbo charged Allan Houston rule whereby yon corpulent and disheveled basketball yeomanry can be bought out with some or all of those contracts coming right off the books. Suppose we're talking about 15% rollbacks on salaries as has been discussed; under that scenario we're optimistically looking at something like a $26 million dollar buyout on Shart versus a $53 million dollar buyout on Gil. That's no sure thing, but it's probably the position that Leonsis is pushing for in the negotiations, it's a fair possibility overall and a hell of a lot more likely than Gil suddenly oozing with trade value had we kept him.

As a deal, it's not great or even good, but it's logical and I can live with it.