nate33 wrote:I agree with Doc. A Beal trade is not happening. They're not adhering to any sort of grand plan with a title run X years down the road. They're just going to try to get incrementally better, year after year, and maybe at some point in the future, they'll have the assets to go all in on a contending team.
So look for them to try and develop their young talent and maybe acquire future picks. They'll look to make smart cap room acquisitions like the Bertans one when another team is in distress. (The mistake they made is not capitalizing on Bertans' value and getting a 1st round pick for him at the Trade Deadline.)
The blueprint is Toronto, Denver, Utah or San Antonio. Just be smart and hit lots of singles and doubles. Don't swing for the fences so much because you'll usually strike out.
It's always hard for a fan to accept this, for me as much as anyone, but not only is there no "grand plan with a title run X years down the road," but any focus at all on winning a title or even contending for one is tertiary at best, marginal.
The Wizards are
a product sold to the public by Monumental Sports. As with any product, the focus is on sales & margins: that's what all the plans are about.
Of course, you need to keep the public interested in your product, & the better it is the easier it is to keep them interested. It's very like the quality of the food: the better the food is the easier it is to sell. Of course, you don't want to over-spend on the food -- as I say, it's sales &
margin.
You also don't want to over-promise. If you tell the fans that the burgers are as good as steaks, they'll be disappointed when they find that, no, they are not. It's the same with being a "contender." As long as the team is respectable -- make the playoffs every couple of years or maybe a bit more often than that -- the customers will be happy.
Now, if we were Boston or the Lakers, no. Fans there are used to contending for titles & sometimes winning them: if the Lakers won 49 games every year & got bounced from the playoffs in R2 -- which for us was a high point, the best we'd done in many decades! -- Lakers fans would be complaining that the quality of the product had gone down!
That's not the Washington Wizards. In fact, no more need be grasped than the above in order to explain why, as nate points out, we didn't bother to capitalize on Bertans' perceived value by scoring a R1 pick for him at the deadline.
In a parallel way, it explains why Wizards fans think Bertans is really good, when in fact he isn't particularly good at all. Similarly, it explains why both Wall & Beal -- who
are really good players -- are nonetheless significantly overrated by those same Wizards fans.
