Trade Blatche or McGee?

[Optms]

Blatche.

I think the Wizards, even with what they have as of right now can still 'win now' without Blatche. Whoever they would get back for him in a trade would surely make up the difference I'm guessing. No need in trading the brightest future piece in Javale when having Blatche on the roster wouldn't take Washington much farther this year anyhow.

[FreeBalling]

If I had to select one, I'd trade Blatche. McGee is going to be the real deal.

[WizarDynasty]

Blatche no doubt. Blatche is skilled on offense and is above average on defense. McGee is a garbage man that is years away from gaining the strength to play in the post and lacks quick nimble feet needed to play powerforward.
Blatche without a doubt.

[LyricalRico]

McGee ... lacks quick nimble feet needed to play powerforward.

Well then it's a good think he's a center, isn't it?

[P'Oed]

Blatche no doubt. Blatche is skilled on offense and is above average on defense. McGee is a garbage man that is years away from gaining the strength to play in the post and lacks quick nimble feet needed to play powerforward.
Blatche without a doubt.

dude....what? McGee is a center. And what would lead you to believe Blatche is "skilled" on offense? Is it the constant need to hoist up a 15-foot jumper that doesn't fall through 70% of the time? Or I guess it could be the fact that he seems freaked out by posting up on other players, even the ones smaller than him. His defense is pretty good but I don't see the "skilled" offense at all. I really hope McGee is motivated by all of the people that say he's a skinny, garbage time piece of crap that will never even see the light of day as a backup center. The guy has a Dwight Howard frame and leaping ability. And post moves? Well...Dwight Howard doesn't even have those. Been on the look out for the Java Moca.

[no D in Hibachi]

After watching the finals I'd say that McGee has better post moves than Howard which really isn't saying much at all. Superman=super overrated

[Dat2U]

I don't want to trade either one; both are cheap, big, above-average players, and you don't send those away lightly. That said, if we are trading one, it's Blatche, no doubt. McGee is going nowhere unless it's as the Al Jefferson in our own personal Kevin Garnett deal (aka, as part of acquiring a top-five player). Blatche, on the other hand, I'd be okay with including him in a package for the next level down, a legit all-star caliber player.

This is exactly how I feel.

I might be greedy, nut I hope we wouldn't have to include Blatche in an Amare trade.

[JWizmentality]

Profit > McGee > Blatche > DMac > Young > Crittenton > Pecherov

Edited for accuracy.

Profit > McGee > DMac > Blatche > Young > Crittenton > Who??

Edited for those who actually watched the games.

[pancakes3]

i would hate to be in stewie's shoes - nailed to the bench in a foreign country making 600k after taxes and being made fun of for looking like an ambiguously gay cartoon baby. go home, big man. make some euros. summer in ibiza. marry a burnt out tennis prodigy. live the good life. you don't really want this, do you?

[doclinkin]

Neither. McGee is the very definition of upside. If you ever wait on a kid due to their potential, this is the one. There's nobody in the league longer, or more athletic at that size. He's still learning how Big he is and what to do with himself, but fortunately we have sufficient depth that we can wait on him to develop, don't need him right away.

And as for Blatche, eh. I just have a good feeling that Flip will know how to use him to best effect, define his role for him. And given success within a role tailored to his skills, he can develop consistency, thus gain reward, cheers, critical appreciation, approval or respect of his peers, a positive feedback loop that encourages him to put in more work to develop more success. And thus he won't have to look for approval offcourt as much, trying to buy it or rent it or burn up the night looking for someone to tell him how good he is.

I don't want to swap for a broke down one-eyed no defense former allstar who is being jettisoned by the team with the best medical evaluation squad in the league. Who just recently received approval to leave his house for crynoutloud.

I don't want to chuck them for expirings, projected retirings and supposed cap space.

My feeling is the proper market value for these players hasn't been set yet. That as of right now we'd be trading them when their value is low. I expect a significant uptick in the Blatche-McGee market over the next couple years with Flip orchestrating the band.

--

I do want a proper Big Man coach for McGee though.

[Ruzious]

Neither. McGee is the very definition of upside. If you ever wait on a kid due to their potential, this is the one. There's nobody in the league longer, or more athletic at that size. He's still learning how Big he is and what to do with himself, but fortunately we have sufficient depth that we can wait on him to develop, don't need him right away.

The thing about McGee though - while he's a great run/jump athlete for his size, parts of the athletical package include fluididity, body control, and strength. McGee showed he's more gangly, gangly, and... gangly. Whether he can convert those 3 g's to the former through physical maturity and hard work is the question, imo. There's a reason he wasn't picked until late mid 1st round. NBA GMs don't normally get together and say in unison - Ooh, we hate athletic 7 footers with All-American genes.

[doclinkin]

Neither. McGee is the very definition of upside. If you ever wait on a kid due to their potential, this is the one. There's nobody in the league longer, or more athletic at that size. He's still learning how Big he is and what to do with himself, but fortunately we have sufficient depth that we can wait on him to develop, don't need him right away.

The thing about McGee though - while he's a great run/jump athlete for his size, parts of the athletical package include fluididity, body control, and strength. McGee showed he's more gangly, gangly, and... gangly. Whether he can convert those 3 g's to the former through physical maturity and hard work is the question, imo. There's a reason he wasn't picked until late mid 1st round. NBA GMs don't normally get together and say in unison - Ooh, we hate athletic 7 footers with All-American genes.

Fluidity and body control we've seen at times, on the two step dribble drive from well outside the freethrow line, to acrobatic contortions to throw the ball down, to silly pointless 'skills' like his behind-the-back assist. He just needs fundamentals of low-post footwork. Repetitions. He has shown a low-post wiggle or two (his debut game in Dallas IIRC he had a low post shimmy to jumpshot). Mostly he just needs someone to set the parameters for him and require him to play Big Boy style.

Here's the thing to understand, he's 3 years removed from being a 190 lb 7 footer coming out of high school where he played as a face-up SF type. His mother did him a disservice teaching him that face-up skills were what earned the real money for NBA bigs. Then he played understudy to a jumpshooting highpost center Nick Fazekas. Banging and thumping int he low-post were not in his repertoire, in part because he didn't have the thicks to do it. Now, though you can see him fleshing out.

As for finished product on coordination, I dunno if you ever went through a growth spurt, but I guarantee you I went through a few years of awkward going from 5'6" to 6'2" and then filling out the wingspan. He is growing into his frame, putting on what 40+ pounds in 3 years. He has the architecture to take upper body muscle if you look at his wrist circumference and shoulder width, though he'll always have a high center of gravity. Many true Bigs take longer to develop. Mnay can't develop because they are merely freaks of size, genetic anomalies. JaVale comes by his size honestly, it's tough to extrapolate what his real limit might be because there have been so few players that long and that athletic. Kareem, Wilt. Ralph Sampson?

He needs a tutor, but his awkward aspect will pretty quickly melt away once he gets a few repeatable skills that are useful at his new size. I'm pretty sure he's going to love the dominance that his increasing strength will give him. He's just never really had it before.

[Ruzious]

I guess I have to see more of that fluididity before I believe he's the great athuhlete that most others believe. NBA history is littered with 7 foot millionaires like Jim McIlvaine who had a few moments of gracefulness. Maybe I'm too impatient with the pregnancy, because I'm so anxious to see the baby. Show me the baby! Show me more assists than Etan Thomas. Show me the defense of a long 7 footer with great athleticism. Show me... any skill other than dunking - on a consistent basis. I want to be like Mickey Dolenz and be a believer.

[WizarDynasty]

He's never going to be able to use his strength with a high center of gravity. Strength in the nba comes from being able to knock your a strong opponent with lower center of gravity off balance. A Big with a high center of gravity can't knock in man off balance because most of his weight is in his upper body instead of his lower body "mcgee" has to work twice as hard to move a player with a lower center of gravity out of position. If McGee could bend his legs he would at least be able to shift his some of his upper body mass lower to ground and use it to move people around but he can barely move his feet with his legs bent. McGee's body has been engineered to run full court with speed, his legs have not been trained at all to push out lower center of gravity post players, which is what he is suppose to do on nearly every play as an nba center. There are players in this draft who are 5 years younger than McGee and have far more strength in their legs because they have practiced banging in the post and building their leg strength their entire lives while McGee has just started building his post leg strength in the last year and half. McGee has years to go before he is going to be able to catchup with the leg strength of post players who have been fighting for post position playing banging in the post since they were in middle school.
What even worse in McGee's case is that he doesn't enjoy physical contact to the chances of his body adapting to physical strength needed to uproot smaller but strong post players out of position is even less likely.
Haywood, Songalia, Thomas are true post players who have played played in the paint all of their lives but I just don't see McGee with the heart to even attempt to battle Haywood, Thomas, or Songalia for post position since both of those players are the vets of the team.
Clearly Blatche has become noticeable stronger this past year and even had the strength to hold his position against 300 lbs Yao during the regular season but it took Blatche nearly 4 years to get to this point. Based on Blatche's experience, and since McGee is going to go through all the same environmental shapings that Blatche went through, I assume that it will take Mcgee three more years to get to strength level of Blatche. Blatche had access to Haywood and Etan as work out partners in practice to build his leg strength because he too was also more of perimeter player coming out highschool.
Since McGee is going through all the same workout facilities and players in competition as Blatche, I expect for McGee to get to Blatche's current strength level in three years. or age 25 for McGee if McGee is 22 right now. So we shouldn't really expect any dominant play from McGee in the post for at least 3 seasons.
there are players in the draft now who already have nba size and the post leg strength that Blatche has now because they have been playing in the post most of their lives. If Haywood was fluid in the post, we would have a post player who can score during crunch time shooting a high field goal percentage in the post but we don't.
so to repeat, we got Haywood=mechanical, Jamison=undersized no vertical=etan=undersized-low basketball IQ=Blatche=almost perfect except he has two inch vertical and can't explode off the ground=McGee=no strength, fluidity, and balance
We have experimented alot but clearly finding a big 7 footer with all these attributes of strength, grace, agility, power, explosive leaping ability, big hands, and can hit a perimeter jump shot, with 6'10 w/o shoes nba size in the post is extremely rare.
Tall Post player's with Gigantic legs and powerful base are usually dominant in the post because they can nudge weaker opponents off balance with their body alone and don't have to use their arms to push. Duncan, Shaq, Zach Randolph. A player that can squat a tremendous amount of weight is the player that dominates in the post. I highly doubt McGee could squat 200lbs let alone 600 lbs.

[clubbing_caveman]

so to repeat, we got Haywood=mechanical, Jamison=undersized no vertical=etan=undersized-low basketball IQ=Blatche=almost perfect except he has two inch vertical and can't explode off the ground=McGee=no strength, fluidity, and balance

Its at times like this I am reminded of Manute Bol. "Maanuuute" as the announcer at the Cap Center would say, "Maaaanuuuute!!".

[doclinkin]

He's never going to be able to use his strength with a high center of gravity.

For what it's worth I agree with you compleeetely. High center of gravity is what doomed guys like Lew Alcindor. YOu wonder why you never heard his name after he graduated from UCLA it's because his high center of gravity was the real problem. He had diffuclty opening doors at safeway because he was so tall and if he bent down he would fall over pretty much.

[dobrojim]

that's not even fair

fish in a barrel

[Severn Hoos]

Duh, after UCLA he legally changed his name. Some people just don't know anything.


Now, don't ever let me catch you disrespecting Roger Murdock like that again, understand? And while you're at it, tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.

[go'stags]

You would think WizNasty would know better Doc, seeing as how he wrote that caption.

[WizarDynasty]

if you are able to bend your knees and move..then you move from a high center of gravity to a low center of gravity when fighting for position...so obviously some people are lost with this concept. Javale doesn't bend his knees to create a low center of gravity because that would would mean that he would have to squat with heavy weight and have extra strong leg muscles to balance his tall frame. Watching Javale's nba footage shows he doesn't have this significant attribute critical for battling for position in the post success. Wipe out.
But yeah...i have to admit, Alcindor and McGee seem really really similiar. Unless Java develops an unstoppable sky hook, or learn to bend his knees and drop his center of gravity so he actually use his strength to leverage shorter guys out of position he going to start looking more and more Dalembert instead of Hakeem Olawuwon. All power moves of post players' are based on his ability to explode when his knees are bent. Javale's movements when his knee are bent are weak and non explosive. Big sign that he doesn't do squats.
His Arch Rival for years to come will be Dwight Howard who plays in the same exact division and we all know Dwight Squat's 345 lbs and benches 400lbs.
Check out Kareem's footspeed when he's was younger. I was shocked at his Karate Move. No way is Javale that quick with his foot speed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQwWhIjtOUU
And when Kareem made his move, he bent his knees his and nudge players out of position. check 1:14 on the clip. But I see a hell of alot of kareem in McGee. Its kind of sweet. When McGee puts his hands straight he is literally 6 inches away from the basket. If only Blatche had a 33 inch no step vertical instead of 25 inch no step vertical and McGee had the footspeed that Kareem showed at the begining of the video our front court would be set for a decade. I think Karate is what gave Kareem is great coordination.