Official Trade Thread - Part XXVII

[Dark Faze]

If he locks into Ariza and Gortat long term then he'll have officially locked us into a hopeless future.

People are excited now because we're actually kind of winning. When we consistently get bounced in the first round of the playoffs for the next year or so the act will get old.

We're doing a great job at becoming that treadmill Hawks team.

It's not too late to create a promising future by letting Gortat and Ariza walk in the off-season, getting a couple of short term patches to keep us competitive while developing Porter and Rice though.

[rockymac52]

If he locks into Ariza and Gortat long term then he'll have officially locked us into a hopeless future.

People are excited now because we're actually kind of winning. When we consistently get bounced in the first round of the playoffs for the next year or so the act will get old.

We're doing a great job at becoming that treadmill Hawks team.

It's not too late to create a promising future by letting Gortat and Ariza walk in the off-season, getting a couple of short term patches to keep us competitive while developing Porter and Rice though.

Oh, you mean treading water, just like the Pacers and Rockets did for years, right?

Becoming a legitimate championship contender doesn't happen overnight. There has to be some progression, and step 1 is making the playoffs, and hopefully being competitive in the playoffs or winning at least one series. Even if you wanted to maintain our cap space with the goal of eventually signing a star free agent, that strategy only works if our team is already very competitive - no star is signing with a non-playoff team (only exception to this would be if the player really wanted to play for his hometown team, but that's wishful thinking to say the least.

[hands11]

Any team design should account for the likelihood of Gooden returning at vet min 1.5 and a decent to good chance of Okafor returning for one year cheap. Okafor liked it here.

I think its going to be one of Webster or Trevor A on the plate next year. One stays, one goes. To improve this team, I think you need a different kind of player backing up Beal. I think its got to more of a SG with handles type. Webster isn't that player. And right now, a NBA inexperienced GRJr doesn't strike me as that player either.

If they can sign TA on a good two year deal for just over value, maybe they do it. If not, I think we will have to say goodbye to Mr TA. And thats ok. We got value out of that deal. He was worth is contract. Webster might be more injury prone and not as good a defender, but he is signed. He does expire in 2016 with an option for 2017 which keeps think flexible. Also, he was a good leader when he started last year. He gets open looks when starting with Wall and was a top 3 ball shooter stretching the floor. And he gets his shoot off quicker when people closing on him. He drives better then TA. And while not a great ball handler, he is better then TA is.

So I imagine it rides on what TA decides in part regarding where he wants to play and contract. If he wants to go or wants to much or for to long, they have to let him walk. But signing him may be better because it lets them use Webster as trade bait. If he walks, they they have to get a FA on the open market. Not sure which is better for them but they should plan according to that.

Wall/Miller
Beal/New back up with handles using Webster as help to make the deal.
TA/Otto
Nene/Gooden
Gortat/Okafor/Kevin S

I think they resign Kevin S. Booker at 3.4 isn't terrible for one year. And even if they sign Gortat, it not like they can't trade him moving forward. If Okafor and Kevin are looking good, maybe they do decide to move him for Chandler at the trade deadline to clean up their contract exposure. I don't think NY trades Chandler this offseason. Maybe he is used in a Monroe deal. I think DET will try to sign him and move him later vs letting him walk. Don't know, but signing Gortat doesn't mean they are stuck.

or it could start with

Wall/Miller
Beal/new SG FA
Webster/Otto
Nene/Gooden/Booker
Gortat??/Okafor/Kevin S

Having one offensive one one defensive center to back up Gortat doesn't suck. Plus Kevin can play some PF if Nene isn't available.

It might not be the young vibrant front court people are looking for, but its no the final construction. They can make future trades using Gortat. He is a good player. Teams would want him. But they can start to integrate Otto next year and find a a better back up SG which had ball handling to the team. I wouldn't hate Webster back as a starter. He was awesome last year in the role. And a team leader. Figure out what they have in Otto is kind of big deal since he could be part of that young core include Wall and Beal. Get that set and you have the following years to work on the front court. Drafts, FAs, Trades.

I think this summer the big play is TA or Webster. Gortat getting inked seems way more likely then not. They need that for stability and they need to have that asset in hand in case they want to make future moves. His contract being to long for 2016 FA is an issue, but they can clean that up later if needed.

If they end up resigning Gortat and Okafor returns for cheap and they made the playoff this year, then that was well worth the protected mid first they gave up to get Gortat. Specially if they trade him for a younger piece they might want like Monroe or similar. This is why its so hard to rate a trade like the Gortat deal in an instant. Its more about how it plays out.

[Dark Faze]

It may sound crazy but I'd let both Web and Ariza go without breaking a sweat a this point. If we have to extend Gortat--fine, but Web is proving to be the risk most of us thought he would be and we if we're going to have any ability to bring in a big time player in a few years we need to let one of Ariza/Gortat walk.

Wall/Dre
Beal/Rice
Webster/Porter
Nene/Gooden/Harrington
Gortat/Okafor or Hill

Now that's ideal and realistic. Plenty of veteran help that helps you win games while also having a heavy emphasis on development. You know Porter is going to start a few games given Websters health issues. At a minimum he's getting 20+ minutes per game for fair evaluation. Rice gets a chance to develop too.

We're not in a great situation to get Durant, but we'd only need to find a way to cut a contract or two to free up the money. I think we're perfectly capable of doing that. Singleton , Booker, Seraphin--all of them can walk.

Give me that and George Karl and I might even support a Grunsfeld extension.

[Dat2U]

Any team design should account for the likelihood of Gooden returning at vet min 1.5 and a decent to good chance of Okafor returning for one year cheap. Okafor liked it here.

1. Is Gooden beginning to price himself outside of a vet minimum salary? Is he worth keeping if the Wizards are forced to offer a multi-year deal?

2. What's the likelihood of Okafor being healthy? There's been no word regarding his health since the trade. No word of him getting back on the court & working out. He may be even forced to retire.

[verbal8]

Any team design should account for the likelihood of Gooden returning at vet min 1.5 and a decent to good chance of Okafor returning for one year cheap. Okafor liked it here.

1. Is Gooden beginning to price himself outside of a vet minimum salary? Is he worth keeping if the Wizards are forced to offer a multi-year deal?

2. What's the likelihood of Okafor being healthy? There's been no word regarding his health since the trade. No word of him getting back on the court & working out. He may be even forced to retire.

I think Gooden is probably will be looking for offers of at least the LLE.

I don't think Okafor is a realistic option. Most likely is the scenario you mention where he is not healthy and will probably retire. If he has gotten healthy, he will probably want to stay with the Phoenix medical staff if his goal is to play as long as possible.

[Nivek]

1. Is Gooden beginning to price himself outside of a vet minimum salary? Is he worth keeping if the Wizards are forced to offer a multi-year deal?

In terms of pure market force, yes. BUT, Gooden will be getting the final year of his amnesty payment next season. Whatever he gets paid by a new team will offset the amount he's getting from the Bucks (about $6.7 million). So, if Gooden signs for the minimum or the BAE (somewhere else, obviously since the Wizards spent theirs on Maynor) or a portion of the MLE, he still makes $6.7 million. It's just that he'll get $X million from his new team and $6.7 million - X from the Bucks.

Given his age and history, I wouldn't give him a multi-year deal.

2. What's the likelihood of Okafor being healthy? There's been no word regarding his health since the trade. No word of him getting back on the court & working out. He may be even forced to retire.

Agreed. If he checked out with the doctors, I'd be willing to offer him one year, non-guaranteed for the league minimum.

[verbal8]

1. Is Gooden beginning to price himself outside of a vet minimum salary? Is he worth keeping if the Wizards are forced to offer a multi-year deal?

In terms of pure market force, yes. BUT, Gooden will be getting the final year of his amnesty payment next season. Whatever he gets paid by a new team will offset the amount he's getting from the Bucks (about $6.7 million). So, if Gooden signs for the minimum or the BAE (somewhere else, obviously since the Wizards spent theirs on Maynor) or a portion of the MLE, he still makes $6.7 million. It's just that he'll get $X million from his new team and $6.7 million - X from the Bucks.

Given his age and history, I wouldn't give him a multi-year deal.

It looks like there is some offset so 1/2 of any amount a player makes over the 1 year vet minimum decreases the payment from the original team. So the first $762K the player keeps and does offset the player's amnesty payments. So basically to Gooden the difference between the BAE and vet min is cut in half. What it might take to keep him is offering him a player option 2nd year on a vet minimum deal.

http://www.bulletsforever.com/2013/3/16 ... free-agent

[rockymac52]

For reasons stated in the last few posts, coupled with his age, career production, and the fact that he lives nearby and had his eye on the Wizards for a long time before signing, I think Drew Gooden is all but a lock to re-sign with the Wizards, and I expect that it will be for the veteran minimum salary. I can't see him commanding much more than that on the open market, despite his excellent offense so far this season. If he does cost more than say $2 million, I say let him go and spend that (or a vet min contract) on another free agent big man that slips through the cracks (much like DeJuan Blair this past season).

[nuposse04]

Anyone else still on the Ed Davis bandwagon? He may pair well with Gooden as he's actually long and athletic.

[jivelikenice]

With the lack of free agent bigs on the market, why not sign a two guard and use Beal as trade bait for a big?...or just sign Bledsoe, pair him with Wall, and deal Beal....(as you can probably tell I'm very anti-Beal right now)

[hands11]

Any team design should account for the likelihood of Gooden returning at vet min 1.5 and a decent to good chance of Okafor returning for one year cheap. Okafor liked it here.

1. Is Gooden beginning to price himself outside of a vet minimum salary? Is he worth keeping if the Wizards are forced to offer a multi-year deal?

2. What's the likelihood of Okafor being healthy? There's been no word regarding his health since the trade. No word of him getting back on the court & working out. He may be even forced to retire.

1. I was starting to wonder the same thing DAT. But then I thought this.

He is making $6,680,000 M even if the Wiz pay him the vet min. He did say he wanted to stay here because we are the ones that gave him his shot. I'll take him at his word for now. I guess thing could change. And oddly enough, who would that loyalty be toward. EG ?

Anyway. He looks to have added a 3 ball that he didn't have before. This makes him a more legit S4. Its all small sample size but he has shown something I think other NBA teams would value. But for how much at 32 with a questionable history ? What would a team be willing to pay in year two ? 3M ? MLE ?

I didn't think about it to much yet but the little I did, I assumed he would want a 2nd year option for some reasonable amount if there was competition or he would go with the one year, get his 6.8 and just become a UFA. Probably could get at least 3M for two years the following year. But who knows, maybe more. So is that worth it to him to keep things flexible for one year and an UFA ?

What do you think it would look like ?

2. True about Okafor. I look for news from time to time. I have read nothing more then his name brought up at the trade deadline and it sounding like he was out for the year but they talked about him in a way that sound like he could be used moving forward. I haven't heard anything about him being finished. That entire injury was weird. Didn't sound like he thought it was serious at first. Then seemed like a Jan. return. Now he is still out and now a lot of news on him. Inking Okafor in on a min. contract is something I have been posting about since it looked lightly he would return early enough in the season to prove to the league he could get more then that. At this point, even if he returned, he couldn't do enough on the court to convince people of more. He had the back and now this, and at his age. I expect he returns and its for a minimal contract one year. And he liked it here. And if TA is still here, that might not hurt either. But even if TA is gone, this is the last team he knew well and felt like he fit in. So I expect the Wizards to be in contact with him. I believe he is still in NY, not PHX.

I did find this..
http://www.vegasinsider.com/nba/injuries/

Just knowing what I do about Okafor, he is going to do everything he can to return. With that much time off, I'm am making the assumption he will be ready.

[Dark Faze]

We haven't heard any conflicting information to think Okafor had a setback. PHX tried to move him at the deadline, it didn't work out, and they have no use for him moving forward so he's probably taking additional time to get right for next year.

[verbal8]

Anyone else still on the Ed Davis bandwagon? He may pair well with Gooden as he's actually long and athletic.

He is a solid youngish big. His next deal should cover his prime. There is a lot to like. He might fly under the radar a bit since he isn't much offensively, but that might keep his cost low enough for Memphis to keep him. If Memphis keeps Ed Davis on a long deal, I would try to trade for Koufus.

[nate33]

Okafor isn't going to come here only to earn the vet minimum for a borderline .500 team only to play behind Gortat and Nene. There will probably be 15 or 20 better offers on the table.

I agree that Gooden will be resigned.

[nate33]

It may sound crazy but I'd let both Web and Ariza go without breaking a sweat a this point. If we have to extend Gortat--fine, but Web is proving to be the risk most of us thought he would be and we if we're going to have any ability to bring in a big time player in a few years we need to let one of Ariza/Gortat walk.

What we need to do with Webster is sit him when he's not healthy. Webster's 4th year is voidable if he misses 66 or more games in the first 3 years of his contract. Better to book some of those 66 games now while giving him the rest he needs to be effective in the playoffs.

The best case scenario is to have him play 60 healthy games a year, and rest 22 games games. It's much better than having him play 40 or so games healthy and then limp around ineffectively for the other 42.

Ariza is currently the second-best player on the team, or maybe the 3rd behind Gortat. Losing him would be a big blow. I don't see Ted letting it happen. I just hope we resign him to a 2-year deal.

I think our future plan is pretty simple if only we had an objective GM to make the decisions. I can sympathize with Ted's mandate to win games now. He wants to make money. But he needs to understand that we can't blindly resign and extend all of our aging vets for maximum-length contracts. We need to structure things so that we remain a competent team in the short term, but set ourselves up to be players in the 2016 free agency market. (We also need a decent GM who can find us some contributing players late in the draft to augment our depth.)

[jivelikenice]

If we were to shop Beal for a frontcourt piece, what type of playwer would be attainable?

[stevemcqueen1]

How much would Patrick Patterson cost on the open market?

[Upper Decker]

Trevor Ariza isn't going to sign a 2 year deal. This is his last big contract. He's going for as much $ and as many years as possible. He has no allegiances to Washington. I consider him as good as gone. Ariza as the 2nd or possibly 3rd best player on any team is a recipe for disaster. The only way it's not is if you have an elite superstar and a star player as your top two guys. Even still that's not enough. He was the 4th or 5th guy on the Lakers when they had Kobe/Gasol/Odom/Bynum.

I'd like to keep Ariza and Gortat, but at that point you'd have virtually an entire roster of guys who are getting paid very well but none of them are even borderline all-star players (Ariza, Nene, Gortat, Webster). You're not winning anything with that.

Spare me this philosophy that you have to take gradual babysteps to contention. The GSW, Rockets, and Suns all went from bad/very bad to really good overnight. How did the gradual babysteps to contention work for the Arenas Wizards when they were capped out and their only hope for breaking through mediocrity was the potential development of Andray freakin Blatche?

If Washington resigns Ariza and Gortat they are toast for all intents and purposes. They'll become the Gerald Wallace / Stephen Jackson Bobcats. It'll be awesome, they'll finish a few years as the 7th or 8th seed before getting bounced in the playoffs in 5 games. They'll be capped out with ZERO tradable assets, meddling 1st round picks, and we'll be prayerfully hoping the next Pecherov or Javale McGee blossoms into a legit franchise guy.

The future might not be so bleak if Brad Beal was capable of anything. What happened to this guy? He can't shoot worth ****, his handles are on par with Martell Webster, his injury exaggerations make Albert Haynesworth uncomfortable. I'm at the point where I legitimately wonder that if Garret Temple got his playing time and shots could he perform any worse? I'm 100% confident that if Beal was replaced by GRJr. we wouldn't tell the difference in production from the 2-guard spot. In back to back years Washington had the #3 pick and both players are either struggling so bad they shouldn't get playing time or aren't getting playing time at all.

Thankfully Ted is raising the ticket prices so while this franchise has essentially zero hope for the future at least we'll be spending more to *enjoy* the product.

[Upper Decker]

If we were to shop Beal for a frontcourt piece, what type of playwer would be attainable?

Derrick Favors?