Official Trade Thread -- Part XXXVIII

[payitforward]

This all makes sense. It's about the right subject -- what the chances are that we can retain Bertans & at what price. Whether the particular points are valid, I just don't know. That is, none of us know.

There's nothing unfamiliar about this issue. It's very like the problem for an investor of being willing to take a profit & knowing when to do it. Often, an investor will wait too long to realize a benefit -- because he's afraid he hasn't waited long enough! He's afraid he'll miss some of the potential gain in that stock. Most often, that leads to holding a stock too long and throwing away some of the gain you had.

We got Bertans for next to nothing. If we turn him into a high R2 pick, we'll have gotten that pick for next to nothing. If, otoh, he signs elsewhere for a price we can't or don't want to match, then for our "next to nothing," we'll have gotten... nothing.

When you add in the fact that the better he plays the less likely we'll be able to retain him, the more wicked the problem becomes.

[nate33]

There's nothing unfamiliar about this issue. It's very like the problem for an investor of being willing to take a profit & knowing when to do it. Often, an investor will wait too long to realize a benefit -- because he's afraid he hasn't waited long enough! He's afraid he'll miss some of the potential gain in that stock. Most often, that leads to holding a stock too long and throwing away some of the gain you had.

This is a good analogy. Yes, we bought low on Bertans and have already "made money" on him. We could sell now and lock in that value. But maybe, he's buy-and-hold type of stock. There's no way to know for sure.

It is a bit clarifying to see how badly the team was blown out last night. It makes one realize that the road to success is going to be much longer than it seemed two days ago.

Current assets are always valued more than future assets, everything else being equal. Given our time horizon, there's a strong argument to continue the strategy of trading our highest value current assets for future assets.

[Mojo Amok]

Overall, I’m quite skeptical of the long rebuild plan with our current core for a couple of reasons:

A) Most importantly, if we could theoretically perform honest to goodness tanking or quasi-tanking into 2022 or beyond, we probably don’t have much of a talent foundation at the top of our roster. Even in 2021, if we’re able to naturally be more or less an awful team given the expenditures on the backcourt and a fourth-year Bryant, a second-year Rui and a third-year Troy Brown, we’ve got some rather big structural problems. That would indeed suggest a long rebuild, but it would probably not be built upon at least Wall and Beal. Barring a ping pong miracle, I don’t see a reason to believe these guys could be bad for long before suddenly flipping the script to title contention (and even then, you’d have to give most of the credit to the incoming phenom).

B) There’s this idea that you can keep acquiring assets over time if you’re patient, but you have to factor that the affordable players that you already have are also shaving time off of their cheap contracts while you do that. If these guys are meaningful pieces for you, you’re in something of a race against time - the additional assets you acquire have to be weighed against what you’re losing in financial flexibility. This is particularly true of the Wizards given the commitments to Wall and Beal. If things go wrong with extensions or offers from other teams on guys who are important but not transcendent, you can get into high stakes decisions with only suboptimal choices at your disposal. A corollary of this is that, even if you acquire a huge basket of quality players in the draft over time, you’re not really going to be able to afford to keep all of them when their rookie contracts expire anyway (unless you’re the Knicks, Lakers, Warriors and so forth with those deep pockets). These rookie-scale guys can still be very valuable pieces and help to get production for cheap over a few years, but nobody is going to put together a 7-8 man core through the draft and keep them around for six years of overlapping career primes. It’s just not going to happen – teams will see your hands are tied with your other deals and just overpay one of your guys. You get guys and lose guys...that’s just how it works. Ideally, the core you absolutely need to win is just 2-3 guys and then there’s a lot of interchangeable pieces around them (some of those pieces will need to be on rookie deals to make it work, but that’s a different thing from tanking/rebuilding strategies).

The NBA is in the fast lane with all the short-term contracts – many years a third or more of the entire league ends up as free agents. The repeater tax is designed to be horrifically punitive, so contention windows are generally quite short now too (and every contender seems to get into a Middleton/Tobias kind of situation where there’s a guy they can’t afford to lose, but also can’t afford to keep for long either). Then throw in the wonky lottery odds and I don’t know that a grand, sweeping Napoleonic saga of a rebuilding campaign is hitting the sweet spot. As I said, it could happen for us, but if it does, some of the guys we’re looking at core pieces now won’t be around (and not even just the backcourt).

Personally, my expectation is that they’ll try and get back in the playoffs for 2021. If that just totally faceplants, the emperor wears no clothes, we probably become sellers in the trade market and are looking at a long rebuild (unless maybe the balls bounce just right and the hype train starts up). If it falls a little short, they’ll probably run it back, but then we didn’t get a high pick and are counting on internal development from guys already on the roster more than anything. What will we spend to try and make a playoff push in 2021? Probably not much - we don't have the matching salary for a big trade during the draft, so it will probably be a low-key kind of effort.

A lot just really depends on making nice tactical personnel decisions in this era more than the particulars of the strategic vision. Something like Miami is probably what most teams will be aiming for – floundering for a good while with bad contracts, but have BAM coming to fruition, make a play for Butler and then nail a pair of rookies this offseason. Nothing particularly special about the overall strategy, but the execution was nice and they’re back in the hunt given the overall parity within the league now.

[dckingsfan]

There's nothing unfamiliar about this issue. It's very like the problem for an investor of being willing to take a profit & knowing when to do it. Often, an investor will wait too long to realize a benefit -- because he's afraid he hasn't waited long enough! He's afraid he'll miss some of the potential gain in that stock. Most often, that leads to holding a stock too long and throwing away some of the gain you had.

This is a good analogy. Yes, we bought low on Bertans and have already "made money" on him. We could sell now and lock in that value. But maybe, he's buy-and-hold type of stock. There's no way to know for sure.

It is a bit clarifying to see how badly the team was blown out last night. It makes one realize that the road to success is going to be much longer than it seemed two days ago.

Current assets are always more value than future assets, everything else being equal. Given our time horizon, there's a strong argument to continue the strategy of trading our highest value current assets for future assets.

And not adding non-assets like Smith.

[Illmatic12]

I don’t think the results we’re seeing so far indicate that the team is in the midst of a years long rebuild. The team was blown out like they did last night because they’re playing young guys with less than 1500 minutes of NBA experience . If this was happening in game 75 or 80 as opposed to game 5, that’s when there would be significant cause for alarm.


The whole stated goal of this season is to give 1500-2000+ minutes to all of our young guys and determine which ones, if any , look to be functional NBA players who are either assets or part of our core moving forward. The ones who aren’t are the weak links who you can swap out for average or stronger links.

Regardless of team record this season.. if after 2,000 minutes we can see that Brown, Hachimura, Bryant are trending towards being rotational caliber pieces on a playoff team then it’s a win. You simply cycle out the other players who didn’t respond to their minutes and replace those weak links with stronger ones.

You can raise the core competency of a team in a short period of time. Look at the Phoenix Suns for instance , they had a few decent NBA players surrounded by non-NBA talent. Well in one offseason they simply replaced the minutes going to G-League level players with unspectacular , but experienced role players and are now a functioning NBA team. That’s all the Wizards will need to do to craft a more competitive team after this season, except they’re already a step ahead of a franchise like Phoenix in terms of management and organizational foresight.

[nate33]

Overall, I’m quite skeptical of the long rebuild plan with our current core for a couple of reasons:

A) Most importantly, if we could theoretically perform honest to goodness tanking or quasi-tanking into 2022 or beyond, we probably don’t have much of a talent foundation at the top of our roster. Even in 2021, if we’re able to naturally be more or less an awful team given the expenditures on the backcourt and a fourth-year Bryant, a second-year Rui and a third-year Troy Brown, we’ve got some rather big structural problems. That would indeed suggest a long rebuild, but it would probably not be built upon at least Wall and Beal. Barring a ping pong miracle, I don’t see a reason to believe these guys could be bad for long before suddenly flipping the script to title contention (and even then, you’d have to give most of the credit to the incoming phenom).

B) There’s this idea that you can keep acquiring assets over time if you’re patient, but you have to factor that the affordable players that you already have are also shaving time off of their cheap contracts while you do that. If these guys are meaningful pieces for you, you’re in something of a race against time - the additional assets you acquire have to be weighed against what you’re losing in financial flexibility. This is particularly true of the Wizards given the commitments to Wall and Beal. If things go wrong with extensions or offers from other teams on guys who are important but not transcendent, you can get into high stakes decisions with only suboptimal choices at your disposal. A corollary of this is that, even if you acquire a huge basket of quality players in the draft over time, you’re not really going to be able to afford to keep all of them when their rookie contracts expire anyway (unless you’re the Knicks, Lakers, Warriors and so forth with those deep pockets). These rookie-scale guys can still be very valuable pieces and help to get production for cheap over a few years, but nobody is going to put together a 7-8 man core through the draft and keep them around for six years of overlapping career primes. It’s just not going to happen – teams will see your hands are tied with your other deals and just overpay one of your guys. You get guys and lose guys...that’s just how it works. Ideally, the core you absolutely need to win is just 2-3 guys and then there’s a lot of interchangeable pieces around them (some of those pieces will need to be on rookie deals to make it work, but that’s a different thing from tanking/rebuilding strategies).

The NBA is in the fast lane with all the short-term contracts – many years a third or more of the entire league ends up as free agents. The repeater tax is designed to be horrifically punitive, so contention windows are generally quite short now too (and every contender seems to get into a Middleton/Tobias kind of situation where there’s a guy they can’t afford to lose, but also can’t afford to keep for long either). Then throw in the wonky lottery odds and I don’t know that a grand, sweeping Napoleonic saga of a rebuilding campaign is hitting the sweet spot. As I said, it could happen for us, but if it does, some of the guys we’re looking at core pieces now won’t be around (and not even just the backcourt).

Personally, my expectation is that they’ll try and get back in the playoffs for 2021. If that just totally faceplants, the emperor wears no clothes, we probably become sellers in the trade market and are looking at a long rebuild (unless maybe the balls bounce just right and the hype train starts up). If it falls a little short, they’ll probably run it back, but then we didn’t get a high pick and are counting on internal development from guys already on the roster more than anything. What will we spend to try and make a playoff push in 2021? Probably not much - we don't have the matching salary for a big trade during the draft, so it will probably be a low-key kind of effort.

A lot just really depends on making nice tactical personnel decisions in this era more than the particulars of the strategic vision. Something like Miami is probably what most teams will be aiming for – floundering for a good while with bad contracts, but have BAM coming to fruition, make a play for Butler and then nail a pair of rookies this offseason. Nothing particularly special about the overall strategy, but the execution was nice and they’re back in the hunt given the overall parity within the league now.

I think your overall point is 100% correct. Tanking for years and years doesn't really help all that much because rookies remain cheap only for so long. I would not advocate tanking the next three years in a row, for example.

The way I see, we have two basic options.

Option 1: Tank this year, try and win next year. Under this option, we accept that this season is lost. We land a high lotto pick in the 2020 draft and possibly deal Isaiah and Miles by the Deadline if they're worth anything. We would most likely keep Bertans in this scenario with the intent to resign him with Bird Rights. Mahinmi could also be traded at the Trade Deadline for a vet on a longer contract if that vet is better than any potential MLE free agent available in the summer. If not, let him walk in the summer and go shopping with the MLE. Our team next year would be: Wall, Beal, Brown, Hachimura, Bryant, Bertans, Ish, Bonga, Schofield, Wagner, 2020 1st, MLE free agent. Our team in 2021 would look about the same as 2020, but with a mid first round pick from 2021 included.

Option 2: Plan for a 2-year tank. Technically, we wouldn't "tank" in the 2020-21 season. We wouldn't actively try and lose 50 games, we just wouldn't take any steps to try and win with veteran help. We only win if it's through the strength of Wall, Beal and our young core. In this scenario, we trade Bertains, IT and Miles at the Deadline for any picks/prospects we can get. And we might even trade Mahinmi in a "bring out your dead" deal where we get back a pick and crappy contract that expires in 2021. Option 2 would have us going into the 2021 season with the same asset base as I listed in Option 1, but without Bertans, with a pick obtained in a Bertans trade, and with a higher pick in the 2021 draft because, presumably, our 2020-21 season didn't go so well.

In either scenario, we would be going all in to win games in the 2021-22 season with free agent signings and minor trades as necessary in the 2021 offseason to further those goals.

[pcbothwel]

Overall, I’m quite skeptical of the long rebuild plan with our current core for a couple of reasons:

A) Most importantly, if we could theoretically perform honest to goodness tanking or quasi-tanking into 2022 or beyond, we probably don’t have much of a talent foundation at the top of our roster. Even in 2021, if we’re able to naturally be more or less an awful team given the expenditures on the backcourt and a fourth-year Bryant, a second-year Rui and a third-year Troy Brown, we’ve got some rather big structural problems. That would indeed suggest a long rebuild, but it would probably not be built upon at least Wall and Beal. Barring a ping pong miracle, I don’t see a reason to believe these guys could be bad for long before suddenly flipping the script to title contention (and even then, you’d have to give most of the credit to the incoming phenom).

B) There’s this idea that you can keep acquiring assets over time if you’re patient, but you have to factor that the affordable players that you already have are also shaving time off of their cheap contracts while you do that. If these guys are meaningful pieces for you, you’re in something of a race against time - the additional assets you acquire have to be weighed against what you’re losing in financial flexibility. This is particularly true of the Wizards given the commitments to Wall and Beal. If things go wrong with extensions or offers from other teams on guys who are important but not transcendent, you can get into high stakes decisions with only suboptimal choices at your disposal. A corollary of this is that, even if you acquire a huge basket of quality players in the draft over time, you’re not really going to be able to afford to keep all of them when their rookie contracts expire anyway (unless you’re the Knicks, Lakers, Warriors and so forth with those deep pockets). These rookie-scale guys can still be very valuable pieces and help to get production for cheap over a few years, but nobody is going to put together a 7-8 man core through the draft and keep them around for six years of overlapping career primes. It’s just not going to happen – teams will see your hands are tied with your other deals and just overpay one of your guys. You get guys and lose guys...that’s just how it works. Ideally, the core you absolutely need to win is just 2-3 guys and then there’s a lot of interchangeable pieces around them (some of those pieces will need to be on rookie deals to make it work, but that’s a different thing from tanking/rebuilding strategies).

The NBA is in the fast lane with all the short-term contracts – many years a third or more of the entire league ends up as free agents. The repeater tax is designed to be horrifically punitive, so contention windows are generally quite short now too (and every contender seems to get into a Middleton/Tobias kind of situation where there’s a guy they can’t afford to lose, but also can’t afford to keep for long either). Then throw in the wonky lottery odds and I don’t know that a grand, sweeping Napoleonic saga of a rebuilding campaign is hitting the sweet spot. As I said, it could happen for us, but if it does, some of the guys we’re looking at core pieces now won’t be around (and not even just the backcourt).

Personally, my expectation is that they’ll try and get back in the playoffs for 2021. If that just totally faceplants, the emperor wears no clothes, we probably become sellers in the trade market and are looking at a long rebuild (unless maybe the balls bounce just right and the hype train starts up). If it falls a little short, they’ll probably run it back, but then we didn’t get a high pick and are counting on internal development from guys already on the roster more than anything. What will we spend to try and make a playoff push in 2021? Probably not much - we don't have the matching salary for a big trade during the draft, so it will probably be a low-key kind of effort.

A lot just really depends on making nice tactical personnel decisions in this era more than the particulars of the strategic vision. Something like Miami is probably what most teams will be aiming for – floundering for a good while with bad contracts, but have BAM coming to fruition, make a play for Butler and then nail a pair of rookies this offseason. Nothing particularly special about the overall strategy, but the execution was nice and they’re back in the hunt given the overall parity within the league now.

I think you overall point is 100% correct. Tanking for years and years doesn't really help all that much because rookies remain cheap only for so long. I would not advocate tanking the next three years in a row, for example.

The way I see, we have two basic options.

Option 1: Tank this year, try and win next year. Under this option, we accept that this season is lost. We land a high lotto pick in the 2020 draft and possibly deal Isaiah and Miles by the Deadline if they're worth anything. We would most likely keep Bertans in this scenario with the intent to resign him with Bird Rights. Mahinmi could also be traded at the Trade Deadline for a vet on a longer contract if that vet is better than any potential MLE free agent available in the summer. If not, let him walk in the summer and go shopping with the MLE. Our team next year would be: Wall, Beal, Brown, Hachimura, Bryant, Bertans, Ish, Bonga, Schofield, Wagner, 2020 1st, MLE free agent. Our team in 2021 would look about the same as 2020, but with a mid first round pick from 2021 included.

Option 2: Plan for a 2-year tank. Technically, we wouldn't "tank" in the 2020-21 season. We wouldn't actively try and lose 50 games, we just wouldn't take any steps to try and win with veteran help. We only win if it's through the strength of Wall, Beal and our young core. In this scenario, we trade Bertains, IT and Miles at the Deadline for any picks/prospects we can get. And we might even trade Mahinmi in a "bring out your dead" deal where we get back a pick and crappy contract that expires in 2021. Option 2 would have us going into the 2021 season with the same asset base as I listed in Option 1, but without Bertans, with a pick obtained in a Bertans trade, and with a higher pick in the 2021 draft because, presumably, our 2020-21 season didn't go so well.

In either scenario, we would be going all in to win games in the 2021-22 season with free agent signings and minor trades as necessary in the 2021 offseason to further those goals.

Perfectly said Mojo and I couldnt agree more.

I think we have to move forward over the next year with the assumption that Rui, Brown, Bryant, and our 2020 pick will be enough to surround a Prime Beal and returning Wall.
I like Admiral, but I think Robinson was the real asset we acquired last draft (No including Rui obviously). Ish and him can handle the PG duties along with Beal & Brown. So move IT for a pick, and take calls on Bertans…

In fact, I’d really look into getting a 2021 1st instead of a 2020 1st. It would time well with our other prospects/contracts and looks to be a great draft with HS players.

If the young guys don’t make considerable strides in the next 14 months and/or Wall doesn’t return to form, then we can look at a much bigger reset.

It would just be a kick in the gut if we too quickly move on from a Wall/Beal core and then Rui proves to be Siakim/Donovan Mitchell/Sabonis/Tobias type piece and Brown turns into Iggy/Josh Richardson…
I think we’ll know FAR more in January of 2021 and can afford to wait until then with Beal’s extension.

[payitforward]

As Tommy said shortly after the draft, "I'm going to build this team the right way -- patiently."

The idea that we have any other option -- really that any team does! -- is pure mythology.

Rui could become a lot of different things. He could become a superstar. He could become a bust. Replace "Rui" with the name of any other rookie, & the statement is equally true.

What we can say about Rui so far is that he looks like he could become an outstanding NBA player. "looks like" as in there are good signs, not that it's definitive. "Could" -- as in "might" as in "maybe."

In other words, neither is it the team's intention to use this season as "1 tank year" & then "return to form," nor would it be possible. For starters what does "return to form" even mean. We've never even gotten out of the 2d round of the playoffs.

We are NOT a good NBA team. Moreover, the guy who has been our best player over the last half decade & more is recovering from the worst kind of injury a basketball player can have.

Above all, the notion that the players currently on the team, plus our R1 pick next year, are somehow "enough" for... anything whatsoever is ridiculous on the face of it.

[payitforward]

Overall, I’m quite skeptical of the long rebuild plan with our current core for a couple of reasons:

A) Most importantly, if we could theoretically perform honest to goodness tanking or quasi-tanking into 2022 or beyond, we probably don’t have much of a talent foundation at the top of our roster. Even in 2021, if we’re able to naturally be more or less an awful team given the expenditures on the backcourt and a fourth-year Bryant, a second-year Rui and a third-year Troy Brown, we’ve got some rather big structural problems. That would indeed suggest a long rebuild, but it would probably not be built upon at least Wall and Beal. Barring a ping pong miracle, I don’t see a reason to believe these guys could be bad for long before suddenly flipping the script to title contention (and even then, you’d have to give most of the credit to the incoming phenom).

B) There’s this idea that you can keep acquiring assets over time if you’re patient, but you have to factor that the affordable players that you already have are also shaving time off of their cheap contracts while you do that. If these guys are meaningful pieces for you, you’re in something of a race against time - the additional assets you acquire have to be weighed against what you’re losing in financial flexibility. This is particularly true of the Wizards given the commitments to Wall and Beal. If things go wrong with extensions or offers from other teams on guys who are important but not transcendent, you can get into high stakes decisions with only suboptimal choices at your disposal. A corollary of this is that, even if you acquire a huge basket of quality players in the draft over time, you’re not really going to be able to afford to keep all of them when their rookie contracts expire anyway (unless you’re the Knicks, Lakers, Warriors and so forth with those deep pockets). These rookie-scale guys can still be very valuable pieces and help to get production for cheap over a few years, but nobody is going to put together a 7-8 man core through the draft and keep them around for six years of overlapping career primes. It’s just not going to happen – teams will see your hands are tied with your other deals and just overpay one of your guys. You get guys and lose guys...that’s just how it works. Ideally, the core you absolutely need to win is just 2-3 guys and then there’s a lot of interchangeable pieces around them (some of those pieces will need to be on rookie deals to make it work, but that’s a different thing from tanking/rebuilding strategies).

The NBA is in the fast lane with all the short-term contracts – many years a third or more of the entire league ends up as free agents. The repeater tax is designed to be horrifically punitive, so contention windows are generally quite short now too (and every contender seems to get into a Middleton/Tobias kind of situation where there’s a guy they can’t afford to lose, but also can’t afford to keep for long either). Then throw in the wonky lottery odds and I don’t know that a grand, sweeping Napoleonic saga of a rebuilding campaign is hitting the sweet spot. As I said, it could happen for us, but if it does, some of the guys we’re looking at core pieces now won’t be around (and not even just the backcourt).

Personally, my expectation is that they’ll try and get back in the playoffs for 2021. If that just totally faceplants, the emperor wears no clothes, we probably become sellers in the trade market and are looking at a long rebuild (unless maybe the balls bounce just right and the hype train starts up). If it falls a little short, they’ll probably run it back, but then we didn’t get a high pick and are counting on internal development from guys already on the roster more than anything. What will we spend to try and make a playoff push in 2021? Probably not much - we don't have the matching salary for a big trade during the draft, so it will probably be a low-key kind of effort.

A lot just really depends on making nice tactical personnel decisions in this era more than the particulars of the strategic vision. Something like Miami is probably what most teams will be aiming for – floundering for a good while with bad contracts, but have BAM coming to fruition, make a play for Butler and then nail a pair of rookies this offseason. Nothing particularly special about the overall strategy, but the execution was nice and they’re back in the hunt given the overall parity within the league now.

A lot of thought went into this, & it contains a lot of good points. I'd say it's invalidated, however, by just a few important facts that go unrecognized.

Most important is that you give way too much weight to the issue of "the race against time." What you overlook is that a team can use trades to adjust the kinds of assets you have -- whether positions or ages. Moreover, "the race against time" is a problem that is identical for every team. It's not a fact about the particular situation the Wiz are in.

Moreover, hoping that what we have plus a little bit is somehow "enough" is a trap not a strategy.

In short, we may not become a contender by building slowly & patiently. After all, lots of things can go wrong. But we are sure not to become a contender by assuming things about Rui, Brown, etc.

[doclinkin]

Overall, I’m quite skeptical of the long rebuild plan with our current core for a couple of reasons:

A) Most importantly, if we could theoretically perform honest to goodness tanking or quasi-tanking into 2022 or beyond, we probably don’t have much of a talent foundation at the top of our roster. Even in 2021, if we’re able to naturally be more or less an awful team given the expenditures on the backcourt and a fourth-year Bryant, a second-year Rui and a third-year Troy Brown, we’ve got some rather big structural problems. That would indeed suggest a long rebuild, but it would probably not be built upon at least Wall and Beal. Barring a ping pong miracle, I don’t see a reason to believe these guys could be bad for long before suddenly flipping the script to title contention (and even then, you’d have to give most of the credit to the incoming phenom).

B) There’s this idea that you can keep acquiring assets over time if you’re patient, but you have to factor that the affordable players that you already have are also shaving time off of their cheap contracts while you do that. If these guys are meaningful pieces for you, you’re in something of a race against time - the additional assets you acquire have to be weighed against what you’re losing in financial flexibility. This is particularly true of the Wizards given the commitments to Wall and Beal. If things go wrong with extensions or offers from other teams on guys who are important but not transcendent, you can get into high stakes decisions with only suboptimal choices at your disposal. A corollary of this is that, even if you acquire a huge basket of quality players in the draft over time, you’re not really going to be able to afford to keep all of them when their rookie contracts expire anyway (unless you’re the Knicks, Lakers, Warriors and so forth with those deep pockets). These rookie-scale guys can still be very valuable pieces and help to get production for cheap over a few years, but nobody is going to put together a 7-8 man core through the draft and keep them around for six years of overlapping career primes. It’s just not going to happen – teams will see your hands are tied with your other deals and just overpay one of your guys. You get guys and lose guys...that’s just how it works. Ideally, the core you absolutely need to win is just 2-3 guys and then there’s a lot of interchangeable pieces around them (some of those pieces will need to be on rookie deals to make it work, but that’s a different thing from tanking/rebuilding strategies).

The NBA is in the fast lane with all the short-term contracts – many years a third or more of the entire league ends up as free agents. The repeater tax is designed to be horrifically punitive, so contention windows are generally quite short now too (and every contender seems to get into a Middleton/Tobias kind of situation where there’s a guy they can’t afford to lose, but also can’t afford to keep for long either). Then throw in the wonky lottery odds and I don’t know that a grand, sweeping Napoleonic saga of a rebuilding campaign is hitting the sweet spot. As I said, it could happen for us, but if it does, some of the guys we’re looking at core pieces now won’t be around (and not even just the backcourt).

Personally, my expectation is that they’ll try and get back in the playoffs for 2021. If that just totally faceplants, the emperor wears no clothes, we probably become sellers in the trade market and are looking at a long rebuild (unless maybe the balls bounce just right and the hype train starts up). If it falls a little short, they’ll probably run it back, but then we didn’t get a high pick and are counting on internal development from guys already on the roster more than anything. What will we spend to try and make a playoff push in 2021? Probably not much - we don't have the matching salary for a big trade during the draft, so it will probably be a low-key kind of effort.

A lot just really depends on making nice tactical personnel decisions in this era more than the particulars of the strategic vision. Something like Miami is probably what most teams will be aiming for – floundering for a good while with bad contracts, but have BAM coming to fruition, make a play for Butler and then nail a pair of rookies this offseason. Nothing particularly special about the overall strategy, but the execution was nice and they’re back in the hunt given the overall parity within the league now.

I actually think now one good value in the league may be inking cheap early extensions on late bloomer talents. If you can in fact develop them.

Then you have a core of players under your system that peak while under an extended rookie contract. And they prove to be moveable assets later on if you’re trying package a deal or slide into someone else’s good deal.

In that respect players like Bonga and Wagner may be the exact sort of players we would trade for or sign. Guys who show promise in practice but on court are buried behind other players who are a year or two more advanced in their similarly late-blooming development (Bryant, Brown).

[thinker07]

I'd make a couple of points --

Nate's idea to trade Davis to Portland which I dismissed, actually looks prescient now that Zach Collins may miss the bulk of the season. Right now Rodney Hood has a knee injury that hasn't been fully diagnosed. Portland might be desperate enough to trade Nassir Little + something to make the numbers work. I think Little is a very interesting prospect that would entice me to want to trade Davis.

There is value in having Davis on the team even if he leaves for nothing at the end of the year. If this year is mainly about assessing what we have in Rui, Brown, Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson AND developing them, then that might work a whole lot more effectively with Davis teaching and mentoring them. Being able to have Davis and IT lead the second team with Brown and Wagner and whoever gives those guys a more cohesive professional unit to learn from. The fact that 3 of the new young guys are international players also makes Davis more helpful.

We also have SOOO many very young guys that I think there is a limit to how many more we could add without having chaos on the floor. Don't forget that in addition to our likely high lotto pick in 2020, we also have a very high 2nd rounder -- the better pick of Chicago or Memphis. Its not a stretch to think that would be in the 31-36 range. Who knows what Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson, Matthews etc can become, but none of them are obvious NON NBA players (by my limited eye) so it would surprise me if most of them didn't get at least 2 years to show their stuff. So Beal, Wall, Ish, Brown, Rui, Bryant, Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson, McRae(?), Matthews(?) 2020 1st rnd pick 2020 high 2nd rnd pick, trying to keep Davis with that super young group would make a lot of sense even if we had to overpay him a bit.

[Ruzious]

The Wiz still need a 2-way forward who can take over at both ends down the stretch of close games. Troy Brown and Rui can at some point become good starters, but I'm looking for someone like Siakam (figuring I can't ask for someone like Leonard or Giannis). Add a player like Siakam to the core of Beal, Wall, Brown, Rui, and Bryant (and Bonga and McRae, maybe Wagner and Matthews), and you have a team that compete in the East - though obviously would not be favored against Philly or Milwaukee.

I like that idea of trading Bertans for Nassir Little and filler.

[pcbothwel]

The Wiz still need a 2-way forward who can take over at both ends down the stretch of close games. Troy Brown and Rui can at some point become good starters, but I'm looking for someone like Siakam (figuring I can't ask for someone like Leonard or Giannis). Add a player like Siakam to the core of Beal, Wall, Brown, Rui, and Bryant (and Bonga and McRae, maybe Wagner and Matthews), and you have a team that compete in the East - though obviously would not be favored against Philly or Milwaukee.

I like that idea of trading Bertans for Nassir Little and filler.

That would be great, but doubt we get Little for Bertans...
Maybe Mahinmi & Bertans for Bazemore & Collins... Possibly throw in McRae too if needed.

We can afford to have Collins sit out for most of the year and return in March/April. I think he would be a great rotational big with Bryant next year and then we have RFA rights.

[pinkman7382]

I'd make a couple of points --

Nate's idea to trade Davis to Portland which I dismissed, actually looks prescient now that Zach Collins may miss the bulk of the season. Right now Rodney Hood has a knee injury that hasn't been fully diagnosed. Portland might be desperate enough to trade Nassir Little + something to make the numbers work. I think Little is a very interesting prospect that would entice me to want to trade Davis.

There is value in having Davis on the team even if he leaves for nothing at the end of the year. If this year is mainly about assessing what we have in Rui, Brown, Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson AND developing them, then that might work a whole lot more effectively with Davis teaching and mentoring them. Being able to have Davis and IT lead the second team with Brown and Wagner and whoever gives those guys a more cohesive professional unit to learn from. The fact that 3 of the new young guys are international players also makes Davis more helpful.

We also have SOOO many very young guys that I think there is a limit to how many more we could add without having chaos on the floor. Don't forget that in addition to our likely high lotto pick in 2020, we also have a very high 2nd rounder -- the better pick of Chicago or Memphis. Its not a stretch to think that would be in the 31-36 range. Who knows what Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson, Matthews etc can become, but none of them are obvious NON NBA players (by my limited eye) so it would surprise me if most of them didn't get at least 2 years to show their stuff. So Beal, Wall, Ish, Brown, Rui, Bryant, Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson, McRae(?), Matthews(?) 2020 1st rnd pick 2020 high 2nd rnd pick, trying to keep Davis with that super young group would make a lot of sense even if we had to overpay him a bit.

There is no value in having Davis on the team even if he leaves in the summer. If the goal is to tank, he is good enough to win them games. If the goal is to develop players, he is taking minutes away from a younger player. Also to let a player like Bertans walk for nothing is Grunfeldian and what we hope Tommy avoids

[pinkman7382]

Something like Miami is probably what most teams will be aiming for – floundering for a good while with bad contracts, but have BAM coming to fruition, make a play for Butler and then nail a pair of rookies this offseason. Nothing particularly special about the overall strategy, but the execution was nice and they’re back in the hunt given the overall parity within the league now.

this is right. Tommy needs to be looking at Brooklyn, Miami and LAC as examples of how to rebuild on the fly. They have to hit on the margins.

[payitforward]

...I like that idea of trading Bertans for Nassir Little and filler.

Me too -- great idea, thinker07 !!

[payitforward]

...Maybe Mahinmi & Bertans for Bazemore & Collins... Possibly throw in McRae too if needed.,,,

Another excellent idea!!

[DCZards]

I'd make a couple of points --

Nate's idea to trade Davis to Portland which I dismissed, actually looks prescient now that Zach Collins may miss the bulk of the season. Right now Rodney Hood has a knee injury that hasn't been fully diagnosed. Portland might be desperate enough to trade Nassir Little + something to make the numbers work. I think Little is a very interesting prospect that would entice me to want to trade Davis.

There is value in having Davis on the team even if he leaves for nothing at the end of the year. If this year is mainly about assessing what we have in Rui, Brown, Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson AND developing them, then that might work a whole lot more effectively with Davis teaching and mentoring them. Being able to have Davis and IT lead the second team with Brown and Wagner and whoever gives those guys a more cohesive professional unit to learn from. The fact that 3 of the new young guys are international players also makes Davis more helpful.

We also have SOOO many very young guys that I think there is a limit to how many more we could add without having chaos on the floor. Don't forget that in addition to our likely high lotto pick in 2020, we also have a very high 2nd rounder -- the better pick of Chicago or Memphis. Its not a stretch to think that would be in the 31-36 range. Who knows what Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson, Matthews etc can become, but none of them are obvious NON NBA players (by my limited eye) so it would surprise me if most of them didn't get at least 2 years to show their stuff. So Beal, Wall, Ish, Brown, Rui, Bryant, Wagner, Bonga, Schofield, Robinson, McRae(?), Matthews(?) 2020 1st rnd pick 2020 high 2nd rnd pick, trying to keep Davis with that super young group would make a lot of sense even if we had to overpay him a bit.

I was high on Little before the draft…maybe too high. I would have considered taking him with the 9th pick. He was drafted with the 25th pick, which was probably too low. Little may turn out to be the steal of the draft given where he was picked. I’d also like to see the Zards trade Bertans for Little, but as others have said I doubt that that’s a trade that Portland would make.

Good (and important) point on this being a very young Zards team and the value of having vets like Davis around. Bertans appears to be the quiet type though and not someone who’s going to be vocal with teammates during games…although I may be totally wrong about that.

I like what I’ve seen from IT thus far as it relates to being an on court leader. He’s vocal and has no problem getting after the young guys when they make a mistake or giving them a high-five when they do something good. The presence of respected vets like IT and Miles lightens the leadership load for Beal. BB has enough on his plate. It’s good that he’s getting help as far as leading this young team is concerned.

[Mojo Amok]

A lot of thought went into this, & it contains a lot of good points. I'd say it's invalidated, however, by just a few important facts that go unrecognized.

Most important is that you give way too much weight to the issue of "the race against time." What you overlook is that a team can use trades to adjust the kinds of assets you have -- whether positions or ages. Moreover, "the race against time" is a problem that is identical for every team. It's not a fact about the particular situation the Wiz are in.

Moreover, hoping that what we have plus a little bit is somehow "enough" is a trap, not a strategy.

In short, we may not become a contender by building slowly & patiently. After all, lots of things can go wrong. But we are sure not to become a contender by assuming things about Rui, Brown, etc.

Just to be clear, do you mean multiple years of trying to work the top of the lottery or something different? Something different, OK, that could be in the cards, but I see staying at the absolute bottom rung year after year gunning for a top pick as being really unlikely for a host of reasons (unless we trade the backcourt… it’s quite likely in that case). For example, are you suggesting three years of that sort of thing with us coming out with a 29-year-old Beal and a 32-year-old Wall?

I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, so just clarify the gestalt of what you’re talking about in terms of the timeframe for being bad and then how bad you mean – give or take.

I would note that a lot of the things really bad teams do with absorbing bad contracts for picks aren’t really going to be available to us unless we roll our expirings over or somehow acquire more TPEs (in fact, we’re barely even going to be able to make any big money trades for a while if we don’t land some more cap ballast to match salaries with).

Overall though, my main issue is that I don’t see a very strong correlation now between being bad for an extended period of time and then being really good later. There’s potential for that working out, but it’s tenuous and based on quite finicky RNG – I see the incentive structure now making things less binary between competing and rebuilding. In the past, during the Pre-Sixers-Process stage of the lottery odds, yes, I can see it and the numbers were compelling enough to take the risk of bottoming out for an extended period of time. However, the league found the bottom-feeding so embarrassing that they entirely overturned that system and brought in what I would consider a new era of team building.

An extended stay in the dark depths of the lottery is now more dangerous than ever with a chance of not achieving escape velocity based on ping pong based fortune. The most likely single outcome for the worst team in the league is to pick 5th now (48% chance). Hanging out there is arguably more predicated on hope than the competitive option. In some cases, it probably can’t be avoided, like when Cleveland is left high and dry with nothing at the top of the roster. But overall, I believe teams are really trying to avoid that outcome. Lottery luck is now more like an accouterment than a cloak and even that is courted more discretely (i.e. being fairly bad rather than awful).

As for the race against the clock thing, we obviously are in competition against the other teams, so their problems work in our favor to an extent, but it’s not always that direct. In practice, it will probably be more like “Atlanta can’t afford to keep all their youngsters, so they make a consolidation trade instead,” which doesn’t really help us directly (and they’re far, far more likely to do that than try and flip second-year guys for future picks and keep rolling along with new youth – that’s not really a system that teams use in practice). Or maybe it means “the Bucks can only contend for 2 years rather than 4 due to repeater tax issues.” I mean, it’s nice, but more so if we’re actually in a position to exploit their problems.

[Mojo Amok]

I actually think now one good value in the league may be inking cheap early extensions on late bloomer talents. If you can in fact develop them.

Then you have a core of players under your system that peak while under an extended rookie contract. And they prove to be moveable assets later on if you’re trying package a deal or slide into someone else’s good deal.

In that respect players like Bonga and Wagner may be the exact sort of players we would trade for or sign. Guys who show promise in practice but on court are buried behind other players who are a year or two more advanced in their similarly late-blooming development (Bryant, Brown).

That would definitely be a nice dynamic to leverage - I guess the key is finding that sweet spot on the money to where someone's willing to ink the long term deal rather than the short term "show me" contracts that we see so often. Both the team and the player taking on a certain degree of risk and presumed security - threading the needle in negotiations.

Though not a late bloomer exactly, we kinda did something like that with Bryant, but it may have just had more to do with him being a center and the weakness of that market (and even then I would have greatly preferred a fourth-year tacked on).

Suffice to say I would approve of that plan.