Chocolate City Jordanaire wrote:There's no need to rush in trading those guys, I agree.
The Wizards need to have a spirited, competitive training camp where those veterans legitimately compete for minutes. Play the best players. Do not tank. Make mid-season trades involving both players.
Middleton is worth the starting SG position.
Smart should find minutes if he's healthy.
Both players didn't get worse. They've been injured two seasons each.
Next season, all the young guys should have to earn their minutes. I think this year's picks are going to be better than Bub or Kyshawn if the Wizards choose wisely.
Play the old guys and Poole at the risk of blowing the tank. There's about 4 monsters in the next draft. No matter who this Wizards lineup is, this will still be a lottery team.
This is the best way to get maximum value in a Pople, Middleton, or Smart trade.
I think you have to be careful about this. I agree that the current lottery system seriously reduces the benefits of tanking. So in the abstract, I don't really care too much whether the Wizards finish with the worst record or the fifth-worst record. There is little difference in the lotto odds either way. You can make a case that the cost of instilling a loser mindset aren't worth the benefit of incrementally higher odds of a top 4 pick.
But that's only with respect to how it affects the lottery odds. There is another dynamic at play: the pick we owe New York. On that subject, I wholeheartedly endorse tanking. It's one thing to fall from the 5th pick to the 6th pick like what happened this year when we beat Utah. It's another thing entirely to fall from picking in the top 8 in the lottery to not picking at all just because we were foolish enough to win 28 games instead of 24.
