RealGM

I don't know if this was posted elsewhere, if so, feel free to delete, but i thought it was a great article low on grizzle, heavy on meat and I Love the thoughts from Thorpe in the article, they really hit on something everyone has begun to mention lately:

"The mistake Ted Leonsis has made is he changed nothing else. You need to start building those guys. Every week you waste takes twice as long. Every week they're doing things the wrong way they groove bad behavior. If you want to get out of the hole you're in, stop digging. Now it's going to take twice as much energy to right the franchise. I'm not going to pass judgment on any of those players long term until there's a real culture change.

"Look at Denver after Chauncey Billups and Carmelo Anthony were traded. Ty Lawson exploded. That doesn't mean Chauncey and Melo are bad players, but it took that change.

"The measuring stick every franchise should use is if we put a different head coach in there -- take your pick of Gregg Popovich, Tom Thibodeau, Doc Rivers -- how would they look? I'm arguing all six would play better. That doesn't mean Flip is a terrible coach. But he has been a bad coach in Washington. Big difference Right now Andray Blatche is a problem. Nick Young is a me-first guy and a ball-stopper. They've got a culture issue. They've got a major coaching issue. I'd even call it directionless."...."




Link:

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_ ... he-wizards

I like Thorpe and Henry Abbott. I think we're all agreed the Wizards need to fire Flip and Ernie. I think they also need to change players. Everything should be on the line for change.

Also, Thorpe's point about Lawson exploding after Denver traded Billups and Melo is a bit disingenuous. They had to trade Melo or let him leave for nothing. And one of the reasons they traded Billups is that Lawson was already playing well in a reserve role.

Nivek wrote:I like Thorpe and Henry Abbott. I think we're all agreed the Wizards need to fire Flip and Ernie. I think they also need to change players. Everything should be on the line for change.

Also, Thorpe's point about Lawson exploding after Denver traded Billups and Melo is a bit disingenuous. They had to trade Melo or let him leave for nothing. And one of the reasons they traded Billups is that Lawson was already playing well in a reserve role.

I don't think that was his point though, and he may have been paraphrased or only half quoted. The sense I got was that he was saying was that creating opportunity for Lawson, and removing distractions so the team could simply play with what they had known for months would be a different team in structure and personel freed him from the constant stressors and frustrations of the constant "where's and when's Melo going" drama (although i did hear Lawson interviewed a week or two ago on the 10am pacific espn radio crew and he made a point of saying that he and Melo were tight, that he loved Melo, and that Melo was always his normal jokey, good natured self in the room and on the floor (may have been mediaspeak, may have been truth, but he was very assertive about it, and with Melo long gone, he could have slammed him, or just been potentially honest if it was negative), and allowed him to just play with a team that was "his" and that was also set in structure for the forseeable future.

Therefore I think the analogy would probably be shipping out blatche and NY to and fire the coach, stick with the kids, McGee gets to get with a new culture and have no knuckleheads to knucklehead with, and Wall gets to ball with guys that he is fundamentally in command of with no leftovers from the pre-wall days save McGee. That would be a new culture, new coach, and then you see what you got. With Blatche and NY there, it's still fractured, still impossible to eval the kids because you got a cancer, and a guy looking to ball for a new contract, not exactly conducive to developing a core and an identity and chemistry or to allow for proper eval of much of anything.