What do you mean no takebacks?

[penbeast0]

With the benefit of hindsignt, if you had one Ernie G move to do over, which would it be? If you are making a draft choice move, it has to be for the guy drafted there (or if you are taking back the Vesely choice, it has to be for one of the guys drafted next which would be Bismark or Knight rather than reaching way down for the best player -- even if like CCJ you called it).

Top favorites:
Cap room for Okariza
JaVale and cap room for Nene
Rights to Rubio for Foye and Miller

Personally, I'd take back the Nene deal despite his being a very nice player for much the same reason I thought it was insane at the time. He's still older, fragile, and has 3 years left at big money on a rebuilding team. By the time we are decent, he'll be toast. You'd still have JaVale's idiocy but with Okafor to take the minutes, you can sit him or let him go when his FA came up.

I like Okafor though not Ariza nor having two older bigs on a team that needs to develop our young bigs. But with only him and not Nene, though he's the lesser player, there would be the minutes for Seraphin (and whichever of the others show anything) plus . . . BIG PLUS . . . he's expiring next year as is Ariza.

The worse deal might have been the #5 for Randy Foye who had already shown he wasn't ever going to put it together consistently and another "proven veteran" mediocrity in Mike Miller. Those kind of guys are useful to teams like the Heat, for a rebuilding team they are negatives and you need to get paid to take them on (BOYD deals). Besides, we got Wall and, like McGee, you'd have to find a trade for Rubio (or Wall).

[daSwami]

Is the Blatche extension on the table? that'd be mine.

[Knighthonor]

JC trade tops the list.

[TGW]

JC trade tops the list.

[keynote]

JC trade tops the list.

Yeah, Javaris *did* cause a lot of trouble.

[Nivek]

I'd probably pick the Okafor/Ariza trade because it was basically a cynical move by the front office to preserve their jobs at the expense of building the team's long-term talent. Ted gave them the directive to be mediocre (which is pretty much the easiest thing for a team to do in the NBA), and rather than doing it by scouting, evaluating and choosing young players who could be part of the team for the next 4-8 years, they traded for some veterans for a short-term fix.

[queridiculo]

In hindsight the Nene trade is a disaster. The concerns about his durability were well founded and at the end of the day we would have been better served letting McGee go for nothing and to use the cap space to rebuild our front court.

An Anderson, Asik front court would have been a realistic scenario.

[Nivek]

In hindsight the Nene trade is a disaster. The concerns about his durability were well founded and at the end of the day we would have been better served letting McGee go for nothing and to use the cap space to rebuild our front court.

A) I actually don't agree the Nene trade has been a disaster. He can play, and his maturity has helped.

B) The issues/concerns with the Nene trade are not hindsight. Some of us made these exact points when the trade happened. Trading for a 30-year old with injury issues and expensive contract struck me as the wrong move for the Wizards right from the start. Another case of the Wizards buying the wrong end of a player's career. Despite my objections, I'd say the trade has been fairly successful for the Wizards.

An Anderson, Asik front court would have been a realistic scenario.

Yeah. There were LOTS of realistic scenarios.

[Kanyewest]

The one EG move I would take back is giving Arenas the max although I have to admit at the time it would have been a tough pill to swallow to let Arenas walk.

[closg00]

Hmmm, so-many EG screw-ups to choose from. You can start the dominos falling as far-back as the Gilbert extension, but I'm gonna get greedy here and go with the "Lost draft" of 2011 which would have set-up our taking Drummond in 2012.

Our could have been roster:

PG: Wall
SG: K Thompson
SF: Ariza/Parsons
PF: Faried/Seraphin/ Booker
C: Nene/ Okafor/Drummond (2012)

Building core expanded from two players (Wall & Beal), up to 5 players.

Wall, Thompson, Faried, Parsons, Drummond

You could substitute Thompson and Faried with other players from that 2011 draft and we still come-out ahead on the rebuild with Okariza as trading pieces.

[fishercob]

The one EG move I would take back is giving Arenas the max although I have to admit at the time it would have been a tough pill to swallow to let Arenas walk.

I think we have a winner. Nothing at all positive resulted from Gil's mega deal. We got more injuries, a physically broken shell of his former self, guns in the locker room, emo gil, Rashard Lewis and then the Okariza trade. If we had let Gil walk (which would have incensed me at the time) we'd have had a lot better 5 years.

[nate33]

It's too hard to go very far back in time and sort out the repercussions of what would happen in what if scenarios. Refraining from resigning Gil would have given us the cap flexibility to find a decent replacement, but that team wasn't going anywhere without Gil's star power. We would have settled into 35-win purgatory. Resigning Gil led to the bottoming out.

Likewise, the Miller trade was awful but it led to Wall. (Indeed, the Miller trade was easily EG's worst of move of his tenure, and that's saying something.) The Vesely draft was terrible but it led to Beal.

With that in mind, I think the move I would take back is a more recent one: the Okariza acquisition. Undo that move and instead sign Ryan Anderson, Martell Webster, and Brendan Haywood and we would be in great shape this summer with $10M in cap room plus one more starter who fits perfectly with Wall. If EG also had the foresight to decline Vesely's 3rd year, we would have $13.3M in cap room to go with this team:

PG Wall
SG Beal
SF ???/Singleton
PF Anderson/Booker
C Nene/Haywood

Resign Webster, draft a high upside C of the future (Len, Austin, Adams, one of these guys should be good) and sign a quality veteran combo guard and our team building would be complete.

[20MexicanosIn1Van]

For both the Nene trade and Okariza trade, the cons were known right away. Hindsight hasn't added anything to whether or not these moves were good. At the time of the Nene trade, his age and health were a concern. At the time of the Okariza trade, the cap space waste was a concern (I do think most of us can agree that Ariza and Okafor have played better than we expected).

At the time of the Miller/Foye trade, I think it was the right choice. We looked like we could've been a pretty competitive team that year but **** just totally hit the fan. With the benefit of hindsight, this trade has the biggest "at the time" vs. "benefit of hindsight" differential.

[FAH1223]

I'd say Okariza trade. They've played great but I'd rather have signed Anderson and another Center.

[WizardsWorld]

Mine may be a move he didn't make.... On draft night we could have traded McGee and #6(Vesley) up to get Derrick Williams and I wanted that to go down. I know we thought about it but ended up deciding McGee was too valuable to give up (LOL).

So the move he did make would probably be the Vesley pick. Leonard was actually our 2nd choice behind Ves even though he fell all the way down to pick 15. They said if we didn't take Ves we would have grabbed Kawhi at #6 or traded down to 10 or so and gotten Kawhi there plus another asset. That probably would've been the way to go.... LOL. Leonard would be great on this team.

[Knighthonor]

JC trade tops the list.

Stop laughing bro.

JC could have got the Wizards at least a first round pick in this kind of draft class. Which could be used to trade up or down. Maybe even land the Wiz more slots in the 2014 draft which is loaded!!! I kinda have a fear about next season if both John and Beal are healthy, as well as Nene and if Oka and Webster stay. They may mess up the tank train in the loaded draft season.

It's a bad move. Need that draft talent to replace those who are leaving soon like Webster, Nene, Oka, ariza.

[montestewart]

JC trade tops the list.

Stop laughing bro.

JC could have got the Wizards at least a first round pick in this kind of draft class. Which could be used to trade up or down. Maybe even land the Wiz more slots in the 2014 draft which is loaded!!! I kinda have a fear about next season if both John and Beal are healthy, as well as Nene and if Oka and Webster stay. They may mess up the tank train in the loaded draft season.

It's a bad move. Need that draft talent to replace those who are leaving soon like Webster, Nene, Oka, ariza.

Relax bro, you're sweating over nothing. In order to draft talent, you need someone who's talented at drafting, and the Wizards haven't got that talent, so they won't get that talent. Drafting 8 or drafting 28, it's all about the same. A few extra picks? Never helped in the past. Besides, Satoransky with an extra year will be like an extra 1st anyway. Maybe even as good as a second Vesely.

I think Okariza is the one I'd take back. Maybe not the worst overall, but it's right now, and will probably hinder adding 3rd top player (by trade or FA) to the Wall/Beal core.

[jman2585]

Not taking Kawhi Leonard at #6 easily. The guy looks like he'll be an all-star, while Vesley is a huge bust.

[penbeast0]

So, assuming we fired EG just before he made the Randy Foye deal (to make sense, this deal assumed that Randy Foye was BETTER than the 5th choice in the upcoming draft since you'd have the #4 for 4 years on a rookie deal while Foye was in the last year of his -- or it assumed the #5 choice wasn't worth a rookie deal -- either way hard to believe) and the Wiz play King Log instead of King Stork except for the Kirk Hinrich deals and the Webster signing which are the only ones the board was semi-unanimously in favor of plus we resign McGee or an equivalent player (Yeah, I know, but otherwise we don't have anyone to play center except KS).

Wall Rubio Mack
Beal Crawford
Leonard Webster Cartier
Seraphin Booker Singleton
McGee (Seraphin)

or

Wall Rubio Mack
Beal Crawford
Webster Cartier
Seraphin Booker Singleton
McGee Bismarck
(which fits the OP and makes more sense because Webster wasn't going to sign with a team that already had a solid young minute eating 3)

Is that a significantly better team than the one we have? No . . . but it's got a lot more future potential and a lot more trade value. That's why we are unhappy with Ernie.