Official 2023 Wizards OFFSEASON Thread

[FAH1223]

Alright guys,

Time to put on your GM hats.

[Jay81]

Kuz is holding deni back…not Rui lol. Trade kuz and Beal …fire everyone and rebuild

[FAH1223]

Kuz is holding deni back…not Rui lol. Trade kuz and Beal …fire everyone and rebuild

Brad isn't requesting a trade. Not this offseason and not with him close to passing Elvin Hayes on the Bullets all-time scoring list.

Kuzma sign and trade possibilities I am interested in.

I'd like to keep Porzingis. I like him. He's a good player.

[FAH1223]

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[AFM]

brutal, nothing to disagree with there either. Unfortunately until Ted sells, this is what we're stuck with.

[FAH1223]

brutal, nothing to disagree with there either. Unfortunately until Ted sells, this is what we're stuck with.

He’ll never sell

[gambitx777]

Can we stop this bull **** negative, Ted needs to sell the team bull ****. He earned his money and bought something he doesn't need toa ell the team. He's not a bad owner. Yes he needs to hire better people and he will eventually. But to just bitch about how Ted needs to sell is silly and childish. He isn't Donald sterling or Dan Snyder. Ted's done nothing to deserve a he needs to sell narrative.

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[trast66]

Stay the course with Tommy and Wes. Offer Kuz and KP as much money as we can. Work out an extension with Deni. Use draft pick on someone not an elite athlete by NBA standards nor particularly fast or quick - Gradey Dick should be available. Just need to stay healthy.

[FAH1223]

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[payitforward]

Can we stop this bull **** negative, Ted needs to sell the team bull ****. He earned his money and bought something he doesn't need toa ell the team. He's not a bad owner. Yes he needs to hire better people and he will eventually. But to just bitch about how Ted needs to sell is silly and childish. He isn't Donald sterling or Dan Snyder. Ted's done nothing to deserve a he needs to sell narrative.

In any case, it's irrelevant. The Wizards are not a rich man's plaything, the way e.g. the Clippers are.

The Wizards are owned by a multi-product sports-&-gambling entertainment company with an objective to grow. Within that company, the Washington Wizards franchise is a product which the company markets to its customers.

Apparently, business is good. Which means there is no problem to solve. Hence no need for a "solution." Things are fine. Nothing needs to change.

32 wins, followed by 25 wins (28+ win equivalent in shortened season), followed by 34 wins (38 win equivalent in 2d shortened season, followed 35 wins, followed by, say, 36 wins this year (if we get there) is just fine. Not a problem

&, if that's true, then you are right about Ted -- he doesn't need to sell, because for sure he's not an axxxole like Snyder or a bad dude like Sterling. He's a nice guy who is building a big sports-gambling entertainment business. & everything is going well.

Only... I'm not a "sports-gambling entertainment business fan." I'm a basketball fan.

So, I don't care that business is good at Monumental. I care that "my" team is lousy year upon year upon year.

Over the 13 seasons that Ted has had control of the team, from 2010-11 (when we drafted John Wall) through this seasons, we have averaged a record of 36-46.

[penbeast0]

Whether or not Leonsis stays as owner, the way to put a winning product on the court is to get 1 or 2 superstars. Right now we have none, just Beal who is paid like one but is more a good 2nd banana, and Porzingis, who is a decent stretch 5. We also have Kuzma who is to inefficient to be shooting as much as he does but who the team seems likely to grossly overpay.

Best option is to crash and burn the whole thing and go full Hinkie. Second best is to deal our younger talent for guys like Lilliard who have 1 or 2 more good years left and THEN crash and burn the whole thing.

But, if we are going to continue to try to compete, then we need to upgrade our forwards. Morris, Wright, and Beal are a solid guard rotation (if overpaid), Porzingis and Gafford a solid center rotation. Deni may be a decent forward if he learns to shoot/ Kuzma has been in the league long enough to have a pretty good idea that he will never really improve his efficiency. Kispert looks like nothing more than a 3 point specialist wing. This is what needs to improve.

[TGW]

They need to absolutely get rid of Kuzma from a basketball perspective. The problem is…he’s great for the bottom line. Kuzma is highly marketable, and as PIF said, the Wizards are a product at the end of the day.

My guess is that they try really hard to retain Kuzma. Not sure if they do or not, but he will be the major offseason priority. They are going to draft another forward or point guard with their pick because that is their positions of need. They might try and upgrade Gibson, but Gill will probably be back because they love his leadership qualities (milk dud head said if you have an entire team of Anthony gills you’d have a very good team, which made me literally lol). I think that for the most part—wysiwyg. Aside from the draft picks and maybe Gibsons replacement, they’re going to run it back. Hope deni, kispert, and Davis grow up and produce more next season.

[FAH1223]

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[The Consiglieri]

Can we stop this bull **** negative, Ted needs to sell the team bull ****. He earned his money and bought something he doesn't need toa ell the team. He's not a bad owner. Yes he needs to hire better people and he will eventually. But to just bitch about how Ted needs to sell is silly and childish. He isn't Donald sterling or Dan Snyder. Ted's done nothing to deserve a he needs to sell narrative.

In any case, it's irrelevant. The Wizards are not a rich man's plaything, the way e.g. the Clippers are.

The Wizards are owned by a multi-product sports-&-gambling entertainment company with an objective to grow. Within that company, the Washington Wizards franchise is a product which the company markets to its customers.

Apparently, business is good. Which means there is no problem to solve. Hence no need for a "solution." Things are fine. Nothing needs to change.

32 wins, followed by 25 wins (28+ win equivalent in shortened season), followed by 34 wins (38 win equivalent in 2d shortened season, followed 35 wins, followed by, say, 36 wins this year (if we get there) is just fine. Not a problem

&, if that's true, then you are right about Ted -- he doesn't need to sell, because for sure he's not an axxxole like Snyder or a bad dude like Sterling. He's a nice guy who is building a big sports-gambling entertainment business. & everything is going well.

Only... I'm not a "sports-gambling entertainment business fan." I'm a basketball fan.

So, I don't care that business is good at Monumental. I care that "my" team is lousy year upon year upon year.

Over the 13 seasons that Ted has had control of the team, from 2010-11 (when we drafted John Wall) through this seasons, we have averaged a record of 36-46.

You guys are also failing to acknowledge that before Ted settled in and enabled sub-mediocrity as long as he continued to earn a healthy profit and build equity, the fan base he has been extorting for more than a decade had endured thirty years of exactly the same miserable horse ---- as fans. To be fair, it was Gen X and Boomer fans that had endured those miserable 30 years, for Millennials it was 20, and for Gen Zers it maxed out on a decade.

But lets be straight here, the Wizards have been irrelevant since the days of Jimmy Carter, and freaking Pong was the best entertainment system you could play at home. They haven't been a fearsome opponent contending for titles since freaking Jaws and Star Wars invented the modern day movie blockbuster. That's how long its been since we've mattered and he couldn't give less of a ----. He's a horrific owner. This fan base has been so spoiled by the cynical depravity and evil of snyder that they don't get what incompetence looks like which is every bit as bad (it drives away fans, builds apathy and eventually crushes attendance just as aggressively as evil incompetence does, the only difference is it doesn't make you feel complicit in it). Just like Pollin before him, Leonsis doesn't care about the only thing that actually matters to fans: Cheering on a team that's either a contender, or has a viable plan to become one, no matter how long it may be. He's not interested in either of those things.

He's an absolute horse ---- owner, and in many ways the worst, because w/o the banality of evil of Sterling's, and Snyder's, it's impossible to rid yourself of these ---- birds unless they think it makes more sense to to sell and stop wringing you dry for your last single thin dime, than it makes to continue doing so.

I can only pray he sells, there is little hope beyond pure accident that we contend w/o a sale, and one can only pray he comes nowhere near the Redskins/WFT.

[The Consiglieri]

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I agree 1000% w/the trashing of us. I do think this is something some of you DC guys who get hopeful every offseason and start doing a lot of deck chairs/Titanic theorizing about how this next season can be different from 80% of the previous 40+ kind of miss because local media seemingly avoids really going full negative town until the February (or at least I imagine that's what happens). The rest of the country just watches from afar, for a second, and basically thinks the exact same thing as those two Boston fans in Bill Simmons and the other ex-espn guy. They just watch from afar and shake their head at how such a loyal devoted fan base can put up with such epic horse ---- (the same thing was true where I grew up, where Oakland and bay area fans put up with totally incompetent Warriors teams during the exact same post 70's era for decades until they got quality ownership and management the past decade or so and turned that ship around. No such luck for us) decade after decade.

I will add one quibble though. After the franchise spent the past half decade completely screwing up the Beal asset and yielding nothing of value from it post Wall Slip in the shower, once they were complete morons (and we all saw this slow motion train wreck happening in advance for 12-18 months) and signed Beal to the Max there wasn't a lot to be done. The team had committed sepiku for the next half decade in addition to the previous 42 years of misery, and that was that.

Honestly what were they going to do at the deadline? They could have been halfway intelligent yes, and traded Kuzma, any team with brains would, but this FO and management and ownership are morons so they didn't. The long term future and actual contending are an afterthought, cashing checks and cashing ticket/tv revenue is all they care about, so the smart thing was never going to happen and lets be sure here.

Just how bad could they be this past year? Unless they traded Beal and Porzingis the roster had simply too many decent players to do a complete successful tank the way the intelligent teams like San Antonio and Houston have done. We were never winning just 15-20 games this year. That was never going to happen. Even post deadline as the brass got a clue and started to kinda tank the past couple of weeks, they still have played at a .364 rate. That win rate will give you about 30 wins. Those 30 wins puts you nowhere near the big 3.

As it is, pre deadline the team was winning at about a 46% rate (25-29)
Post Deadline they've fallen off 10% to a 36% rate (8-14).

The one thing the team could've done, even after keeping Beal, was trade off the other pieces, and the post Deadline tank probably is a touch a better, we probably go 4-18 to 6-16, but that still puts us at 5th and that's where we are anyway right now, a team with a chance to be 5th-10th pre lottery, pretty much right around where we've almost always been since Wall went down in the shower. The upside of doing things right post-Beal Contract Catastrope was what we basically are right now, if the tank goes just right (more likely we land 7th-9th, 5th is the ceiling of our tank to be fair).

Essentially the tier breaks are at pre-lottery 3, pre lottery 7 and pre lottery 10. Unless you're 1-3, 4-7, it really matters minutely in a statistical sense. You've got the 1 in 7 or so chance in the top 3, the 1 in 9 to 1 in 14 chance in slots 4 through 7, and then the 1 in 21 chance we currently are most likely to have.

So tanking? Yes, I was always 100% for it, but Wenbenyama was always no better than a 4.5-11% chance for us this year no matter what we did post Beal Resigning.

Again, it's all deck chairs and titanic until fan's really refuse to go and treat it like redskins fans started treating home games the past decade (half empty seats taken by away fans or nobody) and ownership finally gets that cashing all this money will eventually go away when even the biggest homers realize it really is utterly hopeless unless a complete reboot happens.

Again, I'm in favor of trading our first to another hopeless team for multiple future firsts when this Beal albatross is likely to be offloaded or run its course. No chance of it happening but honestly, I'd rather stop wasting draft picks on a team not going anywhere, just trade them for future picks for teams as cursed as us (Charlotte, Orlando, Detroit, Indiana etc). Again, I realize no chance it's happening, but at least its an idea.

[payitforward]

Once again, there is no "I can only pray he sells."

The Wizards are a product.
That producted is owned & marketed by a company called Monumental Sports & Entertainment.

What Ted "owns" is the largest share of that company.
Since Monumental is doing fine, & their NBA product is essential to their gambling product portfolio, what possible reason would the company have to sell?

Answer: none. Any more than they would have a reason to sell the phone booth & keep the Wizards.

[AFM]

You've made this point many times but haven't once explained how the wizards being the laughing stock of the league, a complete afterthought, and completely irrelevant to anyone except the most die hard fans helps MSE at all.

[doclinkin]

Again, it's all deck chairs and titanic until fan's really refuse to go and treat it like redskins fans started treating home games the past decade (half empty seats taken by away fans or nobody) and ownership finally gets that cashing all this money will eventually go away when even the biggest homers realize it really is utterly hopeless unless a complete reboot happens.

Again, this is what already has happened. There are a few fans who still attend every game, though like the Skins over the past few decades it has dwindled to a trickle. But this group has always been insulated from failure in that the DMV area is filled with a transient population of people from elsewhere. The team sells tickets to lobbyists and visiting team fans and international fans even without the Latvian/Japanese/Israeli/Polish heritage night etc. and sells the big money suites to whomever wants them:

https://www.suiteexperiencegroup.com/all-suites/nba/washington-wizards/

Under the Abe Pollin regime the team specifically marketed the out of town stars to sell tickets. But even without a big push in that direction, the arena fills with the opponent's fans. It's on the metro line, accessible from Amtrak, there are cheap flights in from everywhere.

We are the 5th cheapest ticket in the league with an average price of $163

https://www.slamonline.com/nba/2022-23-nba-tickets-warriors-lakers-remain-the-most-expensive/

If you are a fan of the Warriors, average ticket price for a home game is over $700. And most are sold out. You can get a round trip flight from Oakland for under $300. Its an extreme example, but everybody from anywhere probably has a friend in the area. Why not fly in from Phoenix, Chicago, wherever. For teams like the Knicks, Celtics, Philly, its even easier and more cost effective, you can take a chinatown bus for $20.

Monumental has figured out that it is fine to be the league's sparring partner. Practice squad. They have other revenue streams. So long as you tiptoe up to the luxury tax line, you can still earn solid income being mediocre with a few marketable stars. Nice guys. Just keep your head down and don't draw any negative attention and that revenue stream will keep flowing.

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