Official 2023 Wizards OFFSEASON Thread

[Dat2U]

Man, I really wish we had a player like Jimmy Butler. His basketball IQ and competitiveness are completely insane. The gap between him and a player like Bradley Beal is massive.

The playoffs have been very entertaining, and have made it so blatantly obvious that the wizards are nowhere close to a winning culture.

Or having winning top 10-15 player talent.

We can talk about culture all we want, but when the bulk of the roster is also garbage, culture is just a pretty cherry on top of dog doo. We have neither, just enough high floor talent to never pick in the top 3.

I don't think that the bulk of the roster is garbage. Just our big 3.

I couldn't disagree more.

KP was terrific. Beal was very good when he played. Both were top 30 guys IMO.

Kuz filled a need offensively. A volume shot taker because the team had no quality shot creators outside of Beal & KP. So IMO he wasn't a train wreck offensively despite his inefficiency. His willingness to shoot and be a threat forced defenses to pay attention to him. I wish he made more but his volume was needed. He also was a solid defender at both F spots and thats where is real value lies at this point going forward (still don't want to see him return though).

The Wizards also had 3 flawed but solid low usage role players. Monte Morris was the steady game manager and floor spacer but his lack of playmaking defense made him a fairly neutral player. Daniel Gafford is a passable starter & decent backup who's defensive impact has been consistently disappointing outside of his nice post-trade run when he first got here. Again another useful but neutral player. Delon is a world class defender but not really a PG and is low volume enough where teams tend to leave him open but his defense probably makes him our best role player out of the 3.

Beyond these 6, the roster is just terrible although Kispert's increased usage made him a little more playable despite not being able to rebound or defend at passable level.

Deni was a major disappointment. Simply put, if you can't finish & can't shoot its hard to play through you as a tablesetter and he's clearly not a spot up guy. His defensive intensity also regressed a bit so he's was not a huge positive on that end to offset the huge negative he is offensively.

So you got a solid six, maybe a mediocre top 8 and the rest of the roster is clear G-League quality or below.

Goodwin, Nunn, Gill, Gibson, Huff, Cooks, Jackson, Davis & Todd: 9 roster spots taken by guys who could the core of the Go-Go roster. That's the problem. Davis & Todd were really bad G-league players to boot. That's just not a workable or salvageable situation IMO. You can't have more than half of an NBA roster that's simply not playable. Even worst when your best guys have significant injury history. We all like Goodwin but at best he's a 3rd PG until he improves offensively.

[dckingsfan]

Or having winning top 10-15 player talent.

We can talk about culture all we want, but when the bulk of the roster is also garbage, culture is just a pretty cherry on top of dog doo. We have neither, just enough high floor talent to never pick in the top 3.

I don't think that the bulk of the roster is garbage. Just our big 3.

I couldn't disagree more.

KP was terrific. Beal was very good when he played. Both were top 30 guys IMO.

Kuz filled a need offensively. A volume shot taker because the team had no quality shot creators outside of Beal & KP. So IMO he wasn't a train wreck offensively despite his inefficiency. His willingness to shoot and be a threat forced defenses to pay attention to him. I wish he made more but his volume was needed. He also was a solid defender at both F spots and thats where is real value lies at this point going forward (still don't want to see him return though).

The Wizards also had 3 flawed but solid low usage role players. Monte Morris was the steady game manager and floor spacer but his lack of playmaking defense made him a fairly neutral player. Daniel Gafford is a passable starter & decent backup who's defensive impact has been consistently disappointing outside of his nice post-trade run when he first got here. Again another useful but neutral player. Delon is a world class defender but not really a PG and is low volume enough where teams tend to leave him open but his defense probably makes him our best role player out of the 3.

Beyond these 6, the roster is just terrible although Kispert's increased usage made him a little more playable despite not being able to rebound or defend at passable level.

Deni was a major disappointment. Simply put, if you can't finish & can't shoot its hard to play through you as a tablesetter and he's clearly not a spot up guy. His defensive intensity also regressed a bit so he's was not a huge positive on that end to offset the huge negative he is offensively.

So you got a solid six, maybe a mediocre top 8 and the rest of the roster is clear G-League quality or below.

Goodwin, Nunn, Gill, Gibson, Huff, Cooks, Jackson, Davis & Todd: 9 roster spots taken by guys who could the core of the Go-Go roster. That's the problem. Davis & Todd were really bad G-league players to boot. That's just not a workable or salvageable situation IMO. You can't have more than half of an NBA roster that's simply not playable. Even worst when your best guys have significant injury history. We all like Goodwin but at best he's a 3rd PG until he improves offensively.

Meh. Disagree. If you had a solid big 3 (let's say that Porzingis is one of them), then a supporting cast of:
Gafford, Morris, Wright, Goodwin & Kispert. You would be fine with an 8-man rotation - Deni could have been used as a defensive stopper to give you 9.

But the key here is that the supporting cast is secondary or tertiary. The point is the big 3 isn't/was't.

[Dat2U]

Of course if you have a prime Kobe & Shaq, or prime AD & LeBron, you could get away with having a mediocre supporting cast but how many teams have that? If we had two guys that were top 30 guys and there are 30 teams in the league then it seems conceivable that those two were not the issue.

Out of those 30 teams, i can't find a bottom half of the roster that looks worse than the Wizards bunch.

[payitforward]

...KP was terrific. Beal was very good when he played. Both were top 30 guys IMO.

Kuz filled a need offensively. A volume shot taker because the team had no quality shot creators outside of Beal & KP. So IMO he wasn't a train wreck offensively despite his inefficiency. His willingness to shoot and be a threat forced defenses to pay attention to him. I wish he made more but his volume was needed. He also was a solid defender at both F spots and thats where is real value lies at this point going forward (still don't want to see him return though).

The Wizards also had 3 flawed but solid low usage role players. Monte Morris was the steady game manager and floor spacer but his lack of playmaking defense made him a fairly neutral player. Daniel Gafford is a passable starter & decent backup who's defensive impact has been consistently disappointing outside of his nice post-trade run when he first got here. Again another useful but neutral player. Delon is a world class defender but not really a PG and is low volume enough where teams tend to leave him open but his defense probably makes him our best role player out of the 3.

Beyond these 6, the roster is just terrible although Kispert's increased usage made him a little more playable despite not being able to rebound or defend at passable level.

Deni was a major disappointment. Simply put, if you can't finish & can't shoot its hard to play through you as a tablesetter and he's clearly not a spot up guy. His defensive intensity also regressed a bit so he's was not a huge positive on that end to offset the huge negative he is offensively.

So you got a solid six, maybe a mediocre top 8 and the rest of the roster is clear G-League quality or below.

Goodwin, Nunn, Gill, Gibson, Huff, Cooks, Jackson, Davis & Todd: 9 roster spots taken by guys who could the core of the Go-Go roster. That's the problem. Davis & Todd were really bad G-league players to boot. That's just not a workable or salvageable situation IMO. You can't have more than half of an NBA roster that's simply not playable. Even worst when your best guys have significant injury history. We all like Goodwin but at best he's a 3rd PG until he improves offensively.

Neither KP nor Beal were "top 30 guys" or anywhere remotely close to that.
You can't just ignore obvious deficiencies that jump out of the numbers, b/c your "eye test" doesn't see them: if they're in the numbers, they're also in the game results. Period. No two ways about it.

Kuz "filled a need offensively." I see what you mean, except that his way of filling it was so bad that it caused us to lose games rather than win them. Hence, yeah, he's "garbage" -- or, rather, he was a strongly net negative player last season -- by far the worst of his career.

Kuz is part of the problem -- & he has no role in any solution to the problem.

OTOH, your assessment of Morris, Gafford & Wright seems about right. They might actually be a little better than you give them credit for, i.e. contribute a bit more to winning games.

But, you are way underestimating Kispert's positive effect -- maybe partly because you're not noticing the fact that the guy posted a really extraordinary .658 TS%. For a guy who basically never gets to the line, that is a really astonishing number. Yeah, he shot the 3 at .422 -- but he also shot the 2 at .643. His efg% was .637 -- in his 2d season in the league! Find me another young 2-3 doing anything like that!

You also underestimate what Goodwin gets done on the floor. But, he was a rookie, & until he does it a second year there's not much reason to make a big deal out of him.

OTOH, I'm sorry to say that you seem correct about Deni. 3d year guys who don't post big-time improvements towards being truly productive overall are usually signaling that they aren't going to make it. Looks a little different from Rui, but really it's not a whole lot different.

As to a so-called "big three," we don't have a single player who qualifies. Not one. Beal's on the slide, KP has some good things & an equal number of bad ones. Kuz... forget about it.

We won 35 games this year. That wasn't our record b/c KP was great but some other guys stunk. It was our record b/c of KP & those other guys. run it back & it's likely to be worse not better.

[NatP4]

Man, calling Beal a top 30 player is a massive stretch. I would throw him into the above average starter category with a CJ McCollum and Lamelo Ball.

[long suffrin' boulez fan]

Nurse and Budz available… and we are committed to WUJ.

SMDH.

[gambitx777]

Nurse and Budz available… and we are committed to WUJ.

SMDH.

Ted might be in public but I highly doubt that's bullet proof and we get the new GM in here and they have a connection or line on a better HC.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using RealGM mobile app

[FAH1223]

Read on Twitter

Intel suggests Kuzma will be retained.

He may need to do work to get a big offer from outside but that’s not a given at all

[nate33]

Or having winning top 10-15 player talent.

We can talk about culture all we want, but when the bulk of the roster is also garbage, culture is just a pretty cherry on top of dog doo. We have neither, just enough high floor talent to never pick in the top 3.

I don't think that the bulk of the roster is garbage. Just our big 3.

I couldn't disagree more.

KP was terrific. Beal was very good when he played. Both were top 30 guys IMO.

Kuz filled a need offensively. A volume shot taker because the team had no quality shot creators outside of Beal & KP. So IMO he wasn't a train wreck offensively despite his inefficiency. His willingness to shoot and be a threat forced defenses to pay attention to him. I wish he made more but his volume was needed. He also was a solid defender at both F spots and thats where is real value lies at this point going forward (still don't want to see him return though).

The Wizards also had 3 flawed but solid low usage role players. Monte Morris was the steady game manager and floor spacer but his lack of playmaking defense made him a fairly neutral player. Daniel Gafford is a passable starter & decent backup who's defensive impact has been consistently disappointing outside of his nice post-trade run when he first got here. Again another useful but neutral player. Delon is a world class defender but not really a PG and is low volume enough where teams tend to leave him open but his defense probably makes him our best role player out of the 3.

Beyond these 6, the roster is just terrible although Kispert's increased usage made him a little more playable despite not being able to rebound or defend at passable level.

Deni was a major disappointment. Simply put, if you can't finish & can't shoot its hard to play through you as a tablesetter and he's clearly not a spot up guy. His defensive intensity also regressed a bit so he's was not a huge positive on that end to offset the huge negative he is offensively.

So you got a solid six, maybe a mediocre top 8 and the rest of the roster is clear G-League quality or below.

Goodwin, Nunn, Gill, Gibson, Huff, Cooks, Jackson, Davis & Todd: 9 roster spots taken by guys who could the core of the Go-Go roster. That's the problem. Davis & Todd were really bad G-league players to boot. That's just not a workable or salvageable situation IMO. You can't have more than half of an NBA roster that's simply not playable. Even worst when your best guys have significant injury history. We all like Goodwin but at best he's a 3rd PG until he improves offensively.

I agree with most of this, except I'd put Beal in the top 40, not top 30. And then you have to factor all the games missed.

And KP, though in the top 30, was probably in the 24-28 range. It's not like he was a true difference making star in the top 15. But still, KP was awesome and I really think Wes (or whoever coaches next year) has to find a way to increase his usage more. I still like the way KP was utilized at the end of the 2021-22 season after we traded for him. He played more like Jokic, initiating plays from the high post, rather than merely being a pick-and-pop threat.

I think your more-optimistic-than-most take on Kuzma is largely correct. I know the advanced stats are bad, but when I watched him play, I really didn't feel like his shot attempts were very easily exchangeable for higher percentage shot attempts. It's not like he was Jordan Poole out there, jacking shots with no conscious and with no court vision. The issue is that he was surrounded by a lot of guys who were highly dependent on playmakers to set them up. Kuzma didn't have the option to just dump the ball to Avdija, Wright, Morris or Kispert and expect them to make a play. In that context, Kuzma's poor shooting percentage was somewhat understandable. Frankly, it was his turnovers that bothered me a lot more.

[dobrojim]

Nurse and Budz available… and we are committed to WUJ.

SMDH.

Budz for GM?

[NatP4]

The best players were Wright and Porzingis. Beal was an above average starter that missed a ton of games. Kuzma is a mediocre rotation player miscast into a high usage role and way too many minutes, makes him a net negative player.

Johnny Davis is not in the same category as Isaiah Todd or even close. Total nonsense.

It’s not a depth problem at all. Goodwin, Gafford, Kispert, Avdija, and Morris are all solid. Davis and Jackson were solid at the end of the year. It’s a lack of having enough difference makers.

If they luck into a Thompson twin, and let Kuzma walk, this is a seriously different situation.

[NatP4]

Hopeful for next year:

Impact players:
Ausar/Porzingis/Wright/Beal

Above average:
Morris/Goodwin/Gafford/Avdija

Rotation players:
Kispert/Davis/Jackson/Cooks

[DCZards]

Yeah, Dat’s analysis is pretty spot on. We can quibble about whether or not Beal and KP are top 30 players and Kuz’s impact. (I totally agree with him when he says Kuz’s offensive skill set filled a need on a team with very few playmakers and shot creators.)

Where I do disagree is regarding Kispert. He’s better than Dat gives him credit for being.

But overall Dat’s assessment of Zards players is a clear-eyed one, imo.

[nate33]

Nurse and Budz available… and we are committed to WUJ.

SMDH.

Budz for GM?

I'd much rather have Budd as coach.

I know he sucks at making adjustments in the playoffs, but the man knows how to drill his team into running a successful system in the regular season. His teams always defend and always take efficient shots. I'd love to see him build a base for success here. If, in the end, we have a couple of disappointing playoff failures, we can look into firing him in the future. But in the meantime, let him build a program.

Budd once won 43 games in Atlanta with this rotation:

PG Dennis Schroeder
SG Tim Hardaway Jr.
SF Kent Bazemore
PF Paul Millsap
C Dwight Howard (age 31, 2 years after his Houston back injury and subsequent flameout)

He won 60 freaking games with:

PG Jeff Teague
SG Kyle Korver
SF DeMarre Carroll
PF Paul Millsap
C Al Horford

60 games!

[dobrojim]

Yeah, Dat’s analysis is spot on. We can quibble about whether or not Beal and KP are top 30 players and Kuz’s impact. (I totally agree with him when he says Kuz’s offensive skill set filled a need on a team with very few playmakers and shot creators.)

Where I do disagree is regarding Kispert. He’s better than Dat gives him credit for being.

But overall Dat’s assessment of Zards players is a clear-eyed one, imo.

I think this assessment fails to acknowledge for all the good things Kuz is capable of,
the high volume of negative things he does results in a player who is below average efficiency
for the position he plays. He could be much better (has the talent) but exercises poor judgement
too frequently. As he currently plays, he doesn't move the needle much towards our being a winning team.
I would be wary of overpaying to retain him, especially given our franchise history.

[dckingsfan]

I think this assessment fails to acknowledge for all the good things Kuz is capable of,
the high volume of negative things he does results in a player who is below average efficiency
for the position he plays. He could be much better (has the talent) but exercises poor judgement
too frequently. As he currently plays, he doesn't move the needle much towards our being a winning team.
I would be wary of overpaying to retain him, especially given our franchise history.

Yeah, I am in the same camp. I think we are better seeing him move on then resigning him. He is no where near a top 100 player. For that matter (opinion), Beal was not a top 100 player this season.

The supporting cast is tertiary until you sort out your top players. Full Stop.

[pcbothwel]

The hope for Kuz is that lower usage would theoretically allow him to pick his spots better (I.e. Jeremi Grant). While not a STOCKS guy, some advanced catch all metrics (RPM, RAPTOR, EPM, Etc.) showed him as slightly above average defensively. To me, it is simply not worth it where we stand.
I would, in order, prefer:
1) SnT him for filler/pick, 2) Sign him for <22M/year and trade him later, 3) Let him walk for nothing, 4) Sign him for >25M/Year

[Kanyewest]

Of course if you have a prime Kobe & Shaq, or prime AD & LeBron, you could get away with having a mediocre supporting cast but how many teams have that? If we had two guys that were top 30 guys and there are 30 teams in the league then it seems conceivable that those two were not the issue.

Out of those 30 teams, i can't find a bottom half of the roster that looks worse than the Wizards bunch.

Phoenix comes to mind.

[DCZards]

I think this assessment fails to acknowledge for all the good things Kuz is capable of,
the high volume of negative things he does results in a player who is below average efficiency
for the position he plays. He could be much better (has the talent) but exercises poor judgement
too frequently. As he currently plays, he doesn't move the needle much towards our being a winning team.
I would be wary of overpaying to retain him, especially given our franchise history.

Yeah, I am in the same camp. I think we are better seeing him move on then resigning him. He is no where near a top 100 player. For that matter (opinion), Beal was not a top 100 player this season.

The supporting cast is tertiary until you sort out your top players. Full Stop.

Beal not top 100? Good luck finding even 50 players who had a better season than BB.

[payitforward]

...KP was terrific. Beal was very good when he played. Both were top 30 guys IMO....

...KP, though in the top 30, was probably in the 24-28 range....

W/o wanting to debate this, let me make sure I understand it: if KP was in the 24-28 range among the best players in the league, then -- given that there are 5 positions -- we can probably assume he was among the top 5-6 Centers this year. Something like that anyway....

Given that I think (hope!) we can agree that Nikola Jokic, Domantas Sabonis, Anthony Davis, Rudy Gobert, & Joel Embiid were all unquestionably better than KP this year (not to mention their many previous years), it looks like KP must have been better than all but 1 -- maybe 2? -- of Jarrett Allen, Steven Adams, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jonas Valanciunas, Kevon Looney, Walker Kessler, Mitchell Robinson, Robert Williams, Nikola Vucevic, Ivica Zubac, & DeAndre Ayton.

&, if he was better than all but 1 or 2 of those 11 guys, he must have also been better than every one 1 of DeAndre Jordan, Andre Drummond, Clint Capela & Jakob Poeltl.

Obviously, I disagree. I'd say everyone on all 3 of those lists had a better season than KP. At the same time, I recognize that it's more or less pointless to debate this. For example, it seems obvious to me that Clint Capela is one of the very best Centers in the league.* & that Jakob Poeltl is far from the relative non-entity you judge him to be. Yet, I doubt there's any data I could put forward to support my point which you would find credible.

It's clear to me that we won 35 games because of -- not in spite of -- how our players performed.

Naturally, I put the claim that Brad was a top 40 player this year in the same basket as the claim about KP.