tacosman wrote:The Consiglieri wrote:gambitx777 wrote:Hide aight is always 2020. You really want to avoid being so bad moral is gone we are almost there but you can't just trade everyone under value the players don't respect that.
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I don't think that's really right. If you're not going to have an asset for '24-'25, or it won't be meaningful. You should probably flip it. One of the reasons I wanted to trade Kuzma in the present, rather than wait longer is what just happened to the Guardians. The Guardians just turned what was a CY Young caliber pitcher, into a deadline asset for trade in '23, but Bieber got hurt right before the deadline, so they couldn't engage in talks (for which they were only half serious), then decided against trading him during the winter meetings in '23-'24, and now saw him just go down after 1 week of the season with Tommy John surgery. A key building block asset for the team was flushed down the toilet for nothing because they waited. That is the worst case scenario of course, but then again so are the wizards, most of the time.
Now add in this key piece: bad team morale, & players respecting the build and the F.O.'s. This can matter. But the question is, why would it matter with us? We aren't competing until '26-'27 at the earliest for much, and how many of the players on the current roster are building blocks (Bilal, Deni) or key assets long term (Tristan?). The answer to that is largely none. What do we care about the team morale or potential attitude issues with regards to players who aren't going to be here in the first place. You can have glue guy vets to try and ensure a bottom line level of professionalism and dedication, but I don't think you should be keeping that, over flipping for assets, when you are #1 bereft of virtually any talent to speak of #2 starting from a point that rebuilds never start from (virtually no assets worth a damn because you had too much pride and stupidity to trade guys like Beal when you should have) and #3 not working with the players that will have any relevance to your long term future anyway (in terms of trade pieces or long term value).
I agree with all this of course, but the problem with trading Kuzma is you aren't going to get anything for him.
So he averaged 22/6/4 on 33/46/77 splits on a dreadful team.
Okay.....so is he viewed any differently now than a year ago? no, of course not. Hell a lot of people thought he would average 25 here his first year status post new contract. The reality is decent teams didn't want to pay him much last year......what's changed? Nothing......
I just don't see the incentive to move Kuzma. He's not an asset. And since he's not a real asset, may as well keep him because:
1) he is a high usage player that doesn't contribute to winning for the wiz(obviously lol), which is exactly what you want
2) Although none of you guys care how 'watchable' the product is, it's best to be very bad these years to ensure as high a pick as likely possible, but yet within that spectrum of bad you just want to be a 'normal bottom of the league bad'. Kuzma is a high volume/usage generally losing player who fits in perfectly with the wizards goals but also ensures that they are at least playing
nba level basketball.(just a bottom of the league team each year and not a bottom of the league in nba history team)
The rumored offerings for Kuzma on the market were better than nothing. You've insisted that in two posts in this thread but there isn't really evidence that we were getting nothing for him, the question is, would it be worth what little we might be getting. There was already an offer in place with Dallas, if Kuzma was good to go, he wasn't, and we weren't super exciting anyway, so we said no.
I get what your saying, but you're underselling what we'd get. The Dallas offer was rumored to include two firsts according to SI, and a '27 first as a part of the deal according to bleacher. It was always more than a couple of 2nds. Apparently our ask was two firsts, I don't think Dallas had the ability to do that since they already had made deals that blocked their ability to trade multiple firsts. Maybe they middle grounded it with a '27 first, and multiple 2nds. I have no idea. Not sure. But we could have gotten more than some trash/later 2nds as you imply.
That's worth it to me, and we run are playing a game of chicken w/his value going forward, between age and injury risk on the one hand, and less of a nasty contract on the other if we wait....