(Building Around Wall) no pun, but what need to be done?

[daSwami]

Vesely is a moneyball nba player, everything he's good at can't be measured, everything he sucks at is measurable.

I couldn't agree more. You can't measure something that doesn't exist.

[doclinkin]

Horn tooting:

I'd take Vucevic at 18.

Vucevic is a legit Big from a basketball family. His dad was a pro player for 24 years, mom also played for the national team. He's got lifelong fundamental skills and for all that he's tagged as soft he showed up large against Big Time competition. With his face-up game he'll earn minutes in Flip's offense and help provide room underneath for John Wall et al. to slash.

Of course I also said I'd take Jeremy Tyler at 34, and he didn't did diddly yet.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Dude, this draft SUCKED. There are two non-pgs in the 7-15 slot earning more than 20 minutes a game, and that's Morris and Leonard, the 13 and 15. So anyone else EG picked would have been either just as bad as Ves or just as big a stretch.

Here are your choices:
Knight - PG
Biyombo -sucks
Walker - PG
Jimmer Fredette - can't play defense
Klay Thompson - sucks
Alec Burks - sucks
Markieff Morris - mediocre
Marcus Morris - injured
Kawhi Leonard - mediocre

And look at the players picked ahead of us! Valunciunas isn't even playing in the league yet, Kanter is mediocre, Williams is mediocre, Tristan Thompson is mediocre! All of the impact players from this draft are pgs (Kyrie, Brandon, Kemba)!

Kawhi Leonard already earned starts and praise from Greg Popovich. I think he will become a much better-than-average player. He can hit the three, defend, and rebounds very well at SF. He is 20 years old.

[The Consiglieri]

Dude, this draft SUCKED. There are two non-pgs in the 7-15 slot earning more than 20 minutes a game, and that's Morris and Leonard, the 13 and 15. So anyone else EG picked would have been either just as bad as Ves or just as big a stretch.

Here are your choices:
Knight - PG
Biyombo -sucks
Walker - PG
Jimmer Fredette - can't play defense
Klay Thompson - sucks
Alec Burks - sucks
Markieff Morris - mediocre
Marcus Morris - injured
Kawhi Leonard - mediocre

And look at the players picked ahead of us! Valunciunas isn't even playing in the league yet, Kanter is mediocre, Williams is mediocre, Tristan Thompson is mediocre! All of the impact players from this draft are pgs (Kyrie, Brandon, Kemba)!

Kawhi Leonard already earned starts and praise from Greg Popovich. I think he will become a much better-than-average player. He can hit the three, defend, and rebounds very well at SF. He is 20 years old.

and he was a guy that admittedly, probably THE GUY, that everybody liked. I know I did. The only fear with him was if he'd ever develop the offensive game to go with the defense and athleticism. But he did have great workouts leading to the draft. Sounds like hes coming along fantastically.

[Illuminaire]

I argued so, so hard for Leonard. Why didn't EG listen to me? WHY?

[SUPERBALLMAN]

This is the lineup I'd like to see next year...

DeMarcus Cousins
Thomas Robinson
Harrison Barnes
James Harden
John Wall


Now the question is how to accomplish this?

[thinker07]

Step 1: Get rid of McGee - Painfully and grudgingly I have come to the conclusion that we simply have to move on from McGee. He has tantalizing physical skill - but sadly I think he will have to improve his game under some different plan with a much more veteran team that forces him to behave. If he his had a year or two on his rookie contract, fine. But $10-11 mil a year? Too much risk - so just trade him now. Get 50 cents on the dollar if we have to. Let's move on. Get Udoh and Wright from Golden State and be done.

Step 2: Let NY walk. Nobody is likely to give us anything for him with no Bird rights. If we can get a 2nd rounder fine. Be gon.

Step 3: Pray to the gods that somehow someone would give us SOMETHING marginally useful for Blatche. I wish that Ted was better funded so we could just amnesty him this summer and not have to try and take back another bad contract like Tyrus Thomas. Under NO circumstances can Blatche be around after this year. And I'd rather Ted gulp hard and amnesty Blatche and then spend his cap room on some of the RFA's listed below.

Step 4: Win the draft lotto - Welcome Anthony Davis. If that doesn't happen then we need to focus on someone that isn't a long term development player. Barnes feels like the best fallback to me right now, but maybe it's Robinson or Beal or Lamb or MKG. Sullinger feels wrong right now and Drummond scares me.

Step 5: Buyout Rashard. Maybe someone would give us SOMETHING so we could save Ted a little money - but I guess the cheapest thing will be to just pay him his $10 mil and send him on his way.

Step 6: Don't trade any of the rookies or 2nd year draft choices. Who knows what Vesely and Singleton could become with summer league, some actual practice, coaching, and being in a less dysfunctional situation. Mack looks like a solid backup prospect. Booker is continuing to improve - the jumper is especially exciting. Crawford looks like he will settle in to an off the bench scoring option. Seraphin continues to show glimpses but it was always going to take a while for him - don't give up yet.

Step 7: Free agency strategy: There are very few UFA's so we will have to focus on RFA's. There are a couple of UFA's - Carlos Delfino, Ersan Ilyasova, and Ian Mahinmi. These are some of the most viable RFA's : Omer Asik, Eric Gordon, Rudy Fernandez, OJ Mayo, Anthony Randolph, Landry Fields, Ryan Anderson, Jodie Meeks, Nic Batum, Jason Thompson.

If I was inclined before to hold my nose and give McGee $10 mil per -- Now I'm willing to hold my nose and overpay Ilyasova, Anderson, Mayo, Batum, etc.

So, I think this is the lineup chart that EG and Ted are (or should be) really looking at right now:

Wall, Mack
XXXXX #2, Crawford
XXXXX #3, Singleton
Booker, Vesely
XXXXX #5, Seraphin

The trade deadline happens first, then the draft, then free agency so later stages depend on what happens in earlier stages. If we can get a building block as we jettison our knuckleheads. great --that mean less to accomplish later.

One of those XXXXX spots should be filled with the draft, the other 2 in free agency. If somehow we win the lotto and get Davis, then adding 2 or 3 of the great shooting SG's of forwards makes us a competitive team pretty quickly (into the 5-6-7-8th seeds).

[Zonkerbl]

I've been thinking about letting McGee and N1 just walk. Before I was saying, hey, we're under the salary cap, just let them walk. But I think we would do better signing a max free agent AND holding onto McGee and N1. If the max free agent bumps us over the salary cap, then if McGee and N1 walk we can't replace them.

I wish Nate or somebody would give us an update on the zards salary cap situation...

[Nivek]

Assuming the Wizards land the third pick in the draft, that they amnesty Lewis and the cap remains where it is right now ($58.044 million), Wiz would have about $19.8 million in cap space. If they could find a taker for Blatche that involves not taking back any additional salary for 2012-13, add another $7.1 million.

That $19.8 million includes a $7.4 million cap hold for McGee and a $4.4 million hold for Young. That's another $11.8 million. Lop those two off the cap, and Washington would have approximately $30 million in cap room -- enough to sign two max salary free agents. It would mean letting Young and McGee depart.

[queridiculo]

Kawhi Leonard already earned starts and praise from Greg Popovich. I think he will become a much better-than-average player. He can hit the three, defend, and rebounds very well at SF. He is 20 years old.

Out of the guys available with our slotting Vucevic, Leonard, Faried, Brooks, Waller, all players I would have signed off on.

Players I absolutely didn't want to see on this team Fredette and Vesely, with Vesely being the worst case scenario.

With a bit of maneuvering we could have realistically come away from this draft with a combination of Faried/Vucevic or Leonard/Vucevic. We'd be looking pretty good right now.

Leonard is going to be special, and Faried will make some noise when he finally gets a chance to see the court more.

[Zonkerbl]

Assuming the Wizards land the third pick in the draft, that they amnesty Lewis and the cap remains where it is right now ($58.044 million), Wiz would have about $19.8 million in cap space. If they could find a taker for Blatche that involves not taking back any additional salary for 2012-13, add another $7.1 million.

That $19.8 million includes a $7.4 million cap hold for McGee and a $4.4 million hold for Young. That's another $11.8 million. Lop those two off the cap, and Washington would have approximately $30 million in cap room -- enough to sign two max salary free agents. It would mean letting Young and McGee depart.

Er... you mean excludes, right? If the $19.8 million includes $11.8 million for Young and McGee then it's only $19.8 - $11.8 million = $8 million.

Could you instead do this: amnesty Blatche, sign a max free agent that season, let Young and McGee walk, hold onto Lewis. Next season, use the cap space from letting Young and McGee walk plus Lewis' expired contract to sign another max free agent? I guess you couldn't because you'd have the 2012 3rd draft pick's contract on the books (although you said you included that already?).

I like the idea of trading Blatche straight up for an expiring contract. That's pretty much the same as amnestying him. Only works if the other team thinks Blatche is worth the contract though.

[Nivek]

Umm, no -- I mean exactly what I posted. The $19.8 million in cap space INCLUDES accounting for cap holds on Young and McGee that total about $11.8 million. If you knock those two off the books, the Wiz are at about $30 million in cap space. (Straight addition would put the number higher, of course, but the league requires that teams apply cap holds for at least 11 players. If the team has fewer players under contract and cap holds for RFAs and UFAs, then it applies minimum salary holds until the team reaches 11 players/holds.)

[tontoz]

I like the idea of trading Blatche straight up for an expiring contract. That's pretty much the same as amnestying him.

For us sure but i have a feeling Ted might see things differently lol.

[Zonkerbl]

Umm, no -- I mean exactly what I posted. The $19.8 million in cap space INCLUDES accounting for cap holds on Young and McGee that total about $11.8 million. If you knock those two off the books, the Wiz are at about $30 million in cap space. (Straight addition would put the number higher, of course, but the league requires that teams apply cap holds for at least 11 players. If the team has fewer players under contract and cap holds for RFAs and UFAs, then it applies minimum salary holds until the team reaches 11 players/holds.)

BUt what really matters is that, even if we don't find a taker for Blatche, if we let N1 and McGee walk we could use that cap space to sign two max or near max players next year? As long as we amnesty Lewis.

I suppose you could always amnesty Blatche the next year...

Wouldn't that be sweet? Draft/Sign starting quality SG, SF, and PF/C next year?

[Nivek]

Right -- even if the Wiz don't find an expiring for Blatche, they would have enough cap room to sign two max level free agents if they let Young and McGee depart. Of course, if they amnesty Lewis, they won't be able to amnesty Blatche so they'd either be stuck with him or they'd still need to find a taker for him at some point.

[Zonkerbl]

You can amnesty one contract per year, right? So you could amnesty Blatche the following year, so you're only stuck with him for a year.

[Nivek]

No, teams get to use the amnesty thing only once. Not once per year -- once, period.

[Zonkerbl]

shoot.

[SUPERBALLMAN]

Right -- even if the Wiz don't find an expiring for Blatche, they would have enough cap room to sign two max level free agents if they let Young and McGee depart. Of course, if they amnesty Lewis, they won't be able to amnesty Blatche so they'd either be stuck with him or they'd still need to find a taker for him at some point.

Well if push comes to shove, we can supposedly buy out Lewis' final year for $10 mil. I assume that $10 mil still counts against the cap, but it would leave the amnesty available to use on Blatche. Young is free to go, as is Turiaf, and McGee is definitely should yield something useful in a trade.

Personally, I wouldn't mind at all if we did the above, pick up another lotto pick for McGee, even missing the top pick come out of the draft with something like T.Robinson & Barnes, go with a Wall Crawford backcourt, and address center in free agency. Bench with the guys we want to keep Booker, Vesely, Singleton, Mo Evans, Seraphin, Mack as well as free agents additions. I'd be very happy with that after this debacle of a season!

[tontoz]

The big question is whether or not Uncle Groupon is willing to pay $37 million to get rid of Blatche/Lewis, and then spend the money to bring in a quality free agent or two.