Post#1437 » by rockymac52 » Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:38 am
I haven't given my thoughts on the trade yet, but after giving it a day's time to let it soak in, I like it.
It's not a home run trade by any means, and I can completely understand how it could frustrate many of you, but I think it's a simple move that makes our team better. At the end of the day, just like Ernie said, we're better than we were yesterday. We gave away 2 assets that were worthless to us. We have so much youth already, and Ted made it clear at the end of the season that we were only going to have 2 rookies on next year's team. So if it wasn't drafting a scrub and sending him to the D League or drafting and stashing a marginal European prospect, then it was this. Even though there's guys projected to be drafted in the mid to late 2nd round this year that I'm intrigued by and would have liked to see us draft, I'm not that concerned that we're realistically giving up anything of value with that pick. Lewis was obviously going to be cut in the next 10 days, so he was truly worthless to us.
We traded those 2 assets (and let's be honest, you can BARELY consider either of them a true "asset") and acquired 2 NBA veterans who will most likely be starters on this team.
Neither Okafor nor Ariza are all that great, but they both do certain things very well, and they would start or play significant minutes for many NBA teams.
Both of them are clearly a little bit overpaid. There's simply no denying that. But the good news is that both are only on the books for the next 2 seasons, so even if they're no good at basketball, they won't cripple our long-term future salary cap flexibility. The downside to this trade is that we now will almost definitely not be able to afford a near max contract free agent in the next two offseasons. Before this trade we were in a position where that would have been possible.
However, I think the fact that we made this trade in the first place, along with Ted and Ernie's comments post-trade, make it very clear that we did not think we were going to be able to land a free agent of that caliber. Either because we didn't think there would be any available that fit our team's needs, or that they'd only be restricted free agents and we might not be able to get them as a result, or that we simply knew that DC was not an attractive destination to free agents and it was going to limit our ability to bring in a top tier free agent. It's sad and depressing and I wish it wasn't true, but Ted's comments made it very obvious that this was the case. That cap space we would have had wasn't going to end up actually helping us land a big free agent, at least in the front office's mind.
As far as the players themselves, Ariza starts immediately on this team. He can be a valuable role player on a good team. This last year or two he's tried to do too much on offense, mainly because his team didn't have that many better options, so he tried his best to take over. I'm worried he may fall into the same trap on the Wizards, because we don't have that many good offensive players at the moment. But hopefully we can keep him in check in that regard.
Okafor is a good player who can rebound and defend. No denying that. I agree that at first glance he's definitely a bit redundant with what we have in Nene and Seraphin, but I think he'll do wonders especially on the glass. MORE IMPORTANTLY, I think acquiring Okafor points to one of two things, if not both. One, that one of our bigs is going to be traded this offseason. Many people here are speculating that guy might be Booker and that we might get a wing or mid-late 1st in return. That could be the case. OR it could be a sign that we aren't very confident in our front court players' abilities to stay healthy. If Nene or Okafor have lingering issues and need to miss some time, then it's not that big of a deal to us because we have a deep bench, at least with our big men. If we expect Nene and Okafor to each play something like 60 games, then it would be great if we could have the other one to step up along with Seraphin, Vesely, and Booker for the time being.
Long post, not sure how fluid it was, but those are my initial thoughts.
