Just tank already.

[jivelikenice]

If we aren't going for the 3 seed then I'd rather tank and fall out of the playoffs. This up & down push for the playoffs at the expense of playing some young guys who need to play and could contribute it ridiculous. What is playing Ariza 40 minutes going to mean for us long-term? I am so sick of seeing the offense run through Nene while in year 4 of JW we still don't have a stretch 4 to open the floor.

[ozthegandp]

Brooklyn is about to bump us out of the 6th spot which hopefully means 1st round sweep even if we make the playoffs. which means we forfeit our pick for nothing. which hopefully means eg fired. Lets go Brooklyn. Lets go!!

Yep, Brooklyn looks like they will blow by us... but does that = EG firing? Don't we have to miss the playoffs for that to happen?

a 7th or 8th seed in this yrs east is worse than where we finished last yr. and we don't have the injury excuse this yr. It SHOULD mean hes fired.

[dckingsfan]

Brooklyn is about to bump us out of the 6th spot which hopefully means 1st round sweep even if we make the playoffs. which means we forfeit our pick for nothing. which hopefully means eg fired. Lets go Brooklyn. Lets go!!

Yep, Brooklyn looks like they will blow by us... but does that = EG firing? Don't we have to miss the playoffs for that to happen?

a 7th or 8th seed in this yrs east is worse than where we finished last yr. and we don't have the injury excuse this yr. It SHOULD mean hes fired.

In a rational world

[jivelikenice]

I'd agree. My guess is a top 6 seed with a couple of playoff wins likely means he stays. a 7-8 seed with a potential sweep means he should be fired but with Ted you just dont know.

[wizardry]

Tank to get what other great picks from front office. Whitman has a 1st and 3rd pick backcourt and 2 decent big man. We still suck

[payitforward]

Tank to get what other great picks from front office. Whitman has a 1st and 3rd pick backcourt and 2 decent big man. We still suck

We don't "suck." We're more or less average.

That "3d pick backcourt" guy is 20. Wall is playing well. So are Martell and Ariza.

But we have one not two decent big men -- Nene is not playing well no matter how much people would like to describe it differently.

And we have a ton of dead weight expressly picked by our resident genius.

[wizardry]

We are below .500 in the Eastern Conference. We Suck. Like a said 1st and 3rd round pick backcourt. 2 decent wings and 2 decent big men. Whitman cant work with that.

[Rafael122]

Manu and Leonard out for the Spurs...suddenly looks like a winnable game at home.

[stevemcqueen1]

If we aren't going for the 3 seed then I'd rather tank and fall out of the playoffs. This up & down push for the playoffs at the expense of playing some young guys who need to play and could contribute it ridiculous. What is playing Ariza 40 minutes going to mean for us long-term? I am so sick of seeing the offense run through Nene while in year 4 of JW we still don't have a stretch 4 to open the floor.

We're going for the three seed we're just not good enough to get it.

But that doesn't mean we can't have a positive season by finishing as a playoff team. Preferably higher than a 7 or 8 seed.

And in fact, I think it's absolutely essential for Wall and Beal to get to the playoffs ASAP. They need to learn what it means to play winning basketball. Constant losing produces losers. And you definitely don't want the stink of lack of postseason appearances/success sticking to your players.

You can only develop so many young players at one time anyway. You need guys who aren't going through on the job training to play with. Guys who can just do their job, pick up the defenses, be where they're supposed to be, and hit the shots they're supposed to make. That's exactly what Ariza is doing. We shouldn't trade him unless we get another good player back in return.

Your team doesn't get anywhere if it can't even get off the ground because nobody trusts each other and nobody does their job. That was our situation the first two and a half years of John's career. We were horrible defensively and nobody could hit a shot. And John stagnated. We got rid of half our day care class and got NBA quality veterans that knew how to play and John took a massive step forward soon after.

We don't want to be going into year five and six of the John Wall era wondering when they're ever going to figure it out and get over the hump. Tanking isn't the way for us to get good. It's continuing to develop and build around John and Beal.

Why don't we wait until we actually have a winning season before we start demanding 50+ wins and legitimate contention?

[Silvie Lysandra]

All understandable. I agree, under 99% of circumstances, the best move is to gun for the playoffs. However, we're in a situation where playoff success would make a bottom 10 coaching staff and a bottom 3 front office virtually untouchable. We could easily lock Wall's prime years into bottom seed mediocrity because Ted is looking for any and every excuse to maintain the status quo. I feel that is a far worse outcome than delaying John's playoff experience a year.

[hands11]

Manu and Leonard out for the Spurs...suddenly looks like a winnable game at home.

Come on. You aren't serious are you ? Pops could field a girl scout troop and beat Randy.

[stevemcqueen1]

Running offense through Nene is also a good thing IMO. He brings some inside/outside balance and goes hard at the rim in a way nobody else does.

If you swapped Nene with a stretch 4 you'd have to make up the inside offensive game somewhere else. It's not Beal or any of the threes we've got. Not Gortat either. A stretch 4 without an inside game makes us too perimeter oriented.

And Nene's defense wouldn't be easy to replace either. How many stretch 4s out there are better all around players than Nene?

Getting a good 4 with an all around skill set is much more important than getting a stretch 4.

[payitforward]

If we aren't going for the 3 seed then I'd rather tank and fall out of the playoffs. This up & down push for the playoffs at the expense of playing some young guys who need to play and could contribute it ridiculous. What is playing Ariza 40 minutes going to mean for us long-term? I am so sick of seeing the offense run through Nene while in year 4 of JW we still don't have a stretch 4 to open the floor.

We're going for the three seed we're just not good enough to get it.

But that doesn't mean we can't have a positive season by finishing as a playoff team. Preferably higher than a 7 or 8 seed.

And in fact, I think it's absolutely essential for Wall and Beal to get to the playoffs ASAP. They need to learn what it means to play winning basketball. Constant losing produces losers. And you definitely don't want the stink of lack of postseason appearances/success sticking to your players.

You can only develop so many young players at one time anyway. You need guys who aren't going through on the job training to play with. Guys who can just do their job, pick up the defenses, be where they're supposed to be, and hit the shots they're supposed to make. That's exactly what Ariza is doing. We shouldn't trade him unless we get another good player back in return.

Your team doesn't get anywhere if it can't even get off the ground because nobody trusts each other and nobody does their job. That was our situation the first two and a half years of John's career. We were horrible defensively and nobody could hit a shot. And John stagnated. We got rid of half our day care class and got NBA quality veterans that knew how to play and John took a massive step forward soon after.

We don't want to be going into year five and six of the John Wall era wondering when they're ever going to figure it out and get over the hump. Tanking isn't the way for us to get good. It's continuing to develop and build around John and Beal.

Why don't we wait until we actually have a winning season before we start demanding 50+ wins and legitimate contention?

You're right that it's never a good idea to tank -- and teams that you think are doing it really aren't. They just are bad teams.

You're also right that we'd be nuts to let Ariza go unless we could replace him for about the same dollars w/ someone better than him. But, you could substitute any name for "Ariza" in that sentence, and it'd be equally true. Every time you replace someone with someone else who's better, your team gets better -- duh!

But you're wrong about John's development. He didn't get better because we got rid of McGee, Blatche and Young. In fact, he wasn't very good for a long stretch after that. He got better because he worked hard to get better, and the fruits of that labor began to appear over time. And if you attribute his improvement to one conversation with Okafor..., well we all like fairy tale stories I suppose.

You're certainly right that a team that can't put up a winning season certainly can't be expected to put up 50 wins or contend. Duh. But if that's the talent level you've been able to put on your team after 4 years of rebuilding, then that raises an awful lot of questions that patience can't answer.

As to the other justificatory narrative -- "you can only develop so many young players... gotta have veterans who know where to be on the court etc." -- how many young players has OKC developed all at once? Out of the last seven drafts, they have a 2d pick, a 3d, a 4th, a 5th, a 12th, a 24th, another 24th, a 26th and a 28th. That's 9 guys. They traded one of them for a veteran. They're a younger team than the Wizards. Hasn't been a problem for them.

Of course, they picked well. In those same drafts the Wizards had a 1st pick, a 3d pick, another 3d, a 6th, a 7th, a 16th, a 17th, an 18th, another 18th and a 23d. That's 10 guys -- and at least as good a set of draft assets. Do we need to compare which team did better w/ their assets? (not to mention our altogether wasting 6 R2 picks in those same years).

You don't need old players, you need good players -- and if you have good players, then the younger they are the better!

[hands11]

Upper Decker wrote:I don't -think they'll have to intentionally tank because the schedule until the All-Star games is really tough for Washington:

@ Chicago (L) - won 102-88
vs Miami (L) - won 114-97
vs Chicago (50/50) - won 96-93
vs Detroit (50/50) - lost 104-98
vs Philadelphia (W) - won 107-99
vs Boston (W) - lost 113-111
@ Phoenix (L) - won 101-95
@ Utah on back-to-back (L) - lost 104-101
@ GSW (L) - won 88-85
@ LAC (L) - lost 110-103
vs OKC (L) - won 96-81
vs POR(L)
vs SAS (L)
vs Cleveland (W)
vs Sacramento (50/50)
@ Memphis (L)
@ Houston (L)
TOR
@ ATL

Upper. I hope you aren't putting any money on these games

So far they have beaten Chicago 2x, Miami, PHX, GS, and now OKC.
Had they just won the easier games against BOS, Utah and DET they would be on a insane 9 for 10 games run
As it is, they are on a 7-4 run

So far they are weathering the storm. They still have a tough road ahead though.

[Rafael122]

Schedule is brutal through the all star break and then it gets a bit easier. 7-4, with 6 games left until the break...

I could see them beating Cleveland and Sacramento, if they show up against Portland and the Spurs like they did against the Thunder, they could take those two as well.

[stevemcqueen1]

Schedule is brutal through the all star break and then it gets a bit easier. 7-4, with 6 games left until the break...

I could see them beating Cleveland and Sacramento, if they show up against Portland and the Spurs like they did against the Thunder, they could take those two as well.

The Spurs always beat us convincingly. I'm not expecting much there. But Portland has been slumping a bit for a little while now.

@ Houston and @ Memphis are going to be rough. I think we need to steal this one off Portland and beat Cleveland and Sacramento. We're a better team than those two, we need to beat them. That probably puts us at .500 going into the AS break. And that's an OK place to be.

[hands11]

Schedule is brutal through the all star break and then it gets a bit easier. 7-4, with 6 games left until the break...

I could see them beating Cleveland and Sacramento, if they show up against Portland and the Spurs like they did against the Thunder, they could take those two as well.

Its still the Wizards. Therefor, we have no idea what they will do next.

That said, they are showing some signs that they can get better. Nene has been looking good lately. He seems to have tapped into some new found fire to play hard and tough. He has been looking more mobile than I have seen him in a while.

And if the newly crowned AS Wall passes like he did to start that OKC game, then look out. That's a new level of basketball for him. He looked awesome. Changed speeds. Great bounce passes. No look passes. Pulled it back on a fast break when he didn't have the numbers. He was really hitting Gortat in stride so he could get to the rim quicker which is what he need to make up for his lack of leaping ability.

If those two are gong to play like that and the team comes along for the ride by pitching in, then they can go on a nice run.

These next two games could tell us a lot. If they play good smart basketball, that will go a long ways to showing they are a legit team that could make some noise. Win or lose, they have to show they can play consistent, smart, efficient basketball.

Right now, its really all about Wall. If he plays like he did against SA, they will be several games over .500 before long.

[Silvie Lysandra]

And all of that is why we need to suck as hard as possible. Wall is pretty much pulling a 2012 RGIII where he's covering up for a very flawed team and a very dysfunctional organization. If we keep winning, Ted WILL extent EG, because he's ultra loyal and is tolerante of mediocrity, and he WILL resign Wittman, for the same reasons. The fact that we can beat teams like OKC and Portland and nearly beat San Antonio should be both thrilling and scary, both because we'd be a title contender with a real front office and a competent coach and scary because we'll never get those if we keep winning.

[DCZards]

And all of that is why we need to suck as hard as possible. Wall is pretty much pulling a 2012 RGIII where he's covering up for a very flawed team and a very dysfunctional organization. If we keep winning, Ted WILL extent EG, because he's ultra loyal and is tolerante of mediocrity, and he WILL resign Wittman, for the same reasons. The fact that we can beat teams like OKC and Portland and nearly beat San Antonio should be both thrilling and scary, both because we'd be a title contender with a real front office and a competent coach and scary because we'll never get those if we keep winning.

Do you actually pull for the Zards to lose when they play?

[Silvie Lysandra]

Yes, for this season, I am actively rooting for the Wizards to "lose" so they can win more later. It's called "delayed gratification".