Prime Gilbert Arenas or Current John Wall?

[Upper Decker]

I feel like with prime arenas this team could challenge for the east. Arenas' shooting ability and dribble penetration ability obliterate Wall. While arenas isn't the distributer wall is, every teammate arenas had played better with him than without.

[stevemcqueen1]

Anyone would rather have Marc Gasol than Haywood because he's a way better player in pretty much every way. He's a DPOY and near max contract center.

At the end of the day Gil did play with two other All Stars and his team's ceiling was 45 wins. How much better of cast were you going to be able to realistically build around him? He was flawed. And the talk of him being better than Kobe back then was pure homer talk. Kobe is a top 15 all time player who has pretty much always been one of the five best players in the league since the early 2000s.

John is only in his fourth year and is already buoying the team to near where Gil's teams peaked. And he's not playing with two other All Stars. If he was, we'd be legitimately contending. John is a much bigger talent than Gil was and his personal ceiling and his team's ceiling are way higher than prime Gil. He's going to easily pass Gil in achievement and peak level of play. His teams are also going to be better.

[Dark Faze]

Prime Gil was like an amped up Steph Curry with less passing/efficiency from deep but far better at getting to the line.

Walls not close right now.

Walls upside is through the roof though. Once he learns how to finish the easy ones and draw contact consistently it's going to be a wrap. He leaves 5ppg off the boxscore every game just from missing easy layups.

[mohammed10]

Arenas.

The problem with that Arenas-led team is that it wasn't built properly around him. It needed a Lance Stevenson/Doug Christie type of SG who could dole out 5 assists a night, and it would have been better with a Udonis Haslem/Taj Gibson type of power forward who played great D and nailed midrange shots. It also needed Haywood to play more minutes. If that had happened, they would have been a perennial 50-win team. Add a real two-way all star as a 2nd fiddle to Arenas, and they could have contended.

nate-

We had a Stevenson, just DeShawn (I can't feel my face), not Lance.

Oh, and this here franchise hasn't had a 50-win season since....


...


wait for it


...


1978-79! The year AFTER they won their only NBA title. Yow-za...

[ozthegandp]

Hibachi hands down. arenas had the ability and confidence to go toe to toe with the greatest players in the league. lebron thought he would be an mvp candidate the yr after we took them 7 games in the playoffs. and for the guys who said he didnt make his teammates better. what happened to Hughes, Caron, and jamison after they left the wizards?

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[mohammed10]

Hibachi hands down. arenas had the ability and confidence to go toe to toe with the greatest players in the league. lebron thought he would be an mvp candidate the yr after we took them 7 games in the playoffs. and for the guys who said he didnt make his teammates better. what happened to Hughes, Caron, and jamison after they left the wizards?

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IIRC, we took the Cavs to 6 games in 2 or three consecutive playoff match ups, losing both series, 4-2. Don't think we ever went 7 games with them.

[pancakes3]

Arenas gave Harden his blueprint for scoring success. Gil probably has one of the largest fg%-ts% disparities in league history back in 2006.

Secondly the flip side of the coin is as many said that Wall could have gotten better, I feel like Gil could have gotten better as well. Arenas was all of 24 in that magical 2005-2006 season. In 2007, he cut down on his turnovers and ramped up his shooting. If not for the injury, who knows where he could have ended up. He very well could have been the best guard in the league this season at 32 with Wall being his Eric Snow (but much better).

[Silvie Lysandra]

Anyone would rather have Marc Gasol than Haywood because he's a way better player in pretty much every way. He's a DPOY and near max contract center.

At the end of the day Gil did play with two other All Stars and his team's ceiling was 45 wins. How much better of cast were you going to be able to realistically build around him? He was flawed. And the talk of him being better than Kobe back then was pure homer talk. Kobe is a top 15 all time player who has pretty much always been one of the five best players in the league since the early 2000s.

John is only in his fourth year and is already buoying the team to near where Gil's teams peaked. And he's not playing with two other All Stars. If he was, we'd be legitimately contending. John is a much bigger talent than Gil was and his personal ceiling and his team's ceiling are way higher than prime Gil. He's going to easily pass Gil in achievement and peak level of play. His teams are also going to be better.

The issue with that team was that they were constructed terribly. Really a lot like those early Mavericks teams except worse. They could score but they could never defend. And while Arenas wasn't a great defender, Jamison was a net negative solely because of his defense (and he was never a really efficient scorer even at his best) and Butler was a pretty meh defender too. Stevenson's defense was overrated as well.

Also Arenas played in a much stronger East than Wall is playing in now. Arenas was playing against the mid decade Heat and Pistons, LeBron's Cavs, a still respectable Nets team, and a few other solid teams. I love Wall but if you replaced Wall with Gil, this team would be battling the Pacers for 2nd best team in the East.

[FAH1223]

Arenas gave Harden his blueprint for scoring success. Gil probably has one of the largest fg%-ts% disparities in league history back in 2006.

Secondly the flip side of the coin is as many said that Wall could have gotten better, I feel like Gil could have gotten better as well. Arenas was all of 24 in that magical 2005-2006 season. In 2007, he cut down on his turnovers and ramped up his shooting. If not for the injury, who knows where he could have ended up. He very well could have been the best guard in the league this season at 32 with Wall being his Eric Snow (but much better).

It's a damn shame. Gilbert isn't even that old and his career has been done for the last couple years.

Gerald Wallace

[Kanyewest]

Anyone would rather have Marc Gasol than Haywood because he's a way better player in pretty much every way. He's a DPOY and near max contract center.

At the end of the day Gil did play with two other All Stars and his team's ceiling was 45 wins. How much better of cast were you going to be able to realistically build around him? He was flawed. And the talk of him being better than Kobe back then was pure homer talk. Kobe is a top 15 all time player who has pretty much always been one of the five best players in the league since the early 2000s.

John is only in his fourth year and is already buoying the team to near where Gil's teams peaked. And he's not playing with two other All Stars. If he was, we'd be legitimately contending. John is a much bigger talent than Gil was and his personal ceiling and his team's ceiling are way higher than prime Gil. He's going to easily pass Gil in achievement
and peak level of play. His teams are also going to be better.

The Wizards were on pace to be a 50 win plus team when Butler and Jamison were healthy. Weren't the Wizards a 45 win team without a healthy Arenas?

Butler and Jamison may have been "all stars" but I'm not sure if they were top 24 players in the league plus the West has been stronger in the east and since all stars over-emphasize offense/team success. For instance, in 2008 I'm sure the Wizards would have taken Josh Smith over Jamison and Ginobli over Caron Butler who were all star snubs.

Arenas was as good as Kobe in 2007 at least in the regular season. Kobe is of course going to be a notch above Arenas because of what he did in the postseason. Interesting quote from a Bill Simmons's trade value column though.

10. Gilbert Arenas
Scoring average by season: 10.9, 18.3, 19.6, 25.5, 29.3. And he turns 25 next January. By the way, Kobe averaged six more points than Arenas last season but needed an extra 505 shots to do it. Thought that was interesting.
9. Kobe Bryant

[JWizmentality]

Gilbert and it aint close.

[daSwami]

Prime Gil. I'm glad there are still a lot of folks around who remember. My Bullets/Wiz fandom goes back 35 years (yep. just missed the championship season), and I can't remember anything that compared to the 2004-2007 Agent Zero years. I had such a hard-on for those teams.

I like Wall a lot though, but I still haven't seen him takeover games like Gil did. In my memory, Gil's teams were always mounting furious comebacks. Gil seemed to have the ability to impose his will when he needed to most (At the time, Kobe and Wade were the only other players in the league with that same knack. Lebron disappeared at crunch time - back then at least).

I haven't seen that yet from Wall. (I've seen flashes of it from both he and Beal - but nothing sustained, like Gil.)

Not sure Gil could have won the dunk contest though - although he would have made it interesting that's for sure. (Remember the impromptu trampolene dunk he did during an All-Star game commercial break. That really offered a glimpse into the capricious mentality that was Gil's undoing.)

[daSwami]

Prime Gil was a bit better player than Wall is now only because he was a much better scorer.

But I would rather have Wall for my team. I think Wall already does FAR more to make his team better. And I think Wall is a much better leader too.

Disagree. FAR more? We are talking about Gil in his prime, right? (04-07, pre-finga gunz)

I'd agree if you said that "Wall already shows the potential to do more than Gil did to make his team better" - but even that would be stretching it.

The stats don't bear this out. Gil's teams won more. His teammates played better. Hughes, Butler, and Jamison had their best seasons playing with Gil.

[hands11]

Prime Gil was a bit better player than Wall is now only because he was a much better scorer.

But I would rather have Wall for my team. I think Wall already does FAR more to make his team better. And I think Wall is a much better leader too.

Wall is going to end up being a much better and more successful player than Gil was.

Well considering Wall is not prime Wall yet, you can't really do a fair comparison. Its taking a little longer for Wall because he had that big injury, he came to a blow up team and he is trying to do more things. All Gil focused on was offense.

Prime Wall will be a better player.

Wall will be a more rounded offensive and defensive player who runs the team well and who doesn't mind shouldering the leadership role. Wall will be the more valuable player. But considering he was the #1 pick, I sure hope so.

But from that draft, its Paul George who has the chance to be the core piece to a title team and he was taken 10th. Great pick by Indy.

[pancakes3]

I don't even know if it's fair to say that Wall is noticeably better than Gil on defense. Remember who Gil was playing under and who Wall is playing under. With the right system in place, and the right personnel in place (i.e. someone NOT Jamison as the PF) and I think a Gil-led team would have looked pretty damn good defensively.

[Sluggerface]

Prime Gil was a bit better player than Wall is now only because he was a much better scorer.

But I would rather have Wall for my team. I think Wall already does FAR more to make his team better. And I think Wall is a much better leader too.

The stats don't bear this out. Gil's teams won more. His teammates played better. Hughes, Butler, and Jamison had their best seasons playing with Gil.

I have to disagree with this. If it wasn't for this team getting into the playoffs with Antonio Daniels running point for an entire season (Eddie Jordan was never that good of a coach either), it'd be more of a debate. Jamison, Butler, and Gil had their best seasons together because they were all exceptional scorers in their prime playing princeton basketball which allowed them to play independently from one another. Jamison and Butler never really needed Gil.

We all hate EG now because he started running this team into the ground ever since Pollin forced him to give Arenas the max and trade Rubio for a one year Mike Miller rental, but he actually constructed a team that could compete and withstand player injury.

My personal thoughts on Gil are this, when he was on, he was one of the scariest and most entertaining players I've ever seen, but I knew even back then it wasn't going to last (Tony Kornheiser called the same thing). For all of the times I remember Gil taking over a game, I remember his inability to keep anybody out of the lane, freezing his teammates out of the offense, and above all else, the fact that he never really had any fire. He had more swag than anybody else in the league, but fire is the thing that seperates your average basketball player from a professional. I truly believe that's ultimately why he mentally broke after injury.

For the past two seasons, Wall has already posted higher on-off court differentials than Arenas did in his prime, and Wall isn't even close to his prime yet. He's better than Arenas was right now in every aspect besides scoring, and i'm probably one of the very few who believe this, but I truly believe that if Wall played for someone like Pops or Rick Carlisle right now, he'd be averaging 20-10 with a ts% over .550

As soon as Arenas arrived here the system was already in place for him to succeed. The offense was tailored for his strengths, and he was given all-stars and a sixth man of the year for teammates. Wall has had to deal with a coaching change and was placed immediately into an organization that was in flux. A lot of players would have broke in Wall's shoes. Instead, he's become an all-star with NBA castaways for a supporting cast.

[daSwami]

Prime Gil was a bit better player than Wall is now only because he was a much better scorer.

But I would rather have Wall for my team. I think Wall already does FAR more to make his team better. And I think Wall is a much better leader too.

The stats don't bear this out. Gil's teams won more. His teammates played better. Hughes, Butler, and Jamison had their best seasons playing with Gil.

I have to disagree with this. If it wasn't for this team getting into the playoffs with Antonio Daniels running point for an entire season (Eddie Jordan was never that good of a coach either), it'd be more of a debate.

Wait, Daniels ran point for an entire season???????? I assume you're referring to 2006-07 season (which is only one of the three "prime" Gil seasons).Gil played almost twice as many minutes as AD that season. It's true that AD had to run point in the playoffs because Gil was hurt, but Gil only missed 8 regular season games that year, and averaged 40 min. per game in those games.

[ozthegandp]

Also keep in mind we never actually saw a prime gil. Injuries stole what would have been his prime yrs. We only saw the prime yrs of the career he did have.

Also, arenas's ability to stop on a dime and pull up for a jumper from ANYWHERE, is something that, let alone wall, no player in the league has right now. That is what made him a truly special player.

[Sluggerface]

Wait, Daniels ran point for an entire season???????? I assume you're referring to 2006-07 season (which is only one of the three "prime" Gil seasons).Gil played almost twice as many minutes as AD that season. It's true that AD had to run point in the playoffs because Gil was hurt, but Gil only missed 8 regular season games that year, and averaged 40 min. per game in those games.

Nah, I'm referring to the season immediately after that.

[Youheardme90]

I think Gilbert was a great player, nearly unstoppable on most nights, but John Wall`s game is more conducive to winning basketball over a long period of time. Wall not getting to the line, is part the offensive structure of our team as it never seems to allow John to have space to just take his man off the dribble. Never enough space, especially with Nene, and Gortat on the floor