payitforward wrote:DCZards wrote:I agree with and understand criticizing EG for the numerous personnel mistakes he's made, but I don't understand why it's so hard to give him props for the beneficial moves he's made that have helped the Zards. Instead, EG either "stumbled into" those moves or got lucky.
I'm wondering where you get that idea. By and large, I think most people applauded the pick of Beal (one of those "beneficial moves"), for example. In just the way that picking Vesely was a bad move, picking Beal was a good one. As to "lucky" -- sometimes, sure! Is there some difference of opinion as to whether we had the chance to pick John Wall because of luck? That's obviously true.
DCZards wrote:Well, you should probably add Ariza to the good moves that EG "stumbled into." Two years ago, this board was white hot with criticism of the Ariza-Okafor trade. EG was being blamed for burning assets and cap room that could have been used to sign a Ryan Anderson or trade for Ersan Ilyasova. /quote]
I think I am never going to understand why people who are obviously intelligent fail to distinguish between a good player and a good trade to acquire that player. It doesn't seem all that complicated to me.
Trevor Ariza has been a good player his whole career, and he has certainly had a great season this year and been great in the playoffs. The problem wasn't that we traded for Ariza (whom NO obviously wanted to get rid of), but what we traded for Okafor and Ariza. Could there have been a *good* trade for Ariza -- sure, there can always be a good trade for a player. But we made a bad trade. And it was to get Okafor, mostly, don't you think? The guy we paid $14m to play 2000 minutes.
One could say the same about Gortat -- hey, I have been a fan of that guy for years! When he was signed away from Orlando, I gnashed my teeth that it wasn't my team, the Wizards, that signed him. And, without question, he's lived up to my expectations. But that does not mean that the trade Ernie made for one season of his services (and that's what we got -- even if you'd prefer to fuzz out that fact as if it didn't exist) was a good trade. It wasn't. Gortat is a good player; the trade for Gortat was not a good trade.
And those are pretty much the best moves anyone usually points to when talking about this rebuild -- although for my money there have been others as well. Ernie's moves in the Spring of 2010 were outstanding. He gave up nothing and got a ton of assets from the Bulls. Then Ernie traded up to get Booker, who is by far a better player than anyone taken after him in the rest of the 2010 R1. I would have likely picked Damion James, and I would have been wrong. Ernie gets big props for that pick. For all that work in fact.
Even moves that didn't work out aren't necessarily to be criticized -- picking Kevin Seraphin was a swing for the fences. It hasn't yielded anything, but I still think it was a move worth making. Trading Hinrich for Jordan Crawford and a mid-R1 pick in the '11 draft was, again, a terrific move. Crawford didn't work out, and Ernie wasted the pick on Chris Singleton -- but the deal w/ Atlanta was still terrific work on his part.
He also got a good deal on Martell Webster, and he was right to re-sign him. We might be over-paying him, but that's a meh issue. At the NBA level, the difference is pocket change.
But... that's it. That's all he did that was good. The rest (including the Okariza and Gortat trades as they were structured) has been just awful.
But now's not the time to worry about all that. We are winning; this is a time to enjoy it, ride it as far as it can go. Can we win a 2d series? Sure, why not? Can we beat Miami? Ummm... probably not, but it can be very competitive, so who knows? Maybe lightning will strike! Can we beat the Western Conference champions, whoever they are? I'm just not going to go there right now!!
Go Wiz!!
That's about the most balance post I have read from you in a while PIF. Props.
And here is what I read.
You can make good deals technically that don't yield what you want.
You can make back deals that do yield good results.
And good and bad being subjective to a degree.
And that's where I have been. Some good deals, some back. Which is which gets debated all the time.
But at the end of it all, one of my big questions was.... would they find the right blend of talent, personalities and skills that compliment each other. Could they change the culture to something that was professional, focused, sound and where the players played well as as team with balanced egos ?
Well it look like the front office did that. And I much prefer this kind of a design with a pure PG, pure SG, 3nD SF, true PF and PnR center where everyone plays defense to other team designs that aren't that.
I like this team and they are fun to get behind.
The Great Wall, RealDealBeal, Rainman, Brazilian Jesus and the Polish Machine
They aren't out of the woods yet, but this is the best designed Wizards team I have seen since their title team and maybe one of the Webber teams.
. Still I'm glad EG didn't make that deal.
