The official "coulda woulda shoulda" thread

[Zonkerbl]

This is the official alternate history thread. I think it would be fun to talk some of these scenarios through thoroughly instead of raising them in poorly thought out, off-the-cuff comments.

To start things off:
1) What would have happened had we let Gilbert Arenas walk instead of signing him to his near-max contract? Remember that under the rules at the time, we would not have been able to replace him. We would basically have had to go into complete rebuilding mode and make the trades for Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler that we were forced to do later.

2) What would have happened had we not traded away the #5 pick for whatsisname and whosawhatsit? Would we have been better off with Ricky Rubio, the consensus #5 pick? What if we had picked Stephen Curry, would we be better off, given we probably would not have Wall now? Would we have Beal?

3) What if we had picked Kemba Walker or Kawhi Leonard at #6 in 2011 instead of Vesely? What if we had picked Kenneth Faried instead of Chris Singleton?

4) What if we picked Boogers instead of John Wall?

[JWizmentality]

You're a sick sick man!

[Higga]

1. We would have sucked worse than we did anyway. Maybe have a better shot at landing Blake Griffin?

2. I probably would have went with Rubio, which means no Wall but instead possibly Cousins in 2010. Curry would have been great too obviously. I love Wall but the team is better with Curry or Rubio and Cousins instead of just Wall. Instead of Beal though we likely end up with like, Harrison Barnes? That would suck.

3. With Leonard we'd be legit contenders this year for sure. It still pains me that we passed on him for Jan **** Vesley.

4. Those 2010 ish teams would have been an immature disaster.

Here are some scenarios....

1. What if we don't trade Webber? Or Sheed?

2. What if we drafted Chandler or Gasol instead of Kwamay?

3. What if we had kept Rip Hamilton?

[closg00]

I like the concept of this thread Fertile ground, lots of places to jump-in and play.

[montestewart]

What if the Bullets drafted Clyde Drexler, John Stockton and Karl Malone?

[Zonkerbl]

What if the Bullets drafted Clyde Drexler, John Stockton and Karl Malone?

Could we have? Or are you just being mean?

[montestewart]

What if the Bullets drafted Clyde Drexler, John Stockton and Karl Malone?

Could we have? Or are you just being mean?

Hard to say whether they would have maintained draft position after drafting the first two, but yes. 1983: Jeff Malone @ #10 (Drexler @ #14), 1984: Mel Turpin @ #6 and immediately traded (Stockton @ #16), 1985: Kenny Green @ #12 (Malone @ # 13).

[Ruzious]

And kept the brothers Wallace: Ben and Sheed. And traded Juwan before he became a free agent.

If Robert Pack woulda stayed healthy and not gotten some mysterious nerve injury in his leg...

Sigh.

This thread's a great idea - Can we now keep this stuff here and not infest every other thread with it?

[montestewart]

This thread's a great idea - Can we now keep this stuff here and not infest every other thread with it?

Hard to stop the spread of the knee-jerk-bola virus.

[Zonkerbl]

This thread's a great idea - Can we now keep this stuff here and not infest every other thread with it?

That's the idea...

[nate33]

I mentioned this a while ago, but my plausible alternate history scenario would be to simply go back one year and draft Noel. It would have made no difference in the regular season last year and everything in the post-season would have played out exactly as it did.

The one big difference this offseason is that we would have been more motivated to retain Ariza. I think Ariza could have been signed to a 2-year, $12M per year contract rather that than the 4-year, $36M contract he signed in Houston. We would argue that he makes 150% of the Houston contract over the next 2 years, and then hits free agency during his prime in a year where the salary cap jumps up somewhere near $80M. I think he goes for it.

Sign Ariza to a 2-year $12M deal, and then sign Blair with the Maynor TPE and our team next year would be:

PG Wall/Miller
SG Beal/Rice
SF Ariza/Webster
PF Nene/Gooden/Noel
C Gortat/Blair/Noel

We would still have the MLE at our disposal if we wanted to add another vet on a 2-year deal. Maybe we still add Pierce or Humphries.

That team is younger and better balanced than our current team, and it has a legit rim protector in training in Noel, who should be rounding into form (but still on a cheap rookie deal) by 2016 when Durant hits the market. In 2016, we have a ready-made team for Durant to join:

PG Wall
SG Beal/Rice
SF Durant/Webster
PF Noel/Blair
C Gortat

Basically, it's the 2012/13 Thunder where Wall=Westbrook, Beal=Harden and Noel=Ibaka. The big difference is that we have Gortat instead of Perkins, and we won't let Beal walk. And we play in the East.

[keynote]

Your Washington Bullets '85 lineup:
PG Gus "Wizard" Williams
SG Jeff Malone
SF Dan Roundfield
PF Karl Malone
C Jeff Ruland

[Ruzious]

Your Washington Bullets '85 lineup:
PG Gus "Wizard" Williams
SG Jeff Malone
SF Dan Roundfield
PF Karl Malone
C Jeff Ruland

Gotta have Drexler instead of Malone, imo. And I don't think Roundfield could play SF - he was strictly an inside player. How about Bernard King at the 3, or do the years not work out?

[montestewart]

Your Washington Bullets '85 lineup:
PG Gus "Wizard" Williams
SG Jeff Malone
SF Dan Roundfield
PF Karl Malone
C Jeff Ruland

Gotta have Drexler instead of Malone, imo. And I don't think Roundfield could play SF - he was strictly an inside player. How about Bernard King at the 3, or do the years not work out?

His comeback was a few years off.

[payitforward]

Any different choice -- and certainly any better one -- at any point changes the future, so you can never really calculate the result of making different choices. Other than to say that, e.g. in the draft, there are always good players available to you if you manage the draft well.

E.g. go back to '08: w/ our #18 we drafted McGee. If you look at the moves made by Morey w/ his much later R1 picks, it becomes obvious that it would have been possible to wind up with Batum, Chalmers & DeAndre Jordan just by being clever. Now, if you didn't call for that at the time, then it's just hindsight. But, that's exactly what I called for. It was obvious to me that Jordan was a better prospect than McGee who wasn't even good in college! And, of course, that draft would have changed our '09 picks.

As to '09, I had Curry not Rubio at #5. We all know it was a stupid trade we made. But, what no one mentions is that we might have at least worked a deal that got us the #18 Minny pick wch they dealt to Denver for next to nothing. And that would have gotten us Ty Lawson. Again, if you didn't say this at the time, it's just hindsight. But, I did. Nothing was more obvious that year than Ty Lawson! Terrific in college and an incredible value where he was projected. Again, had we not made the dumb trade, and even had we wound up w/ Lawson and used our R2 pick to grab Blair, then maybe 2010 becomes different.

In 2010, I would have picked Cousins. But at least Wall has turned out to be a good player. And the rest of our draft was fine, even though Seraphin has been a bust.

2011 was an obvious mess from ever pov. It was proof positive that Ernie can't evaluate prospects. Leonard, Faried & Parsons would have been perfect. And even picking then keeping not waiving!!! Mack would have been an improvement. Mack looked like a promising rookie with the usual struggles when we gave him away -- tho people here seemed not to notice any of his numbers.

2012 -- obviously had we drafted well in '11 we'd have had no shot at Beal. But, even if we allow for that, a few picks later and we'd still have been able to take Drummond who so far looks incredible. As it was, we wasted a R2 pick on Satoransky when Crowder was there, and we'd thrown away our #46 pick which (had I been picking) would have brought us Kyle O'Quinn.

2013 -- I liked and still like the pick of Porter. If Noel is healthy, then hindsight may well say he'd have been a better pick. We don't know enough actual facts about his injury to comment meaningfully on this, IMO. As to the trade for Rice, I thought it was ridiculous. I thought we traded a better prospect -- plus a pick -- for a less good prospect. Rice has done nothing in the league yet to make me change my mind. We *already knew* he was an outstanding player at the D-league (and now SL) level. Wolters seems already to have shown he can be a rotation NBA player.

The Okariza trade was an obvious disaster, as I hope is clear by now given that Okafor's fragile body meant we had to pay $14m plus a mid-R1 pick in the best draft in a decade to have Gortat for a year. And Ariza -- who had 2 outstanding years with us -- helped us become an average nba team. Big deal. Now he's gone.

Partial list of guys we could have had many (but not all) of instead of the guys we got:

Nicolas Batum, Mario Chalmers, DeAndre Jordan, Stephen Curry, Ty Lawson, DeJuan Blair, deMarcus Cousins, Kawhi Leonard, Kenneth Faried, Chandler Parsons, Andre Drummond, Jae Crowder, Kyle O'Quinn, Nate Wolters, Kyle Anderson/Jarnell Stokes & Jordan Clarkson.

Instead we got McGee, Miller, Foye, John Wall, Jan Vesely, Chris Singleton, Brad Beal, Satoransky & Glen Rice.

[keynote]

Your Washington Bullets '85 lineup:
PG Gus "Wizard" Williams
SG Jeff Malone
SF Dan Roundfield
PF Karl Malone
C Jeff Ruland

Gotta have Drexler instead of Malone, imo. And I don't think Roundfield could play SF - he was strictly an inside player. How about Bernard King at the 3, or do the years not work out?

As discussed by others above, I figured adding Drexler would've pushed us out of the running for Malone. Plus, I always liked Jeff; I identified with his widow's peak. I used to practice that fadeaway 18 footer on the blacktop.

As for Roundfield: yeah, I knew it was a stretch. But they used to play Roundfield and Cliff Robinson together, and neither of them felt like a SF to me (at least, as far as I could remember). Their lack of a true SF is prolly why they talked themselves into Kenny Green.

And, as others have said, King came on a little later. But if we do draft Karl Malone, we probably don't trade Ruland/Robinson for Moses/Catledge.

[montestewart]

Could have drafted Karl Malone on top of Jeff Malone, then traded for Moses Malone. That would have produced some fabtastic headlines: Malone Rangers Fire Bullets to Victory, Knicks: Leave Us Malone, Loughery Says "Send the Malones," Tres Malones Trip Spurs, etc. You could have had them dress in ripped jeans, t-shirts, and leather jackets, Ramones-style. Why? Why?

[Kanyewest]

1. What if the Wizards hadn't traded Rasheed, Big Ben, and Chris Webber and had let let Juwan walk? Maybe not a title team but at least gets to the NBA finals.

2. What if Arenas never gets injured? At least in 2007 could have had an opportunity to get to the NBA finals

3. What if the Wizards had kept their #5 pick instead of Antawn Jamison and they Iguodala or Deng? Maybe the Wizards don't have enough to get to the playoffs initially but build a team that has better defense and long term success.

[hands11]

This is the official alternate history thread. I think it would be fun to talk some of these scenarios through thoroughly instead of raising them in poorly thought out, off-the-cuff comments.

To start things off:
1) What would have happened had we let Gilbert Arenas walk instead of signing him to his near-max contract? Remember that under the rules at the time, we would not have been able to replace him. We would basically have had to go into complete rebuilding mode and make the trades for Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler that we were forced to do later.

2) What would have happened had we not traded away the #5 pick for whatsisname and whosawhatsit? Would we have been better off with Ricky Rubio, the consensus #5 pick? What if we had picked Stephen Curry, would we be better off, given we probably would not have Wall now? Would we have Beal?

3) What if we had picked Kemba Walker or Kawhi Leonard at #6 in 2011 instead of Vesely? What if we had picked Kenneth Faried instead of Chris Singleton?

4) What if we picked Boogers instead of John Wall?

Dates back to L8ner for me.

I didn't want to trade him the year we traded him for AJ. Needed to wait one more year and build the right way. They had actually started to play their best ball in a while at the end of the previous season. They needed to build on that slowly. Let L8ner come off the books in another year. He was traded after the 2003/04 season in which he fought injury problems. He played 48 games age 34 and made 5,625,000. His last year of his contract was the following year at $5,500,000 and then he would come off the book. He played 49 that next year then retired. As I recall, they were tight on cap. I wanted them to move Stackhouse who needed to go since he was being a ass, but not L8ner. I wanted a legit PF that could defend, not AJ at 12,584,688. I was also interested in them moving one of GIl or Hughes while they could get something from them and rebalance the roster. To many one on one ball hog long ball shooters.

Jamison has a horrible contract. 12,584,688, 13,843,156, $15,101,625, $16,360,094
Stackhouse was.. $7,437,500, $8,367,187, $9,296,874

We could have moved Stack with one of Hughes or Gil without moving L8ner and taking on AJs boat anchor of a contract for a player who was best used as a 6th man off the bench... just like DAL has already proven. AJ played zero defense. Exactly what I don't want in a PF. And if you couldn't move Stackhouse fine. Move one of Gil or Hughes and pick up some assets and use the #5 pick. At a min trade Hughes who was coming dude to be resigned and use the pick and just let L8 come off the books in 2005

Here are the moves made that year.
http://www.nba.com/transactions/movement2004_index.html

Something like this wouldnt have sucked..

Cleveland acquires Drew Gooden, Steven Hunter and the rights to Anderson Varejao from Orlando for Tony Battie and two future second-round picks.

Phoenix trades the rights to No. 7 pick Luol Deng to Chicago for the rights to No. 31 pick Jackson Vroman and a future first-round pick.

Miami acquires Shaquille O'Neal from Los Angeles Lakers for Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, Brian Grant, a first-round draft pick and second-round pick

Denver acquires Kenyon Martin from New Jersey for three future first-round picks

Portland acquires Nick Van Exel from Golden State for Dale Davis and Dan Dickau

Hughes had one more year on his deal for 2004 worth $5,455,200 then would need resigned. Gil just got resigned and in 2004 would be making $9,389,600. I was open to moving either to help land that PF. Sell high. I also wanted to keep Steve Blake and have him play a bigger role. I though he was a fine back up PG and would have a long career.

http://www.nba.com/wizards/news/Jamison_040624.html

1 Gilbert Arenas $8,536,000
2 Jerry Stackhouse $6,906,250
3 Christian Laettner $5,625,000
4 Larry Hughes $5,000,600
5 Brevin Knight $5,000,000
6 Kwame Brown $4,252,080
7 Etan Thomas $2,200,942
8 Jarvis Hayes $1,748,760
9 Jared Jeffries $1,714,440
10 Juan Dixon $1,260,360
11 Brendan Haywood $1,125,360
12 Chris Whitney $1,070,000
13 Mitchell Butler $876,179
14 Steve Blake $366,93

The trade was...

Wizards have acquired forward Antawn Jamison and cash considerations from the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for forwards Jerry Stackhouse, Christian Laettner and the draft rights to Devin Harris. ( #5 pick )

Sept. 9 Golden State waives Christian Laettner 5,625,000
Sept. 15 Miami signs Christian Laettner $1,100,000

With that pick, you could have drafted... Luol Deng, Andre Iguodala, Kris Humphries, Al Jefferson, Josh Smith.

Its was a typical ... in to much of a hurry to do it the right way short time line.. fix it now move.. like so many others while Abe was owner.

Sure. They went from 25 to 45 wins, but that was the peak. They were forever strapped for cash after that which they also where before MJ arrived and they shipped out 3x 10M contract that were attached to boat anchor players. They gave up the #5 pick to win now and they would do the same thing again later. This was the fork in the road for me. They would have build slower and gotten something more sustainable long term. Just went they would clean up a mess and things would start looking better, it was always time to cash in now.

2004
1 Antawn Jamison $12,584,688
2 Gilbert Arenas $9,389,600
3 Larry Hughes $5,455,200
4 Kwame Brown $5,361,873
5 Etan Thomas $4,903,000
6 Jarvis Hayes $1,879,920
7 Jared Jeffries $1,834,080
8 Brendan Haywood $1,735,305
9 Anthony Peeler $1,600,000
10 Juan Dixon $1,348,200
11 Samaki Walker $995,046
12 Laron Profit $745,046
13 Michael Ruffin $745,046
14 Steve Blake $620,046
15 Peter John Ramos $600,000

But even with that, EG pulled a miracle trade. Kwame to Tough Juice. Hughes ? They got nothing for him as signed for way to much with CLE. So instead of assets, they got NOTHING.

2005

No draft pick #20 was trade back when we got Haywood

1 Antawn Jamison $13,843,156
2 Gilbert Arenas $10,243,200
3 Etan Thomas $5,393,300
4 Antonio Daniels $5,000,000
5 Chucky Atkins $4,500,000
6 Brendan Haywood $4,000,000
7 Caron Butler $2,461,617
8 Jared Jeffries $2,433,824
9 Jarvis Hayes $2,011,080
10 Michael Ruffin $1,670,000
11 Calvin Booth $900,498
12 Peter John Ramos $660,000
13 Awvee Storey $641,748
14 Andray Blatche $398,762
15 Donell Taylor $398,762

It was something of a team, but AJs contract would forever have them strapped. Later that would be AJ and Gils contract.

Thats one fork in the road on how things could have gone differently.

The one before that was Nash as GM with players like R Wallace and Howard. Another over reach was the trade for Weber only to trade him away.. LOL. And Trading away R Wallace. And giving up B Wallace

I am much happier with the time line Ted sets. Their time line seems more rational.

[mohammed10]

Like the thread...

Cannot believe no one has posted this one:

In 1997, what if Abe Pollin didn't change the name from Bullets???