Tracking Former Wizards 3.0

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Aside from that, the idea that you give up 2 R2 picks to move up 4 spots & pick a guy, & then you trade him for essentially nothing 3.5 years later, & then someone calls that a "good pick by Ernie" is kind of mind-blowing.

Don't get me wrong: I supported the move at the time. But, I was altogether mistaken. Now, if he'd traded down & picked Larry Nance Junior & Kevon Looney... that would have been good work!

It was a good pick. Drafting a guy good enough to earn a 7-figure-a-year 2nd contract is a good thing. Oubre was a useful rotation player while he was here, and has become a useful starter. That's a good pick.

Oubre is better than Looney or Nance - or certainly the market thinks he is more valuable based on the contract they gave him last summer. The only reason one might like Nance or Looney more is because they signed much cheaper 2nd contracts. That has nothing to do with Ernie's draft day decision. Surely you're not arguing that EG should have drafted a worse player so that he'd be cheaper on his 2nd contract.

The only problem with Oubre is that he happened to hit free agency during a year when there was a lot of money floating around and their was a high demand for wings. If we could have ultimately retained him for $12M a year or so, I'd have been happy to do so. But at $15M per year, I can understand letting him go.

All that said, I'd rather have Oubre at $15M than Ish + CJ + $3M in spare luxtax room. If we had played our cards right, there would have been just enough money to retain him. I would have really enjoyed a starting 5 of Brown, Beal, Oubre, Hachimura and Bryant, with Bertans as 6th man. That's a rock solid team.

Well, right now it's kinda hard to argue against Kelly Oubre, since he's playing great! & my first sentence above wasn't about him as a player, it was about the work "...by Ernie."

I agree that we might have made the $$ work to keep him. But, don't forget that $5.3m of Miles's salary was locked in as a guarantee to Howard, so it would have been pretty complicated. If we don't sign Ish & don't trade for Miles, that frees up $9.4m, putting us at @$118m. Add Oubre, & it's $133m, just over the tax -- but... that's for 14 guys (unless we'd kept Howard, of course).

[closg00]

*side comment* Kelly signed a 2-year deal and is playing his way to a nice pay day (not that $15M is bad), perfect contract situation for him and future potential problem for the Suns.

[nate33]

I agree that we might have made the $$ work to keep him. But, don't forget that $5.3m of Miles's salary was locked in as a guarantee to Howard, so it would have been pretty complicated. If we don't sign Ish & don't trade for Miles, that frees up $9.4m, putting us at @$118m. Add Oubre, & it's $133m, just over the tax -- but... that's for 14 guys (unless we'd kept Howard, of course).

You are forgetting the extra $3M we would have saved by buying out Howard.

If we had kept Howard and then bought him out in the same manner as Memphis did, we'd have a salary obligation $6M less than what we are currently paying Miles. That $6M saved, plus the $5.8M to Ish, plus the remaining $3M in luxtax room would have been enough to afford Oubre.

[JWizmentality]

Otto has got be hurt. He's been horrible to start the year. I wish we could have gotten something of longterm substance.

Seems pretty rare when he isn't hurt. Horrible start to the season.

And his passive disposition doesn't help. He's done as an NBA imo. At least one that justifies that contract. Was a mistake matching Brooklyn's offer.

[nate33]

Otto has got be hurt. He's been horrible to start the year. I wish we could have gotten something of longterm substance.

Seems pretty rare when he isn't hurt. Horrible start to the season.

And his passive disposition doesn't help. He's done as an NBA imo. At least one that justifies that contract. Was a mistake matching Brooklyn's offer.

I wouldn't say it was a mistake. His first year on the contract, he earned his pay. In his second year, he played worse, but he wasn't terrible, and we still managed to dump him without having to attach any value to him.

Going forward, he is going to be a negative value contract though. Fortunately, that's Chicago's problem, not ours.

[payitforward]

I agree that we might have made the $$ work to keep him. But, don't forget that $5.3m of Miles's salary was locked in as a guarantee to Howard, so it would have been pretty complicated. If we don't sign Ish & don't trade for Miles, that frees up $9.4m, putting us at @$118m. Add Oubre, & it's $133m, just over the tax -- but... that's for 14 guys (unless we'd kept Howard, of course).

You are forgetting the extra $3M we would have saved by buying out Howard.

If we had kept Howard and then bought him out in the same manner as Memphis did, we'd have a salary obligation $6M less than what we are currently paying Miles. That $6M saved, plus the $5.8M to Ish, plus the remaining $3M in luxtax room would have been enough to afford Oubre.

I'm inclined to defer to you automatically, nate, on stuff like this, so my questions mostly indicate a desire to learn from your response. So...

We're paying Miles $8.7m. If we hadn't made the trade, we'd have waived Howard & owed him his $5.3m. That's a savings of $3.4m, but it leaves us with one fewer player on our roster. OTOH, Howard signed w/ the Lakers for the veteran minimum, & that $1.6m comes off of what we'd have owed him, so the net savings is actually $5m -- &, again, we have dropped to 14 guys.

Now, assume we don't sign Ish. We are at 13 guys; our savings is $11m. We sign Oubre at $15m. That takes us to 14 guys. But, our salary obligation is now $4m more than its current level.

To get to 15, we sign an undrafted player for $1m, which takes us to $5m above our current salary level.

What if anything have I got wrong in the above? Are we under the tax?

[nate33]

I'm inclined to defer to you automatically, nate, on stuff like this, so my questions mostly indicate a desire to learn from your response. So...

We're paying Miles $8.7m. If we hadn't made the trade, we'd have waived Howard & owed him his $5.3m. That's a savings of $3.4m, but it leaves us with one fewer player on our roster. OTOH, Howard signed w/ the Lakers for the veteran minimum, & that $1.6m comes off of what we'd have owed him, so the net savings is actually $5m -- &, again, we have dropped to 14 guys.

Howard signed for the Lakers for the vet minimum price of $2.56M. (10 year vets get a bigger vet minimum). So that's another $1M saved, bringing the net savings to $6M.

Now, assume we don't sign Ish. We are at 13 guys; our savings is $11m. We sign Oubre at $15m. That takes us to 14 guys. But, our salary obligation is now $4m more than its current level.

And factoring Howard's bigger vet minimum deal, that takes us to a salary obligation $3M more than current.

To get to 15, we sign an undrafted player for $1m, which takes us to $5m above our current salary level.

What if anything have I got wrong in the above? Are we under the tax?

That extra player gets us to $4M above our current level. Sportrac says we have $4.6M in luxtax room.

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Aaah, thanks, nate!

In any case, whether we had retained/resigned Oubre or not, how much better it would have been simply to waive Howard!

[gambitx777]

House Jr is someone I really wish we still had around.


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[tontoz]

Porter 1-10 tonight yikes. Don't remember very many nights like that from him.

[payitforward]

House Jr is someone I really wish we still had around.

Kudos to Danuel House -- I thought he had no chance whatever, but I was quite wrong. He has turned himself into a valuable NBA journeyman. Good for him!

[closg00]

Watch on YouTube

[Ruzious]

Watch on YouTube

In this smallball era, the Lakers often go with the monster frontcourt of Howard, Anthony Davis, and King James. When I watched the other day, they mostly had Howard standing around on the perimeter on offense and playing center on defense.

[smoothSeph]

Looks like he's getting some of his explosiveness back. Wish it worked out, he'd be the perfect back up center for TB

[deneem4]

Howard has been great but oubre has been good as well for the suns

[mariller]

I wonder if it's time to revisit OPJ trade. Also so many claims here that he was the Wizards's best player.

[WeekapaugGroove]

Howard has been great but oubre has been good as well for the suns

Suns fan, oubres been good on the court. Still does some dumb **** from time to time but plays his ass off and is really focused on getting to the rim this year.

But he's had an even bigger impact off the court. He's brought a level of enthusiasm and irrational confidence the team needed after some real dark years. He's really taken on a leadership role with young guys and the fans and media love the dude. He was one of the first guys to come to Phoenix and not pout but truely seem happy to be there. Some of the stuff like starting a valley boyz clothing line and running a mosh pit in the pregame huddle seem corny but kind of work for this group.

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[payitforward]

I wonder if it's time to revisit OPJ trade. Also so many claims here that he was the Wizards's best player.

Really seems like his body has betrayed him. A sad thing.

What's your point?

[mariller]

His body betrayed him a loooong time ago, it was clear for 3+ seasons, still many thought that trading his negative value contract for expiring deals was a bad move. Thought maybe some posters would like to eat some tasty crow.

There were some very feisty battles here.

[nate33]

Howard has been great but oubre has been good as well for the suns

Suns fan, oubres been good on the court. Still does some dumb **** from time to time but plays his ass off and is really focused on getting to the rim this year.

But he's had an even bigger impact off the court. He's brought a level of enthusiasm and irrational confidence the team needed after some real dark years. He's really taken on a leadership role with young guys and the fans and media love the dude. He was one of the first guys to come to Phoenix and not pout but truely seem happy to be there. Some of the stuff like starting a valley boyz clothing line and running a mosh pit in the pregame huddle seem corny but kind of work for this group.

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I'm happy for Oubre. I know he dealt with some depression issues here in DC, which seemed to affect his game at times. Most of the time, he seemed happy-go-lucky, but he went into really odd 3-point shooting droughts.

The annoying thing is that I think the Wizards would have kept him if they knew they were going to trade Porter down the line. By December of last year, they finally figured out that they couldn't afford both Porter and Oubre on a sub-.500 team; so they traded Oubre for cap relief and what they hoped was a short term fix to our chemistry problems (Ariza). Our stupid owner still thought that the team could make the playoffs and he wanted to see the team get swept in 4 games as the 8th seed rather than take a longer term view and develop talent. Then the Ariza thing didn't work out; the losing continued; and we still ended up gutting the team by dumping Porter.

If they just would have assessed their playoff chances realistically, they should have just dumped Porter earlier in the season and kept Oubre. Assuming Oubre would have resigned here for the same contract, there would have been just enough room to afford him under the luxtax. (We wouldn't have been able to afford Ish Smith, and we have had to buy out Howard ourselves rather than trade him for Miles.)

This would have been an exciting team:

PG Brown/Thomas
SG Beal/McRae
SF Oubre/Bonga
PF Hachimura/Bertans
C Bryant/Wagner

Giving Brown and Beal more PG responsibility might hurt the wins and losses this year, but it would develop them as players and decision-makers. Next year, Wall comes back and that team looks really strong with 5 multi-talented, versatile, defensively switchable wings in Wall, Beal, Brown, Oubre and Bonga.