The Wizards have gotten at least 10 offers for the pick, but every team I spoke with that's in the draft was still in the dark about where they stood.
The Knicks have offered Larry Hughes for Thomas and James. The Wolves have reportedly offered Mike Miller. The Celtics would give them Ray Allen. The Rockets would give them Tracy McGrady and Carl Landry. The Bucks would send them Richard Jefferson. The Nets would entertain unloading Vince Carter. The Suns could do something with Shaq. The Blazers could part ways with Steve Blake, Jerryd Bayless or Travis Outlaw.
The question is: Are any of those offers good enough for the No. 5 pick? In most year's, no. But this year, with the Wizards thinking they're poised to make a deep playoff run? It might be enough.
Chad Ford's latest buzz update. It has all you need to know about the Wizards and the fifth pick.
over 2 years ago
Mike Prada
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As for these possibilities
No, probably not, probably not, maybe but doubtful, no, yes (to Vince) as long as we don’t give up too much, hell no and no.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
Bad deals
Most of the deals listed are insulting unless they include a swap of first round picks. Larry Hughes for Thomas,James, AND the pick would be crazy. Maybe Hughes for Thomas and James, or the above if we also got the #8 pick along with Hughes. Same for most of the others.
As a Wizard fan, reading all of these one sided proposals makes me feel disrespected.
Someone
might want these guys, but they don’t fit here. Its as if the other teams don’t really care. if they really wanted #5 they’d find a 3rd team to make it work.
It theyt don't
Really want the pick we need to keep it. They are not even making it worth our time now. I guess the offers start to get better the closer we get.
by Danyon Rome on Jun 23, 2009 11:24 AM EDT up reply actions
Kudos to Grunfeld
One thing needs to be said — Ernie has done a great job getting out the word that the Wizards are open to trading the pick, and patiently waiting for the right offer. Maybe he’ll never get that right offer, but look at all of the teams bidding for the pick. He has created a market for the pick, created competition for it, got teams dreaming about what they could get for the pick, etc., and maybe one team will offer something really great for it. If not, the Wizards keep the pick. But if they do keep the pick, it won’t be because Ernie didn’t do a good job.
Yup, agreed
The man knows how to make trades. It’s his biggest strength as a GM.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
Agree and Disagree
When Ernie does make a trade, he does an excellent job of getting value. He rarely, if ever, gets fleeced on a deal. My only complaint is that he sometimes gets too complacent and/or conservative and does not take enough chances. Sometimes I wonder if that is why he has been so successful at building playoff contenders, but has had zero success at building championship teams.
"It's OK for the Bullets to trade baskets, as long as they can score on their end." -- Words of wisdom from Phil Chenier
I'd say that the complacent thing is his Wizards tenure only
He was unbelievably aggressive in remaking the Knicks through trades in the late 90s (Sprewell, Camby, LJ, etc).
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
Good Point
Perhaps Ernie has gotten wiser with age? He certainly appears to take less chances now. Or perhaps he continues to wait for the good offers to come to him? Maybe it is just bad luck that that has not happened in a few years.
"It's OK for the Bullets to trade baskets, as long as they can score on their end." -- Words of wisdom from Phil Chenier
Let's be optimistic
Ernie certainly has not had the “chips” in past years that he has this year.
The last time he had Expiring contracts and a high draft choice – he turned them into Antawn Jamison…. AND CASH CONSIDERATIONS…. Even though Devin Harris has turned out to be a pretty good player, Ernie hit a home run with that trade.
That trade was made on Draft night – And I don’t remember any buzz before the draft, about any Dallas / Washington trade talks… So perhaps all this trade talk we’ve been hearing is only the chaff….. and we haven’t gotten to the “wheat” yet.
Bullets Forever - where "Dagger ! " happens......
That's true
Antawn to DC came from out of nowhere, IIRC.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
CJ, this might come across as smart-alecky or antagonistic, but I truly don’t mean it to be. Here, you say that Ernie doesn’t take risks, but in one of your posts in response to Mike’s post about keeping the pick, you said that the Wizards shouldn’t, “gamble on a big piece,” but instead, “playing it safe [by trading the pick for veterans] makes a whole lot more sense.”
That is the issue, though — when to take risks, and when to play it safe. If the guys available at 5 in this draft are horrible, with only a 15-20% chance to be really good, then it makes sense to play it safe and trade for a vet. If Ernie feels that his best option at 5 has a better chance than that to be really good, however, then maybe he shouldn’t play it safe and instead take a chance on an unproven commodity. If it works out, then that gamble might be the move that vaults the Wizards into a higher echelon.
Two Different Situations
Actually, your post read very respectful towards me. I think the difference in my two opinions is exactly what you alluded to, picking and choosing the right moments to take chances.
I honestly wished Ernie had taken a few more chances the past two seasons. But he kept the coach, he kept all of the players, and sat while the team suffered through two injury-plagued voyages of mediocrity. He has had chances to get that big man to complement Haywood for a long time now, but he settled for Etan Thomas and two rail-thin projects as being the answer. He had the chance to deal Arenas in a sign-and-trade and/or Jamison last off-season, but he made no moves. He let Roger Mason walk (good), but then replaced him with Dee Brown and Juan Dixon (bad). He then sat through the trade deadline and made no moves.
So when evaluating Ernie’s performance overall (which is what I was doing in my comment above), I’m left with the impression that he has not been very aggressive at adding talent around his core players, or of rebuilding around a smaller core. But we are where we are now. Just like Prada, I think the time to have been aggressive is behind us. We need to now make our run with what we have plus a few safe choices.
As you can see in my comment below, this is the situation with which to be patient. But in Ernie’s tenure with the Wizards overall his patience has looked more like complacency.
"It's OK for the Bullets to trade baskets, as long as they can score on their end." -- Words of wisdom from Phil Chenier
Just for the Record.
Ernie wanted to keep Mason Jr, But Abe didn’t want any part of the luxury tax and said no. I wish we would have kept him. We wouldn’t be in need of a guard now.
Agreed
About Ernie doing a good job by being patient in this situation. He’ll probably get a lot better offers once everyone knows what will be there at #5.
"It's OK for the Bullets to trade baskets, as long as they can score on their end." -- Words of wisdom from Phil Chenier
I would not want to play poker with the dude, for sure...
The Knicks need to start talking David Lee. Carter I still like. If the Bucks change their offer from Jefferson to Michael Redd, I would be a bit more interested.
A third partner might help,
Would T-Mac come with a 20,000 mile warranty?
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The Knicks can't trade Lee because of his RFA status
Which throws BYC into the discussion, and that’s way too complicated.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
But that's exactly what I'm saying, khrabb
Lee’s immediately going to become a base-year player, which throws a whole bunch of salary complications that basically render it impossible to trade him unless the team getting him is below the cap.
We’ve talked about this before.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
Let's look at the Bucks again, then...
Since they have just traded Jefferson to the Spurs for Bowen, Oberto and Kurt Thomas, what’s the chance they would offer Redd and Oberto to the Wizards for the #5, Mike James and his expiring contract, Songaila and Nick Young? Redd and Oberto are exactly the sort of pieces the WIz need I would think.
Too much
The Bucks just showed the value of expirings on their own. No need to throw in anything of value for someone like Jefferson or Redd, just expirings.
If we can do it for expirings so much the better...
but Redd (I think, would like oher opinions here) is a more valuable player than Jefferson, Yes? Certainly he would be much more valuable to the WIzards!
The problem is that Redd is expensive, coming off an injury and a bad fit because he doesn't play defense
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
I don't want two Gilberts on my team
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
The injury is worrisome for sure....
the defense… well… it’s the Wizards…. More seriously, he was a bonafide contributor for the US team… which would suggest that maybe he can play some team defense.
He has, what, 2 years left on his contract, signed in 2004-05 for $91 mil for 6 seasons, which would annualize at about the same cost as our two expiring contracts, right? Basically, we are looking at a substantial one year investment (2010-11, as this year washes) for a guaranteed 20 ppg 2-guard, who has not yet turned 30 and is a left-handed shooter to boot.
If his knee is judged sound, and going with disgruntled’s thought that we shoujld offer nothing more than the expirings for him, I would think we could not dismiss that sort of possiblity out of hand.
Yeah - go for it
The more 20ppg guys they can cram into the Starting line up; the better…. Because they’re gonna have to score 150 points a night if they keep picking up scorers that can’t play defense.
Sorry – that came off as too harsh…. but at some point, the Wizards are going to have to start looking at upgrading their defense… and that starts with obtaining players that can, and want to play defense.
Bullets Forever - where "Dagger ! " happens......
As more details come in on this trade, however, it appears that San Antonio had something the Wizards can’t offer: The Bowen and Oberto contracts are only partially guaranteed, so the Bucks can cut them (and they return to San Antonio — unbelievable!) and save a lot of money.
Can’t someone kidnap Mike James and his agent until the window for James to exercise his option this coming year passes?
He already exercised his option...
I don’t remember reading that Etan Thomas has exercised his option though
Bullets Forever - where "Dagger ! " happens......
That's the huge key for Milwaukee
Now they can re-sign Villanueva and Sessions without going over the luxury tax.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
The question is whether you value Grunfeld's ability to make the right pick
A lot of hay has been made out of the Michael Redd pick, but if you look at his Knick’s career, his choices were dubious at best. He had three chances in 1996 to get it right, and selected John Wallace, Dontae Jones, and Walter McCarty. The selections of John Thomas and Monty Williams don’t do much for me either.
I think Ernie should stick with his strength and trade the pick – even for a player like Jefferson.
Its always Roger Mason (Jr.) time!
I’ve been a huge Ernie supporter for years. His track record in New York and Milwaukee is solid and he made some good moves in his early days with the Wiz to get this team moving in the right direction. However, what has Ernie done lately? Since the Caron trade in 2005, what moves have been made that have helped this team get to the next level? The team hasn’t made a trade of note, signed a single free agent who made much of an impact and his draft record hasn’t been so hot either. Blatche, Dominic, Young, McGee. All have potential but I don’t think anyone is counting on them to move this team to the elite level. It just seems other teams find a way to make moves. The Spurs just got an all star caliber player for crap expiring contracts. The Wiz have plenty of those, the number 5 pick and some young players. Seems Ernie has more than enough pieces to bring back a difference maker especially with so many teams reluctant to go over the luxary tax.
Richard Jefferson is no longer an all-star caliber player
He hasn’t been since he was catching passes from Jason Kidd eons ago.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
Further
Non guaranteed contracts are different from expiring contracts. They create immediate cap space, certainly a need with Milwaukee having two restricted free agents in Sessions and Villanueva.
I think you may overestimate the value of the expiring contract. Currently almost 18 teams are going to have enough money to sign a max free agent after next season, with 6 or 7 having the ability to sign 2 in the same off season. Look at hoopshype, every time has expiring contracts this off season. Currently only a handful of teams have capspace this season and next season over half the league will have options to sign a max free agent.
Plus
All the guys (save Amare) available are 2s or 3s. They are available because they are crazy overpaid. Its much easier to go get a decent 2 guard even in the second round of this draft where I think Ellington and others end up.
The point is other teams are making moves while ....
…the past few years all the wiz have done is make small trade or sign free agents who make no impact. Atlanta supposedly wants to get rid of Josh Smith. You telling me some pkg around 5 pick won’t get it done. David Lee is another player who’d be perfect for the Wiz. I know he can’t be traded for a bit but it seems you could easily get Lee in some pkg for the pick. Instead, our big move will be to trade thomas and james for hughes and, as always, hope everyone stays healthy.
We've talked about this several times
Lee and Smith are basically impossible to acquire because of base-year compensation problems. Lee will have those problems for an entire year; Smith until August. BYC basically makes it impossible to acquire those guys unless we had cap room (which we don’t).
I understand your frustration, but let’s be patient and see what happens once Ernie actually has some assets to trade (like now). It takes two to make a trade, and there’s no reason to do something just because you need to do something.
You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.
i don't see josh smith fitting in our line up
especially since we got antawn and butler at the foward spots. i also don’t like paying lee 10 mil a year to come off the bench. he can rebound but he isn’t that good of a defender
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