Open thread: Questions for Ernie Grunfeld

I REALLY like the question about the expiring contracts… with the Salary Cap and Luxury Tax Line expected to be lower next year – I’d like to hear Ernie’s views on how valuable expiring contracts will be…. especially at the trade deadline… Does he expect teams that are out of the playoff hunt to dump contracts?

Perhaps the Defense question could come in with something around Flip Saunders- “Was one of the reasons you hired Flip to get a different philosophy (match up zone) , and a different voice talking about and teaching defense”..?

Since I cannot attend, I’ll have to leave my question to you. I want to know how, if at all, Grunfeld is going to deal with the issue of Twitter. Kevin Love prematurely broke a story via Twitter when McHale was fired, Marbury basically went crazy on there this summer, and more recently Robert Henson of the Skins berated the fans via Twitter. So my question is, did Grunfeld or the team as a whole, lay down some Twitter guidelines, or will they not address that until they have to. I know its not exactly a basketball question, but its one that team in all sports are having to address more and more.

Some organizations have gotten a lot of attention for their development and use of alternative or advanced statistics, many of which are said to be proprietary to the organizations. How are the Wizards using them? How might they have factored into decisions such as the Miller/Foye trade?

Flip Saunders brings a significant change in offensive philosophy and some different defensive tactics. Do you think these philosophies are better suited to the personnel that were already in place?

I don’t know if this is a question for Ernie or not, but the hot trend in pro sports is the variable ticket price. In the NBA the Heat and Jazz are both going to try it this season. If you are not familiar here is a clip from the heat website.

“This season, the HEAT is introducing variable ticket pricing for individual game tickets, placing a premium on high demand games. All regular season home games during the 2009-10 season have been categorized in one of three tiers: Hot, Hotter and Hottest, with premium games deemed Hottest, popular games deemed Hotter and Hot games priced most affordably. Fans can mix and match their All You Can HEAT partial plan by selecting games from any of the three categories.”

Any chance the wiz adopt something similar?

When you are choosing a player, what skills/traits do you expect a player to bring to the organization versus those you’d expect them to pick up/learn from the coaching staff?

about Amare and the 5th pick, although I’m not sure he’ll tell you anything.