Suggestion Thread for Ted Leonsis, version 2.0

The long-term goal of winning a championship takes priority over the short-term goal of filling seats.

That principle is most important at the beginning of a team’s rebuilding stage.

I think I speak for a lot of us out there who have been unbelievably frustrated watching over the hill vets take time from our young guys. It happened this year with Oberto over McGee/Blatche and with Boykins over Livingston/Foye. Last year may have been worse as well.

I also hope that he will wait til 2011 for the free agent market. The fact is that we will not lure James, Wade, or Bosh. They want to win now and we are not there. We may be able to get Joe Johnson but even he is at the peak of his career now age and numbers-wise. 2011 also gives us the possibility of Durant and Melo (both relatively home-grown).

Either way, out biggest mistakes over the past few years have been overvaluing where we thought our team stood in regards to the rest of the NBA/Eastern Conference and not allowing our young talent to develop (and see if it actually is young talent). Based on how TL has handled the caps, I think (and hope) he will correct these two issues and make this team a perennial contender.

Leonsis has proven himself to be a capable and incredibly open owner in his years with the Capitals. I have no doubt that he won’t be able to pull the same magic with the Wizards.

But when we got to the all-star break, and were very very likely out of the playoff hunt, thats when Boykins should have seen less minutes and Oberto certainly shouldn’t have been taking minutes fro McGee. When you are out of the playoff hunt, you need to see if the young guys can get it done.

Until you rename your new franchise the “Bullets”, the curse on your fortunes (which you may have noticed already at work on Wednesday night) will not be lifted. Gilbert Arenas was just trying to tell you this in his way with his locker room hijinks.

View them as a kind of rebus.

Get into the 21st century…

Use proven metrics to help evaluate and select players.

Build towards the only goal that matters… an NBA Championship. Analyze the competition and build a team that addreses the strengths and weaknesses of key opponents, starting within our Division and Conference. We are at the bottom of the NBA Southeast right now, so that is the first mountain to climb.

Improve the Wizards brand. The earlier comment about the logo and colors is really accurate. This is Washington’s team playing the city’s game in the city’s center.

Invest in each player’s physical health, metal health and character development. College is supposed to do that, but that dog won’t hunt any more. When you invest millions in a small group of very young and often immature and egotistical young males, you have to pay attention to them as whole human beings…

And as others have also said… Use the D League!

Reduce crowd inhibition:
Cut beer prices.
Adjust the lighting so seating areas are nice and dark. Washingtonians can be noisy, I’ve experienced it at movie theaters.

Put up panels that reflect and concentrate crowd noise onto the court.

Team band, like the Redskins? Drums, like DC United?

The Wiz are definitely in need of an organization wide overhaul. This team has suffered from systemic flaws during my entire tenure as a fan.

1) Clean House

Fire everyone in management (bye bye Susan O’Malley – who I once saw win the “random prize drawing” at a fan appreciation night at the Cap Center), player development, scouting, and the medical staff. Abe’s loyalty was a wonderful personal trait, but it has killed this team’s ability to be competitive – the same people have been running this team into the ground for 20 years.

2) Employ “Bring Out Your Dead” Strategy for 2010-11

Do not sign any free agreements this summer beyond bargains with future value and players we need to fill out our roster. Use the available cap space to pilfer prospects and draft picks from teams that need to dump contracts to get under the luxury tax. We are not going to win anything next year and so we need to employ this kind of strategy in order to improve the team’s future prospects (see what Presti has done for the Zombie Sonics)

3) Change the Name Back to Bullets

It’s a better name. It has history. I know that you won’t be able to do this right away given the Gilbert controversy, but the Wizards name, colors, etc. have never seemed right to me.

At the very least we need to go back to red white and blue for our colors and re-implement the Bullets throw backs as our alternate jerseys.

4) Build The Team – Do Not Try to Win Fast (somewhat overlapping with #2)

We need to build by acquiring cheap young talent and letting them grow together. Throwing money at yet another over the hill free agent will not solve anything

5) Develop an Advanced Stats Department

This team is sorely lacking in this area and we need to modernize in order to be competitive.

6) Hire an expert Capologist

We need someone who advises on personnel moves who actually understands the salary cap implications of what we do. Ernie’s wheeling and dealing evidences this.

More to come later

1. For the fans: Build teams the community can be proud of. That means guys with character, not the Portland Jailblazers. Guys who are in this town for years, that we’ve watched grow. If the Wizards win a championship, that will be great, but it will be less great if the starters of that team have been in DC on average for two years rather than a long time. Make sure your fans can watch or listen to games. I can drive to Verizon in 35 to 40 minutes, but I can’t get games on radio. That’s unacceptable. And improve the in-arena atmosphere. The non-stop, mindless noise, constantly being told to “make some noise!,” is irritating and eliminates the home court advantage. Go to a soccer game — DC United or otherwise. There is no piped in music, no antics, and the fans fill the void and create the atmosphere. The best crowds do that, and the Wizards in-game folks don’t even give the DC crowd the chance.

2. Develop a team and organization in your image and style. One word I would use to describe you is nurturing. You have built the Caps around young guys, giving them room and time to grow. Your want your teams to give families the opportunity to have a good time as fans and to experience things they will treasure for the rest of their lives. Not many GMs or executives in the NBA think that way. Find some that do, and bring them to DC. You don’t seem like someone who instinctively and coldly fires people, but the sad fact is that you need to clean house. Not because they are bad people or even terrible at their jobs, but because they are not great at their jobs and don’t share your vision and instincts.

3. Make your organization one that players want to join. Not in the Dan Snyder sense of this is where you go to get paid. But because this is where you go to be treated right, to have support, training, the greatest medical care, coaching, etc. You’ve got this great city as a draw without lifting a finger, so it should be easy.

4. As others have described above, give the youngest men who come here the support they need to be on their own for the first time, to handle life, NBA life, to learn, to grow personally and professionally, etc. Read everything you can about what the Wizards organization did not do for Kwame Brown, and then do the opposite. Use the D League. Nothing will make a rookie work harder than riding a bus from Sioux Falls to Bismarck in January.

5. In line with #4, make sure your coaches and GMs don’t baby or turn a blind eye to the players’ bad behavior. Jerry Sloan is the toughest SOB around, his players know they are on a short leash, and they both act accordingly and pretty much always produce. Gilbert let down this organization this year, but this organization missed many opportunities to reign him in in the past.

6. Pursue the Bring Out Your Dead strategy for a couple of seasons. People will be patient. You’ve got a ton of cap room, and you won’t have this kind of cap room again for a good 10 to 15 years. Don’t rush to use it to sign one guy. Use it to collect picks, etc., to launch the organization in the direction you envision, and to build the foundation that will sustain the team for a decade or more.

7. Don’t trade lottery picks. Ever.

8. Be accessible to fans, to some extent. Many of us diehard fans are idiots sometimes, and all of us are idiots occasionally, so protect yourself accordingly. But don’t ever shut down a message board after a playoff loss. Hire a GM who will be somewhat open with fans when he can. If diehard fans listening to your GM’s press conferences fall asleep, something’s wrong.

9. If you are going to play video games with someone, make it Shaun Livingston.

Finally, you owe it to Mr. Pollin not to change the name back to the Bullets. Changing the colors back to red, white and blue would be fine, but I’m not one who really cares.

Good luck — we are rooting for you and with you!!

Basketball SABR stat heads. Build our own databases, work on new stats. Try to take advantage of better quantifying talent.

Fusion of stats/scouting. These ideas are not contradictory – they can be complimentary. Let’s try that.

Finally, better economic decisions. Better understand of the marginal costs/utility of decisions, better debt structure managment relative to player contracts, sunk costs, dynamic thinking instead of static. Better information allows us to make better economic choices. This will lead to better outcomes.

Don’t lose him to the Sixers without checking him out around the league.

First time, long time. This is a great thread. I definitely agree with the general sentiment but want to add a few things.

(1) Go REALLY Young
There is a huge benefit to having players grow up together, as seen in OKC. Not sure how Gilbert fits into this.

(2) Find the Diamonds in the rough:

The general sentiment seems to be that we need a new GM. I agree. As previously mentioned, Ernie is not the kind of GM that is having success in today’s NBA—he doesn’t have a track record of building through the draft, pays too much for veterans, and seemingly is not up on the modern aspects of the job (advanced stats, salary cap maneuvering, d-league).

So, assuming that we find a new GM, I would like to see us find somebody who really knows how to make the most out of late 1st round draft picks and 2nd round draft picks. Teams will often throw these into deals as sweeteners because they are not viewed as that valuable, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. There is lots of gold after the 20th pick and those who find the treasure are usually the ones like the Spurs (Parker, Ginobli, Scola, Splitter, Hill, Blair), who do a great job of scouting, both domestically and internationally. Just look at this last draft—Darren Collison, Omri Casspi, Marcus Thorton, Jonas Jerebko, Taj Gibson, Rodrique Beabous, Jon Brockman, are all solid players drafted after the 20th pick that will be locked into rookie contracts. This brings me to something that a lot of people have posted that I have to disagree with: Kevin Pritchard is not a savior, in fact I doubt he is our guy. He never lived up to his own hype, and now comes with a lot of baggage. Paul Allen seems like a great owner—he’s been very patient abs basically given Pritchard a blank checks. Pritchard never turned his assets into any real success. Despite the fact that he has had that blank check for years, the Blazers still haven’t gotten out of the first round. And even though Oden has been injured, and supposedly lots of GMs would have taken him over Durant, Pritchard was the one who actually did. That move there crippled (no pun intended) the franchise, and he hasn’t found enough treasure with late picks to make up for it.

Generally, we need to be in the habit of “buying low, selling high.” The contract we gave Arenas coming off an injury, when no one else wanted to pay him that much, is going to haunt us for years. Finding value is how teams accumulate good assets without breaking the bank. For example: Will Blatche’s stock every be higher than it is now? Will Beasley’s ever be lower? I’m not saying we should make either of these moves, but they are worth looking in to.

(4) Gilbert:

If there is a way to get rid of him, whether that be by voiding his contract (I still haven’t seen anything that says this can’t absolutely be done—and at this point the guy has had 3 gun-related incidents) or letting him show he can still play and trading him to the Knicks, I think it needs to be done at some point. I do not think his presence is conducive to building the team/organization we all want to see. I base this on his salary, style of play, and personality.

I will get off my soapbox now. I cannot wait for next season—I am very optimistic that Ted will end the Les Boulez era. Really looking forward to the Leonsis era!!!!