Eleven months ago I wrote about the difficulty of being a fan of a rebuilding team:

In the Arctic, a polar night can last months. While the last few months bear witness to some of the worst basketball we have ever seen on a professional level, there's hope it's about to end. We have our first winning streak of the season, and today we'll see if we can run it to three games. It may have just been a flash in the pan, or a meteor lighting things up, if you will. We're all coming to accept that this is the reality of a being a fan of a rebuilding team, like waiting for dawn in the land of the midnight sun.

There is unrest in the house that Abe built. I see three levels of understanding when undertaking a trial. The first is intellectual; the breadth of the challenge is perceived, distances measured. You might call it analytics, and it is a fairly sterile understanding. This understanding exists in a vacuum, has logical consistency, but as Dr. Manhattan would say, "is as nourishing to the intellect as photograph of oxygen to a drowning man." We still know nothing of the emotional reality of our chosen path.

The advent of the blogosphere has been a blessing for diehard sports fans. Rather than the stories of one or two stars, we become privy to the unique narratives of every player of our chosen team. We are able to engage in meaningful debate and come to fairly objective conclusions on the other side. This dynamic helps us to achieve that level one understanding.

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First thing's first: there are a lot of things to like about the move to trade Kirk Hinrich and Hilton Armstrong to the Atlanta Hawks for Mike Bibby, Mo Evans, Jordan Crawford and a 2011 first-round pick. Namely:

• The Wizards have followed their philosophy of always acquiring a prospect and a pick in trades.
• The Wizards pulled a sneaky Oklahoma City-like move in terms of asset management, parlaying a veteran like Kirk Hinrich into two first-round picks and Jordan Crawford. For comparison's sake, the Thunder got two first-round picks for taking on Kurt Thomas, then a third for trading him. Then again, they used two of those picks on Serge Ibaka and to trade for Thabo Sefolosha, which is a better use of the assets they got.
• The Wizards understood that Hinrich, while productive, was not an essential long-term piece, and were proactive about doing something about it.
• Mo Evans, if he sticks around, is a pretty solid veteran just like Hinrich that stands in the corner and shoots threes.
• Jordan Crawford dunked on LeBron James, which is awesome.

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Posting a little later out of respect for the dearly departed.

To be sure, the NBA isn't MLB...yet.  It seems like such a short time ago I was cursing Mitch Kupchak.  Only the Lakers, I moaned, could steal Pau Gasol without buying Memphis dinner.  With Lamar Odom re-signed, Ron Artest in for the MLE, Derek Fisher hanging around, that Kobe guy, Shannon Brown developing into a 6th man, and Andrew Bynum with fresh plaster on his glass knees, it just seemed to be an impossible job of team building.  Well, the impossible is possible when the stars align for the biggest market teams, I muttered to myself.  I was willing to ignore Boston and their Big 3 (4)...anything to beat the Lakers.

Of course, my above question is fairly sophomoric, because it's really already happened.  Boston is the NBA version of 'Space Cowboys', a bunch of gritty older guys who will get the job done, and may just punch you in the nuts and take your wallet for good measure.  Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett will go into the sunset together, while Rajon Rondo, Big Baby, and Kendrick Perkins (maybe) head up the new generation.

Chicago probably scares me more than any other team in the future.  Derrick Rose is coming into the full of his powers and will be there well into our own contending window.  If Joakim Noah gets healthy, Carlos Boozer stays on the court, and Luol Deng is there to play 4th banana color me apprehensive.  Or they could all take turns being injured while D-Rose wills his team to victory anyway, like most of this season.  This is the East team done right.  D-Rose is an intense competitor and I would be shocked to see him go elsewhere.

I don't want to talk about the Heat...so I won't.  It goes without saying.

The Knicks aren't there yet.  I know that's contradictory, given the title...but it's only a matter of time before Amar'e's knees have to be encased in carbonite, with all the minutes he's playing.  As much as NY fan's are blasting the trade, it cost them an RFA, Michelle Trachtenberg's boyfriend, the man who ate Blake Griffin's armpit, and a PG not named Chris Paul.  Keeping Landry Fields is nice, but the Knicks are paper thin.  Walsh will have to build within some serious constraints, whether or not the Knicks have a reliable bench in the next two years will be the acid test for his legacy in New York.

A few thoughts outside the supercities after the jump.

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And so, it begins.  After a disappointing start to the 2010/11 season, Andray Blatche is definitely on the trading block.  Reports indicated that the Wizards were "gauging interest" in trading Blatche as recently as last week, and on Sunday, we learned that the Cleveland Cavaliers may be one interested team.  It's not clear what Cleveland would give up, and it's not really clear whether Cleveland's interest is serious anyway, but clearly, Blatche is on the block.

It's a very quick turn for the Wizards, who signed Blatche to a five-year contract extension just over two months ago.  Something has convinced the Wizards that their faith in Blatche wasn't justified, and while we can all speculate about whether that may have been an off-court incident like the fight he had with JaVale McGee, it could very easily have to do with what they have seen on the court.  Blatche's per-game averages aren't bad, but he's doing it with poor efficiency and horrendous defense.  We the fans mostly seem frustrated with his lack of development after he broke out at the end of the season last year.  I'm seeing a lot of "Trade Blatche NOW" comments and FanPosts, and I understand the sentiment completely.  More than any other player, he's disappointed me too this year.

But the Wizards cannot make an emotional decision here.  They're in a tricky spot, and they need to consider all sides of this situation before they figure out what to do.  The worst thing the Wizards could do would be to trade Blatche simply out of frustration.  They have to figure out whether it's the right decision going forward and try to separate their own disappointment from the decision-making as much as possible.  

So what is the right decision?  It's tough, but I think I would indeed trade him at this point.  

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It looks like the overhaul of the Wizards' roster is continuing today, according to Al Iannazonne and Adrian Wojnarowski, who are both reporting the Wizards and Nets have agreed to a trade involving Yi Jianlian and Quinton Ross.

Iannazonne reported rumors of the deal first:

The team is working on a deal with the Wizards that would send Yi and cash to Washington for a player who makes "significantly less" than what the Nets' power forward earns. Three sources confirmed this is in the process of getting done.

The player is Quinton Ross, who earns $1.14 million. Yi is set to earn $4.05 million. The roughly $3 million savings the Nets will create will give them around $30 million available to spend on free agents.

Wojnarowski is also reporting the same on Yahoo Sports:

Washington sent Quinton Ross to the Nets for Yi, who has been traded twice since the Milwaukee Bucks selected him with the sixth overall pick in the 2008 draft. The Nets also sent $3 million to the Wizards.

New Nets coach Avery Johnson didn't consider Yi a fit for his system, and the Nets were anxious to clear even more cap space to make a run at LeBron James(notes) and several major free agents.

Quick analysis after the jump.

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Ric Bucher has the scoop:

The Chicago Bulls have a deal in place that would move Kirk Hinrich and the 17th pick to theWashington Wizards, freeing up enough cap space to pursue two maximum-salary players on this summer's free-agent market, sources with knowledge of the Bulls' plans said Thursday.

It wasn't immediately clear what Washington would send to Chicago in the trade.

Hinrich has two years and $17 million remaining on his contract.  He'll make $9 million this year and $8 million in 2011/12. 

My initial reaction is that I hate this trade.  The point of BOYD is to get guys with one year left, not guys with two years left.  We have much less flexibility in 2011 now, which really hurts going into the new CBA.  Also, I was hoping we wouldn't get yet another combo guard. We now currently employ John Wall, Gilbert Arenas, Kirk Hinrich and (for the moment) Shaun Livingston.  

But at least we did get the 17th pick, I guess.

UPDATE: Um, this is weird. From the same article.

Since it's a good-faith deal for the time being, there remains a chance it could fall apart. But according to one source, the Sacramento Kings are prepared to make a similar deal with the Bulls in the Wizards' stead if that were to happen.    

Please fall apart.

The underreported part of the two trades the Wizards made last February is that the Wizards also acquired two trade exceptions in the deals.  One is a $6 million trade exception from dealing Brendan Haywood to Dallas, and another is a $4.5 million trade exception from trading Drew Gooden to the Clippers. 

In a nutshell, a trade exception allows you to trade for a single player that makes around the same amount of money as the value of the exception.  There's more on trade exceptions here.  It's a more valuable tool for teams already over the cap, but it does allow for some flexibility even for a team well under the cap like the Wizards.

I was confused, though, about how the Wizards got those trade exceptions when the salaries in both trades matched up perfectly.  I asked Michael Lee and he told me this:

@MikePradaSBN I believe it is because DAL was already over the luxury tax and took on more salary with Haywood's inclusion.    

Still stumped, I looked for others to help explain this to me.  Luckily, Joseph Treutlein of HoopData, an expert in the CBA, filled me in on how the Wizards got these exceptions.  His explanation, and more, below the jump:

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At the end of the day, the Wizards did what they had to do.  This team badly needed to be blown up.  It probably ran it's course by the time last year rolled around, but with Abe Pollin desperately seeking a winner before he passed on, we tried to ride this thing out one more year and make something happen.  It didn't happen, so we needed to start over.  As of yesterday at 3 p.m., we have officially started over.

In that sense, it's hard to call this series of moves a failure, per se.  Ernie Grunfeld and the rest of the management team were given a directive to clean house and get under the luxury tax while doing it.  They accomplished that.  The absolute worst thing that could have happened was salary-dumping Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood while holding onto Antawn Jamison and staying over the luxury tax.  That would have meant that Ernie failed to accomplish even the most basic of tasks set before him.  You could kiss goodbye maximum cap flexibility in 2010 and 2011 and any hope of any development of our youngsters.  Luckily, Ernie found a way to move Jamison a day before the deadline, thereby avoiding that doomsday scenario.

Then again, it's hard to call this series of moves a success either.  Yes, we got maximum cap room this summer and beyond.  Yes, we eliminated all our high long-term salaries, except Gilbert Arenas' of course.  But it still stings to think that, in return for our three best players, we got just expiring contracts, a 26-year old Al Thornton, James Singleton and what'll likely be the 30th pick in the draft.  That's rough.  We're always dealing with incomplete information when assessing whether a GM got proper value for his players, but I think it's safe to say that Ernie got almost no on-court value for guys that should have yielded some.  In that sense, this is a failure.

While we moved Jamison in the end, I still strongly disagree with the decision to move Butler and Haywood out first for expiring contracts instead of moving Jamison first.  Even with Butler's spotty play this year, we could have likely gotten more for him than we did.  If not, the Butler/Josh Howard trade was always going to be there, and we could have thrown someone like Nick Young their way for their trade exception to help with the luxury tax problem.  Judging from what I've been reading, Dallas was prepared to move Howard anyway.  As for Haywood, Portland supposedly offered a pretty good package (Steve Blake, Jeff Pendergraph and a pick, or possibly the rights to Petteri Koponen) before they eventually moved on to Marcus Camby.  Had we held out until closer to the deadline, I'm confident someone would have budged and offered some good basketball assets for Haywood.  These were missed opportunities.

Still, at the end of the day, the necessary rebuilding has begun.  While we should have gotten more prospects and/or picks, it's unlikely we could have received a true building-block type of player anyway for Jamison, Butler or Haywood.  Cleveland held out J.J. Hickson, Dallas held out Rodrigue Beaubois and Portland said no to Rudy Fernandez -- and those aren't even building-block types.  A failure to get one of those guys is a failure, but it isn't an epic failure.  This team's prospects don't dramatically change if J.J. Hickson is on the roster.  They would have dramatically changed if Antawn Jamison and his big long-term contract stayed on the roster.  Now, we can at least begin the slow, patient road back to respectability and more, when hopefully 40-45 wins and first-round playoff exits are disappointments, not something to cheer.

I realize we, as fans of this franchise, have witnessed too many failed rebuilding efforts to put too much trust in rebuilding, but just because it failed before doesn't mean we should refuse to rebuild.  Every great team in this league (except the Lakers, who are the Lakers) went through rebuilding.  It's the only chance you get to get good.  That doesn't mean every rebuilding team succeeds, but to win in this league, you need a franchise cornerstone, smart cap management, several building blocks to complement your cornerstone and a few veterans to help show the way.  You don't get those pieces unless you commit to a long-term rebuilding plan and give yourself options.  

At the very least, we accomplished that.  We didn't accomplish it as well or as smoothly as I would have liked, but we did accomplish it.