Yesterday's fun exercise got far more responses than I expected, which is great. The purpose was not necessarily to find the one perfect guy (though for each individual, it was). Really, it was for us as a collective, now having a list of who we all think would fit in best, to think about the type of player who would help us most. Normally, we'd go from general to specific, but here, I think it paid to do the reverse.
Based on our responses, clearly most of us feel we need to find someone who has "toughness." That kind of what I expected, and I mostly agree with it. Still, it's important to make the distinction between tough guys who can contribute and tough guys who can't. Basically, if we're looking for a "banger," we should get someone who has strong rebound rates. If we're looking for a "pure point guard," we should get someone with a good assist rate. If we're looking for a "lockdown defender," well, that's trickier, but we should still find someone that has strong defensive numbers (and I'm not talking steals and blocks).
For reference, here's a list of who we came up with for our price tag. Free agents are italicized.
- Raja Bell
- Antonio McDyess
- Joe Smith
- P.J. Brown
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Kurt Thomas
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James Posey (player option)
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Eduardo Najera
- Charlie Villanueva
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Chris Duhon
- Jason Maxiell
- Quentin Richardson
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Chris Richard
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Francisco Elson
- Linas Kleiza
- Ronny Turiaf (restricted)
- Quinton Ross
- Dikembe Mutumbo
- Alonzo Mourning
- Rodney Carney
- Mikhael Pietrus
- DJ Strawberry
- John Salmons (borderline)
- Brandon Bass
We'll eventually revisit this thread (and do add to it if you so please), but for now, here's the question for the next day or two.
Eddie Jordan. Undoubtedly, Wizards nation is divided on him keeping his job, but many of those reasons ("he's not the coach to take us to the next level") are only indirectly related to his actual coaching.
So here's today's question. Let's ignore the question of whether Eddie should return next year for a second. The point of this question isn't for people to advocate firing or retaining him, because the sense I get is that Eddie is neither a perfect or horrifically awful head coach.
What are Eddie's biggest strengths? What are Eddie's biggest weaknesses? Spell out both, but don't decide yet whether one side outweighs the other. Just describe both.