The Wizards......(sigh).....
Today is the NBA trade deadline. It’s a day where teams either fold or push their chips to the center of the table. Where current value is turned into future assets and future assets are swapped for current value. It is also when fans’ hope is crushed for the season or reignited for the stretch run. All the teams that fold have the same message, “Trust us, it’ll be better in the long run.”
I’m a Wizards fan (you’re allowed to laugh, pity, and/or hope I’m talking about Harry Potter), and this season has been particularly vexing. The Wizards came into the season thinking they might contend for something, which for the Wizards means the 4 seed in a Lebron-less East. Signing Dwight Howard gave us a “legit” starting five that could “compete” in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Basically, since then everything has gone from wishful thinking to bad to worse to south to south of south to places where they speak Spanish to Portuguese to Spanish again to where glaciers are melting for the first time in 300,000 years. Like many early expeditions to Antarctica, let’s chronicle this slow moving disaster.
· Howard was butt hurt to start the season and required surgery, and has not really even played this year.
· John Wall looked like he was working himself into shape, then needed season-ending heel surgery, and then needed the next season’s ending surgery on a ruptured Achilles.
· We traded a decent young homegrown player on an expiring contract for a better veteran on an expiring contract because we were going all in for, at that point, the 8th seed in the East.
· Then we traded Otto Porter, a decent homegrown player under contract for multiple seasons, for two expiring contracts and a protected 2nd round pick, to open up cap space for the summer?
· The Wizards also managed to trade Markieff Morris simply to save money on their luxury tax bill.
The Wizards managed to push all of their chips into the middle of the table and then fold before the river. Each move is defensible on its own, but when put together…..I mean holy shit it looks insane. The only asset of value the Wizards have accumulated is cap space and the hope that their fans will once again “trust” them in the offseason. Trust what? Trust who? Kevin Durant wouldn’t even meet with us the last time. Kyrie plays guard. Kawhi has only been a part of intelligent organizations. Jimmy Butler? Klay Thompson? Kemba Walker? Kristaps Porzingis? Boogie Cousins? Tobias Harris? Khris Middleton? WHY would they sign with the Wizards? John Wall won’t play next year, why waste a season waiting for a guy who might be washed up anyways? The Wizards can have as much cap space as they like, but they’re not going to attract any of these guys, and even if they do how good will they be with John Wall out all season making 37 million from the bench?
In the James Bond film Spectre, Christoph Waltz’s bad guy character, tells James Bond that he is, “the author of all your pain.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ3OIYdDifw) Ernie Grunfeld is that for the Wizards. Which is why giving him all this cap space is so frustrating. He had to trade away contracts that he gave to create more space to do more contracts. The madness of this is absurd. Perhaps he does tear everything down and gut the rest of the roster. He trades Ariza for a late first round pick and sends Bradley Beal to a franchise that knows what it’s doing for a massive return. Whoopty-fucking-doo. Those moves only work or make sense if the guy making the decisions is good at their job. It’s why banks don’t give loans to people with horrible credit scores.
The Wizards can’t sell hope as long as Grundlewald presides over the franchise’s decision making. Since 2003 he has been allowed to make dumb decision after worse decision. This season has to be the final straw. Every bad decision he has made has reared its head, and completely nullified the good decisions he has made. The best franchises don’t always make the best decisions, that comes down to luck far too often, but they never make backbreaking decisions. Ernie Grunfeld has time and time again made decisions that cause the franchise severe harm. He is like a teenage boy 3 FourLocos deep (back when they had caffeine) in their parents' house. Stuff is going to be destroyed. Shit will hit the fan. The Wizards can rebuild all they want, but when your architect is a demolition expert you end up with too many seasons like this one, just a pile of rubble where a house was supposed to stand.
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