Will Wizards Make a Deal?

Shapecity · Dec 3, 2009

Ready to talk trades yet?

The trade deadline is more than two months away, but we're watching and waiting already. The reason: The biggest variable in any trading season is which clubs will look to retool (or dismantle) their rosters based on disappointing starts to the season.

On this front, two clubs in particular bear watching given their high expectations entering the season and subpar performances thus far -- the Washington Wizards in the East and the Portland Trail Blazers out West.

Washington is 6-10 after Tuesday's less-than-emphatic win over the also-struggling Raptors. That's a bit disappointing for a team that loaded up in the offseason, put itself well over the luxury tax and dreamed of contending with the Eastern Conference's elite.

Portland, despite its 12-8 record, has lost three straight games by surprising margins, two on its once-impregnable home court. The Blazers rank only ninth among Western teams in my latest Power Rankings, even though they, like the Wizards, harbored ambitions of contending.

Let's start with the Wizards, whom I believe to be the more interesting of the two stories.

Washington has admittedly looked better since forward Antawn Jamison returned after missing the first nine games with a shoulder injury, going 4-3 in the past seven games. But is that really enough? The past few seasons, Washington has been a .500 or so team when at least two of their Big Three of Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Jamison have been healthy. But the Wizards have never been able to sustain themselves at a higher level. Why would this year be any different?

The hope was that new coach Flip Saunders, a pair of new guards (Mike Miller and Randy Foye) and some improvement from younger players like Andray Blatche, Nick Young and JaVale McGee would propel Washington forward.

Thus far, the Wizards are continuing the same string of uneven efforts that plagued them for the past half decade. Here's the biggest problem: Although theoretically an offensive team, the Wizards aren't scoring. Washington ranks only 25th in offensive efficiency, a deplorable state of affairs for a club that realistically needs to rank in the top five to achieve its goals. In a related story, the Wizards are a mere 24th in my Power Rankings. Even in a dilapidated Eastern Conference, Washington would not make the playoffs in its present form.

Worse yet, two of the main culprits comprise two-thirds of Washington's alleged Big Three. Gilbert Arenas is still struggling to regain his form. While he hasn't been bad (16.25 PER, and a solid 22 points and nine dimes against the Raptors on Tuesday), one wonders if his Hibachi days are permanently behind him. In the Wizards' past two wins, over Miami and Toronto, the club ran more smoothly with 5-foot-5 Italian League refugee Earl Boykins at the controls.

Then there's Caron Butler. While the loquacious Arenas gets most of the attention, Butler's struggles have been even more pronounced. Sporting a measly 12.57 PER through 16 games, he's been one of the league's most disappointing players in the first quarter of the season. As a jump shooter, we shouldn't expect his output to crash suddenly, but it appears he's struggling to get the looks in Saunders' system that he routinely got in Eddie Jordan's Princeton offense.

Here's where it gets really interesting -- the Wizards stand in the midst of an ownership transition following the recent death of longtime owner Abe Pollin. He approved the moves to put the Wizards into the luxury tax, presumably because he knew he didn't have much time left to win a championship. But with Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis poised to take over, whether the financial floodgates remain so wide open is an open question. While Leonsis is nobody's idea of a cheapskate, I doubt the idea of paying luxury tax for a team that has won 25 of its past 100 games sits well with him.

That, in turn, opens the possibility that Washington will be active at the trade deadline to reduce next year's payroll, with Butler seeming the most likely name on the block given his hefty contract and production. The Wizards may also look to unload some dollars to get themselves under this year's tax; trading Mike Miller's expiring $9.8 million deal to a team well under the cap, for instance, might get them to a reasonable financial footing without costing them one of their three core stars.

Of course, the Wizards still have time to make this a moot point by turning things around, and perhaps they will. Ironically, the Wizards have provided answers to the other big questions they faced heading into the season:

• Brendan Haywood has been outstanding in his return from a wrist injury and Blatche has been among the league's most productive sixth men.

• The Wizards' defense, while below average, has been good enough, and if their offense were meeting expectations, they'd be a top-five seed in the East.

• Finally, the return of Miller would gloss over their glaring weakness at shooting guard. Nick Young (42.4 true shooting percentage, 7.87 PER) has been disastrous at both ends and DeShawn Stevenson (40.2 TS%, 5.29 PER) even worse, save for one night when he goaded LeBron James into breaking Cleveland's offense.

In the big picture, however, the inescapable conclusions are that the Wizards are underperforming, and that the struggles of their two best players are the main reason. If those facts don't change, the uniforms of a few players very well might.
Click to expand...

Source: ESPN

Moo2K4 · Dec 5, 2009

I love how this article mentions nothing of the fact that they were without Jamison for most of the first month. I think the Wizards will be ok now that they're core trio is all healthy and in tact. I also don't see Arenas and Butler struggling this much for the rest of the season, they're too good of players to be in their slumps too much longer.

Barring injuries, I can see them making a push for HCA. It's not going to take much, maybe 45 wins, since after the top 3 the East is pretty atrocious.

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Will Wizards Make a Deal?

Shapecity S2/JBB Teamster Staff Member Administrator

Moo2K4 NBA West Producer

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Will Wizards Make a Deal?

Shapecity S2/JBB Teamster Staff Member Administrator

Moo2K4 NBA West Producer

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