Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Looking Ahead: The Gilbert Question

As much as I hate LeBron (who outside of Cleveland doesn't?), I must admit that he is an amazing talent. I honestly believe he is the equivalent of three NBA All-Stars (this theory will be tested against Boston).

Here is a must read about LeBron giving a ten dollar tip on an $800 meal: http://www.clevescene.com/2008-05-07/news/when-it-comes-to-tipping-lebron-goes-scrooge-mcduck

The Wizards will have some interesting decisions to make this off-season and I have answers (well sort of)! In this post, I'll focus on the Gilbert debate.

Question #1: Do you re-sign Gilbert Arenas and give him too much money?

-The Wizards have no choice but to re-sign him. If they don't re-sign Gilbert, they might be able to pull off a sign-and-trade and in a best-case scenario acquire a guy like Elton Brand (an aging injury-prone vet). Acquiring Elton Brand might help in the short term but is he really going to take the Wiz to another level? Absolutely Not.

-When the Wizards are healthy (which is rare) they are extremely dangerous offensively. With three elite scoring options, defenses can't double team the Zards.

-If you sign Gilbert, and presumably give him all your money, the team must improve internally. I have no doubt that Nick Young will eventually be a big upgrade at the two guard position. I don't know how much better Andray Blatche is going to get (I just sense he's missing something) so he might be good trade bait. The nucleus needs to get better now (sorry Dominic McGuire).

Bottom line: The are only about five true franchise players in the NBA: LeBron, Kobe, Duncan, KG, and Dwight Howard. Unless you have one of those players, you're probably not going to be winning an NBA championship anytime soon.

So rather than completely rebuild and hope to win the draft lottery when the next superstar emerges (for the record neither Beasley nor Rose is what I'd consider a superstar), why not stick with a good team that with the right additions might become a very good team.

Assuming Ernie Grunfeld knows what he's doing (and he does), Agent Zero will be a Wizard next year.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

You wrote: "If they don't re-sign Gilbert, they might be able to pull off a sign-and-trade and in a best-case scenario acquire a guy like Elton Brand (an aging injury-prone vet). Acquiring Elton Brand might help in the short term but is he really going to take the Wiz to another level? Absolutely Not."

Are you kidding me? I don't know where to start with what's wrong with that statement. Elton Brand is "aging"? He's only 29! He's injury-prone? Before his freak injury before this season, he'd played in at least 74 games in 6 of his 8 seasons, and 62 games in all 8 of his seasons. And he wouldn't help take the Wizards to the next level? The Wizards made the playoffs without Gilbert this year, and were winning games without him in the playoffs. If you add a career 20.3 ppg, 10.2 RPG, and 2.1 BPG in place of Brenda Haywood's 7.5, 5.9, and 1.4, you have yourself one helluva lineup -- one that would definitely have beaten Cleveland, and would have had a very good shot at taking out Boston. I would trade Gilbert for Brand in a heartbeat right now.

Unknown said...

I forgot to click e-mail follow-up comments, so I'm posting this one to do that.

Anonymous said...

Elton Brand won't make this team a championship contender. Despite being in the west, the Clippers aren't exactly beating people. Also injuries add up. A torn achillies doesn't just disappear. Bigs take a beating.

Unknown said...

Your post made absolutely no refutation to the points that I made.

First, you wrote: "Despite being in the west, the Clippers aren't exactly beating people." What does "Despite being in the west" mean? That the Clippers *should* be beating people because they're in the West? Are you insane? If anything, they should be given credit because they're in the West. In any regard, how does the Clippers' record in any way reflect how good Elton Brand is? In fact, it does. With substantially the same roster, in 2005-06 and 2006-07, with Brand, they won 47 and 40 games. In 2007-08, without brand, they won only 23. The man helped them win an extra 17-24 games!!!

"A torn achillies doesn't just disappear. Bigs take a beating." May I remind you of another D.C. athlete named Jon Jansen? He ruptured his Achilles in 2004 and came back just fine in 2005 and 2006. And does he, perhaps, take a beating during the course of his sport? 10x as much as Elton Brand ever would. And Brand even came back for 8 games at the end of this season and put up, out of condition, 17.6 points, 8.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists, and 1.9 blocks. Yea, those are terrible numbers, and he shouldn't be even better next year, according to you, right?

Anonymous said...

CP3 is definitely a franchise player that can get a 'ship...