Washington Wizards Blog

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time August 11, 2008 at 11:10 AM

Great new idea for next year’s Wizards’ uniforms.

Comment from SportzWiz
Time August 11, 2008 at 11:32 AM

There might be a new alternative uniform coming in the next year or so, but my guess is that is not it .

Comment from Wizfan4life
Time August 11, 2008 at 11:50 AM

hey yall its been a while but I’m finally back!! For the past four weeks, I’ve been an assistant counselor at a YMCA camp on the coast of Arapahoe, NC called Camp Sea Gull….It’s an all boys camp that has a sister camp called Seafarer that’s a couple miles away from it…..Sea Gull is a 4 week overnight camp where they have activities from archery, canoeing, sailing, water skiing, etc. I’ve been going there since I was 9 and just love it! Well get this: one of my camper’s counsins is Roger Mason Jr. !!
My camper would tell me what a great guy he is and what he does for his family and stuff…..he gives his family free season tickets for whichever team he plays for and will pay for their airfare for them to see him on the road, or at home since he is now in San Antonio……it’s a shame he isn’t with the wizards anymore because I thought he was a great player, and now I’ve learned what a great guy he is.

Comment from Wizfan4life
Time August 11, 2008 at 12:02 PM

Oh yeah this free agency has been very boring the past few weeks…..no big surprises besides Kwame going to Detroit. Personally, with Iguadola and Ben Gordon still available on the table, don’t you think it would make sence to somehow get rid of a songaila/thomas or daniels for one of them?? and also waive d-mac to get Ben Gordon or Iggy?? I mean teams have done that before; dump a big contract and pull in a big named player…..just look at what the celtics did with Ray Allan on draft night, look at what the mavs did with jason kidd, look at what pretty much any team has been able to do…….im mean Pau Gasol for Kwame Brown and some scrubs??? the wiz could make a deal like that easily!!! now not trying to diss Songaila/Thomas/D-mac/Daniels, but i mean come on now, they CERTAINLY do not bring as much production as a player like BG or Iggy right?? All I’m sayin is, get rid of some players with big contracts that arent producing and get BG or Iggy……i think it’s a one shot oppurtunity for the wizards and they should go for it…..because oppurtunities like this dont come around very often!

Comment from SportzWiz
Time August 11, 2008 at 12:43 PM

Wizfan no question about Roger, just a standup guy and I wish him all the success in 80 of the 82 games this year.

The problem with your 2nd post is it’s very one sided. I dont see how ben gordon fits into this team so ill take the Iguodala proposal.

Do you think they’d want AD and Thomas for Iggy? Highly unlikely!!! Especially with Andre Miller already entrenched at the point.

Everyone wants to talk about the Kwame trade, the reason that trade took place was because of an expiring contract. The Wizards dont have one of those and the teams that make those deals usually make them mid-season because they dont want to pay the entire salary (memphis probably only payed 1/2 to 1/3 of kwame’s 10 million dollar salary and now they have the ability to sign a big time free agent.

I dont see the Wizards making a big time deal like this. They dont have the contracts and pieces to make those types of moves and this is also an organization that believes in continuity. A lot of people are talking about the Wizards not upgrading this off-season but I think thats a huge understatement.

This team won 43 games last year without Gilbert that’s a big upgrade assumming he’s healthy along with the return of Etan Thomas. I dont understand the thought process that this team didn’t make significant moves when they re-signed two all-stars.

When you want to see what teams will be able to acquire big trades during the middle of the season u have to look at teams that have money coming off the books in expiring contracts. The Wizards dont have anyone coming off the books after this season. Off the top of my head I know of one team that most likely will have that type of movement and that would be our “friends” up in cleveland.

That team has 27 million dollars ocming off the books next year which means they can go after a couple big salary players and trade expiring contracts.

As we saw last year that can have very positive results (LA Lakers) and not so positive results (Dallas and Phoenix).

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time August 11, 2008 at 3:15 PM

Yeah, those were not very good trade ideas — for one thing, there is no such thing in the NBA as “waiving” someone. If you let a player go, you are still responsible for his contract, and it still counts towards the cap and the luxury tax ceiling. For another, you can’t really get someone to take your spare parts in order to give you a player you need.

Secondly, were we able to trade Daniels for Ben Gordon straight up (we can’t for a zillion reasons, but assume for a moment that we were), the result would be about 5 fewer wins for our team in the coming season. There seem to be people who think that all that counts in a basketball player is volume scoring.

SportsWiz — we *did* make significant moves, obviously, by re-signing gil and antawn. But, we didn’t make significant *changes*. People get restless if there are no changes.

If we do better this year, however, I think it’ll be more because of Thomas than Arenas. I.e. Antonio stepped in for Arenas and had a great year. On the other hand, we were pretty unproductive statistically at backup center, so the return of Etan Thomas helps a lot. If he is back to full strength, that is.

Comment from SportzWiz
Time August 11, 2008 at 3:38 PM

I agree on the daniels stepping in for Gilbert part and how he helped us. But just think how much better your 2nd unit becomes when AD comes in the game. I showed the stat in another thread, but this team struggled mightily without AD in the 10 or so games he missed because they had nobody that could run the team behind him.

Now if AD is out hurt the team will be fine because they’ll still have Gil playing the majority of the minutes.

Last year this team played shorthanded all year, (bite your tongue) that shouldn’t be nearly as big an issue this year.

As for the making changes, when you have two all-stars that are free agents your not goin to make many changes, what your going to do is try to keep your all-stars. It seems like sometimes fans like when they get a 2nd rate player more than keeping their best players.

Comment from gbkdc
Time August 11, 2008 at 4:13 PM

Is anyone irritated that Men’s Basketball is on at 10:00 am or whatever ridiculous time it’s on TV tomorrow? How am I supposed to watch it from work?? Does anyone know if they rebroadcast it later? I have tried to find out, but couldn’t.

I still don’t like LeBron, but I’m glad he’s on our team at least.

Comment from SportzWiz
Time August 11, 2008 at 4:22 PM

Thats the problem when the games are over in China . Im pretty sure they are reairing them that night but dont hold me to that comment.

Comment from Tom Mandel
Time August 11, 2008 at 5:52 PM

SportsWiz — I don’t disagree one bit w/ what you say. Above all, if we stay healthy, and if Antonio gets something close to 20 minutes a game, we can hope to have a very effective 2d unit and improve our record.

In a way, the minutes (if not the role) being replaced by Gil this year start with Roger’s minutes. We should be better just because Gil is a better player than Roger. Many of the other minutes Gil would have played were played by Nick — and not very productively either.

So, a lot depends on Nick, since I’m sure they want him to play at least as many minutes this year as last (1150 minutes last year).

Comment from SportzWiz
Time August 12, 2008 at 9:19 AM

Hey everyone, i know some people are annoyoed that team USA is playing during working hours, but here is a partial solution to the problem You Can watch the game live from NBCOlympics.com

Click here to watch the game live. Currently team USA leads by 19 late in the third.

Comment from gbkdc
Time August 12, 2008 at 9:53 AM

Thanks, SportzWiz.

Dwayne Wade looks AMAZING! Scary for us… does anyone agree? He’s back!

Comment from Phemy
Time August 12, 2008 at 9:58 AM

yeah, dwade looks very good…and kobe doesn’t ;>

And i have to say, i like the schedule, the game was at ~3pm here in germany

Comment from SportzWiz
Time August 12, 2008 at 10:14 AM

All i keep thinkin about when i watch team usa is dwade is back. The good news is his support staff isn’t much to write hoome about. Sure they have beasley and marion and udonis haslem but outside of that they really dont have much to work with.

Looking at this list I dont see many guys that could make the wizards roster let alone play any sort of role on the team.

Also i am still interested to see how those guys mix. Marion has always wanted a bigger offensive role but how much is he goin to see of the ball with wade and beasley. Also those two guys will take time to get to know each others games.

However, with a healthy dwade you can add miami to the list of growing teams taht will be fighting for a playoff berth in the east next year.

Comment from WizardsDotCom
Time August 12, 2008 at 10:20 AM

My favorite memory from USA-Angola, ‘92:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA778YNWtrY