As another disappointing season comes to an end for the Wizards, it is time to look forward to look for a cure to our current woes.  With a little bit of cap magic and wise moves, Washington may be able to conjure a future that contains something other than bleak hopelessness.  Below I have listed the salary amounts for the Wizards in 2012 according to sham sports and some of my own additions.

Now you’ll notice that I added a couple of things.  I’ll go in to more detail about the possibilities of Lewis being cut and Blatche being amnestied but let me first explain my other additions.  The first thing I added was the cap hold for the #3 pick.  After a first round draft selection, the salary that the player selected there would receive is counted against the cap.  In this case I added the #3 pick because that is the closest to the average of where our pick would be.  Since we could be anywhere from 1-5 that hold could be about a million more or less   I also added in cap holds, which represents the players we would need to complete our team.  Each team needs to have a total of 12 cap holds and since the Wizards on my chart are anywhere from 1-3 away from that number I added in the cap holds.  Finally I added in the amount of cap space that we would be projected to have.  It should be noted that I have estimated the salary cap, cap holds, and pick cap hold based on last year’s numbers. These numbers may be a little high, but the most any would be off by is a million.

Will the Wizards Cut Lewis?

The answer to that question is he will almost certainly be cut.  The reason for this is a provision in his contract.  Most contracts in the NBA are fully guaranteed, so waiving them would not save the team any money and they still count against the cap.  But Lewis has a contract that is only partially guaranteed and although reports vary to the amount that is guaranteed, the most consistent report is that it is only guaranteed for 13,000,000$.  This means that the Wizards would save almost 10,000,000$ by cutting him.  This seems like an easy decision as Lewis is not worth even half that at this point in his career.

Will Andray Blatche be Amnestied?

This question is a bit trickier than the previous one.  While this action would give the Wizards the cap space necessary to chase a major free agent, it would cost a lot of money.  Blatche has 23,000,000$ left on his contract and that seems like a lot of money to pay someone not to play.  It may be the opinion of the Wizards organization that they give Dray another year to improve his trade stock, even if it alienates some Wizards fans.  In addition if the Wiz miss out on the top free agents and can’t find any teams to give up assets for cap space, the amnesty would be rather useless.  In addition, Washington will have the full 5 million dollar MLE that can be used if there is not amnesty allowing them to pick up a potentially good value free agent.  One possible factor that could be in favor of an amnesty is the potential that another team bid for Blatche.  This may seem unlikely but there are going to be a lot of teams with cap space and the likes of Travis Outlaw got a bid of 12,000,000$ on the remaining 4 years of his contract.  If there is a decent sized bid, it would look much better fiscally for Ted Leonsis.  Ultimately, it will come down to whether Dray can come back and be productive enough to trade for shorter contracts and how willing they are to spend money to improve.

Why not just amnesty Rashard Lewis?

It seems obvious that if you’re going to cut Lewis, why not just amnesty him.  The problem is the timing of the offseason.  Lewis’ contract becomes fully guaranteed at the end of June and the amnesty period isn’t until July.  This means that the Wiz would have to pay the extra money in his contract just to have him not count against the cap.  With fairly poor depth in the free agent class and a number of teams that have cap space.  Also, if we amnesty him that would mean we cannot use it on Blatche even if we wanted to down the road.  It just doesn’t make sense to waste nearly 10,000,000$ and the ability to use the amnesty later on the off-chance that we would hit big on free agents.

What Would I Do?

First off, it’s easy for me to say that I would amnesty Blatche because it’s not my money on the line.  But, I just don’t see Andray being able to resurrect his trade value in DC.  I think an amnesty is needed on the off-chance that someone will be willing to bid on him.  This also allows us to use our cap space to improve the team in the short and long-term.  I think that our goal should be two young players that will be solid starters now or in the near future while keeping cap flexibility for the future.  Right now, I believe that Wall and Nene are the only true starters on this team.  The potential is there for Seraphin, Booker, and Vesley but they haven’t quite proven it yet.  The first starter would come from the draft where we will have a top 5 pick.  I would feel comfortable with any of Anthony Davis, Bradley Beal, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, or Thomas Robinson.  The second starter would be a wing player that we can get from a trade or free agency.  This could be trading into the draft, trading for an undervalued guy or picking up someone in free agency.  I would be willing to trade anyone but John Wall, Nene, and Kevin Seraphin.  The key would be finding a guy who can play a role in the starter line up but does not cost much money.  Some trade targets would include Chase Budinger, Jared Dudley and Wes Matthews.  A few free agent guys I would look at are Brandon Rush, Danny Green and Courtney Lee.  While these are not the sexiest names, they are all capable of playing a 3 and D type role that almost every contender has.

The second part of this plan comes in the summer of 2013. After adding a couple starters in 2012, the Wiz should be at least contending for a playoff spot.  I estimated the 10th pick for the Wizards which would put us near the top of the Eastern Conference playoff teams. I also added 5,000,000$ for the second starter that we picked up in 2012.  As you can see, the Wizards would have nearly 14 million dollars in cap space.  This can be even more if one of our players were traded when the second starter was acquired.  Also one of my starter targets, Chase Budinger, would have a cap hold of about one million.  So it seems likely that under this plan, the cap space could be close to 20 million.  This is generally considered max cap space and will allow us to tap into the free agent class of 2013. There are a number of potential targets there like James Harden, Andrew Bynum, Josh Smith, and Paul Milsap. Even if we strike out on those guys, we could use our cap space, first round pick, and young players to trade for a star level player.  It might be that Atlanta decides to blow up if Josh Smith leaves and Al Horford is on the block.  Or maybe we could take on a contract and give up a young player to move up in the draft and move into the top 5 of the top-heavy 2013 draft.  The point is we will have the flexibility and trade assets to put together a trade that will give us another top player.