Well the Wizards finally tipped off their season last night and while the night lost it’s luster a little bit with Wall and Nene out, there was still plenty to take notice of. Here are my thoughts from last night:
I have procrastinated so much that I am now writing the Wizards season preview 20 minutes before their season begins. Nonetheless, this team is very different from last season. Gone are the knuckleheads of Blatche/Young/McGee and in are the anti-knuckleheads of Okafor/Nene/Ariza. I’m actually not sure you could have a bigger transformation if you tried. You go from a team of a bunch of gunners who are goof balls that play very little defense and very small basketball IQ to a bunch of tough/smart/defensive veterans who aren’t the most offensively talented in the world. To be honest while whole “changing the culture” thing is nice and definitely needed, it most likely won’t change the Wizards postseason hopes a whole lot in the next couple of years. As for this season here is what to watch for:
Today news broke that John Wall injured his knee and will be out for 2 months. His exact return date is scheduled for November 23rd which would mean he would miss 10 regular season games but that’s more of a tentative date but expect him to miss around 10 as long as they correctly diagnosed the injury. Apparently it is some sort of stress injury in his left patella (whatever that means) that he got by working out but the Wizards are being kind of vague it seems like to me.
The Wizards made a huge splash in the free agent market signing the great A.J. Price. He will be brought in to serve as the backup PG for John Wall. To be honest I haven’t really seen that much of Price since he played at UConn (been in the league 4 years) primarily because he played for Indiana and I didn’t see them much other than the playoffs and because he just hasn’t played that much in his 3 year career. In his 3 years he has started 3 games so he is a career backup who averages about 15 minutes a game. In those minutes he averaged 6 points and 2 assists a game. Like I said, I haven’t seen him much but from everything that I’ve heard he is basically a little bit better version of Shelvin Mack so this move obviously was just to upgrade our back up PG situation for next year. If anything this is more of an indictment on Mack because he really had no compeition for the spot the last year and really cost himself with poor play in the summer league this year. Mack has a team option this year of 762,000 that could or could not be picked up. I kind of doubt this is the end of Mack’s Wizards run considering he is so young and cost so little but it definitely will cost him playing time at the very least next season as he will now become the 3rd string PG on this Wizards roster. I don’t think that the details of Price’s contract have been specified yet but I can’t imagine it is for very much or very long considering back up PG’s are pretty much dime a dozen and he isn’t really special. Bottom line here though is that it upgrades the Wizards roster next year because now we have an even better backup when Wall needs a breather and really the biggest effect this will have is probably on Shelvin Mack’s career.
A couple of years ago me and my good friend Lee would get into many a argument regarding the future of Andray Blatche. I would argue that Blatche was a stat sheet filler, who just produced empty stats, was a selfish player who cared much more about how he individually performed, didn’t understand what it took to win in the NBA, played lack luster defense, and really just how much I didn’t like him being a part of the Wizards organization. Lee on the other hand argued how Andray really showed potential and had the talent to one day be a good player for a good team. While I did believe he had the talent to be a good player on a good team, it was clear to me that he had nowhere near the wherewithal to become the player that he was capable of being. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but at least for his tenure as a Wizard, he certainly didn’t play up to his abilities. 2 years later we all find out the real truth about Andray Blatche and now the Wizards have amnestied him meaning that he is pretty much cut from the team but will still be paid in full.
A couple of days ago the Wizards re-signed SG Cartier Martin to the leagues veteran minimum (about 1 million). I am a fairly big fan of this signing as I was hoping that we would bring Cartier back to be our 3rd string SG behind Beal and Crawford (hopefully in that order). While it doesn’t really seem like a big deal who our 3rd stringer is, it’s always good to have as much depth as possible and at the rate that Wizards player seem to get injured and traded, he will probably be used a decent amount. Martin is a good shooter who while maybe gets a little shot happy at time is a much better team player than a Crawford and at 6’7 has the length to defend the 2 or the 3. Because of that size he is also a decent rebounder. Like I said this is not an earth shattering move for the Wiz but it is a good depth move at a very good price.
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