Missed Opportunities

I agree with John Hollinger about the Wizards' questionable offseason moves:

In three seasons with the trio of Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler, the Wizards have won 43, 41 and 42 games and haven't made it past the first round of the playoffs. The three players are 26, 32 and 28, respectively, so it seems likely that we've seen about the best we're going to get from them. They're an average team, and without an infusion of vastly better players around them, they'll keep being an average team.

Yet instead of blowing that trio up, the Wizards took a Bob-Beamonesque leap of faith this week. First they extended Jamison for four years and $50 million, and then they offered Arenas a monstrous six-year, $127 million package. Given that Arenas is coming off a major knee injury that kept him sidelined nearly all of last season and is heavily dependant on his quickness to be an elite scorer, his offer in particular appears to be a reach.

The trouble is that I think the Wizards think our "big three" is really superb and the team is only average because they have a below-average supporting cast. I don't think the evidence bares that out, either if you look at certain fancy statistical metric or simply the commonsense observation that losing Gilbert Arenas didn't hurt the team very much. Brendan Haywood, Antonio Daniels, DeShawn Stevenson, and Andray Blatche aren't great basketball players but as 4-7 guys in the rotation they're totally fine. The issue is that Arenas, Jamison, and Caron Butler are all kind of borderline stars. In the case of Butler that's great since he's cheap.

But the kind of money they just committed to Agent Zero needs to be saved for a truly phenomenal player. If it wasn't possible to resign Jamison and Arenas on the cheap, then this summer was a chance to blow the team up and rebuild around Butler's excellent contract and the team's decent supporting players. Instead, we're going back to war with what we had, hoping Jamison never shows his age and Gilbert's knee doesn't hamper his effectiveness.

Comments

Jesse Helms’ Death Prompts Michael Jordan to Issue Belated Endorsement of Harvey Gantt

http://www.sportsmansdaily.com/Jesse_Helms.html

I'd love to linger, but I've got things to blow up. Happy 4th.

Posted by Charleds | July 4, 2008 4:26 PM

I still can't believe how the Warriors offered a 5-year $100 million contract to Arenas and let Baron leave without matching a 5-year $65 deal. Even if the salaries were the same, I'd take Baron over Arenas any day of the week.

Posted by ben | July 4, 2008 4:56 PM

Further problem; Jamison is actually a superb player, but only in a system which completely values ball movement. I can't believe they haven't figured a way to dangle him in front of, say, Phoenix or Orlando.

Posted by drinkof | July 4, 2008 5:20 PM

Much like Jesse Helms, MY does not want to see the Black President.

But on a serious note, does this take Agent Zero out of the veepstakes? I think Obama/Arenas could have made a run at McCain in Arizona.

Posted by Dave M | July 4, 2008 5:22 PM

The '04 Detroit Pistons were the only team in the last 20 years to win without two true superstars on their roster. It might be a better business model for the Wizards to win 48 games every year and make then playoffs instead of oscillating between great and awful like the Miami Heat but it's not going to get you a championship building around very good players. You need greatness or a once in a generation example of teamwork.

Posted by joejoejoe | July 4, 2008 5:58 PM

Abe Pollin is much more interested in demonstrating his commitment to winning by signing these Juwan Howard-like contracts than he is in actually winning.

Posted by bjk | July 4, 2008 7:43 PM

joejoejoe - I don't think the Spurs of '05 and '07 had any "superstars" besides Duncan. Parker and Ginobili are nice all-star level players, but not MVP/HOF level.

Rockets of '94 had only 1 superstar.

The Pistons of '04 were unique in having zero MVP/HOF type of players.

I think Gilbert could become a HOF-type superstar, so it's worth the risk. Should the Bullets instead have let Jamison and Gilbert walk away, and hope they get someone even better in the draft?

Posted by nbt | July 4, 2008 8:28 PM

The team is now mortgaged to Arenas for the rest of time, at least in NBA terms. He has never shown the ability to play defense well enough to win in the playoffs. He hasn't shown he can recover from the knee surgeries. He hasn't ever demonstrated that he can play well with others to win a championship. But he has relinquished some of his astronomical salary so that the team can add one quality player.The risk here is staggering but it's typical of the Pollin moves for the last thirty years -- a repeated propensity for building the team on sand.

Posted by rod | July 4, 2008 9:13 PM

People tend to say "blow it up" without thinking through what that actually means.

Wait, I'm on the Wizards comments, right? Ok. Say that the Wizards decided that Jamison was too pricey and he signs with Philadelphia, and Arenas takes the money from Golden State.

So your starting point guard is 33-year old Antonio Davis and you have either raw Andre Blachte or very mediocre Darius Songaila starting at power forward.

You have $10M in cap room to play with--but you're the armpit of the NBA, a team that has been to the playoffs 5 times in the last 20 years and just let its best player in 20 years walk over a couple million a year.

Posted by John Bragg | July 4, 2008 9:52 PM

John nailed it.

If you say the Wiz should let Arenas walk, you owe us an explanation of how they'll sign a better player than him.

This isn't baseball, with no salary cap and unrestricted free agent all stars every offseason.

Teams hold on like grim death to true superstars, the labor agreement is tilted towards keeping players in place, and Washington isn't a prized destination as a locale or a basketball town.

Even the second tier of free agents is usually made up of restricted free agents, which means pulling a Joe Johnson and overpaying someone like Andre Iguodala or Joe Smith so their teams won't match.

The Wiz have a better chance trading for a star, and re-signing Arenas doesn't give away any of the draft picks or young players who would likely be chips in that deal. If anything, it makes it more likely a star would be traded here. See KG going to Boston only when they had traded (and overpaid) for Ray Allen.

Posted by kegler | July 5, 2008 12:36 AM

The key word, kegler, as youA yourself note, is "superstar." Arenas may be a superstar when it comes to excitement; he may be a superstar when it comes to the occasional stunning offensive outburst; but he is not a superstar as far as production goes. His defense isn't good enough, he doesn't rebound much, he's inefficient as a scorer, and he doesn't rack up assists. He's a great scorer, but not the foundation for a championship team.

Posted by C | July 5, 2008 1:37 AM

"But the kind of money they just committed to Agent Zero needs to be saved for a truly phenomenal player."

Wha? Like who? This fallacy in sports reasoning is so common it should be given a name. The market for players is very small. If you have money, you can't just go down to the NBA star store and pick up a star off the shelf at the best price available. Aside from the fact that the player has to agree to the deal, there aren't that many "truly phenomenal" talents once you exclude Agent Zero from that set.

The opportunity cost of letting any of their three stars walk is high, since there aren't great, likely options out there that they can simply take advantage of. Saying "you need greatness to win a championship" doesn't translate into a business plan, because the Lebron-MJ-Shaq-Duncan kind of greatness usually falls into your lap.

Blowing it up is sometimes the best choice, but it's also a) the reason 3-5 teams each year in the NBA are non- or borderline-competitive, and b) a great excuse for cheapskate owners who want to take a 3 year break from fielding a decent team by paying people. This swing for the fences management mentality is kind of shameless and it results in a lot of suckitude in the NBA. "Yes, we stink, but we were saving our cap space for Lebron, and he decided to go elsewhere. What Plan B?"

Posted by Colatina | July 5, 2008 2:14 AM

C: Going by Hollinger's own Player Efficiency Rating, Arenas was a top 10 player two years in a row before being injured.

Plus, he really is an efficient scorer. His TS% was above the league average those years and his turnover rate was below it, despite being the primary ballhandler and creating a ton of shots.

The man is no Iverson. The real question is whether the knee surgeries mean his best years are behind him (the microfracture procedure was allegedly not on a weight-bearing part of the joint, but he did NOT look good when he came back).

Posted by kegler | July 5, 2008 2:40 AM

The commenters are correct that there's no guarantee the Wizards would be able to sign a better player (or group of players) than Arenas if they hadn't offered him this big deal. But it's equally true that there is a guarrantee that resigning will not produce a team that's anywhere near competing for a championship.

So, if you're trying to build a championship caliber team as soon as possible, you'd be far, far better off not resigning Arenas and Jamison and rolling the dice. You're likely to end up worse in the short term, but at least you'd have a shot in the medium term.

These moves guarantee a mediocre team at best (and that's assuming a full recovery for Arenas) for the short and medium term, with the eventual bad teams most likely coming later, once the Big Three start aging and losing skill.

Personally, I'd rather take my chances. Plus, it's not the Wizards fell apart when Arenas was hurt last year. If your team is just as good when a player is out of the line-up for an extended period of time, I'd say that's a pretty clear sign that he's not worth a max deal. I'd like a max deal player to be one that actually helps the team when he plays.

Posted by Doug T | July 5, 2008 9:27 AM

you're the armpit of the NBA, a team that has been to the playoffs 5 times in the last 20 years and just let its best player in 20 years walk over a couple million a year.

I think that sums up the Wiz's thinking. IMO Grunfeld brings competent, professional, conventional-wisdom management to the Wizards. Which is a huge step up from the Unseld/(shudder) MJ years. But he's not the kind of GM who makes wild moves.

I've got no problem with re-signing Jamison. By NBA standards it's a reasonable contract, he's a great team guy, and he may actually be the glue that holds that system together.

I love Zero, but I would have been happy with one of those wholly-fictional Arenas + picks for Brand + Livingston rumors that were floating around. Shoot-first point guard != great team. Though he is a lot more fun than Starbury.

As for this contract making Gil a Wizard forever, maybe yes, maybe no. Guys with massive contracts do get traded every so often. Kevin Garnett, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen. And who ever thought Miami would be able to shift Shaq's contract?

And bringing the team back intact gives a chance to see Haywood vs. Thomas: The Rematch.

Posted by hubcap | July 5, 2008 12:46 PM

The Wiz have a better chance trading for a star, and re-signing Arenas doesn't give away any of the draft picks or young players who would likely be chips in that deal. If anything, it makes it more likely a star would be traded here. See KG going to Boston only when they had traded (and overpaid) for Ray Allen.

Not sure how you figure they overpaid for Ray. The traded Delonte West, Wally Szczerbiak and Jeff Green for Ray and Big Baby Davis. Delonte is a career backup. I'd say his performance in the playoffs demonstrated that pretty conclusively. Wally is close to done, and Jeff Green averaged 10pts per game off 42 percent shooting this season (27 percent on three pointers).

This for a guy who is pretty widely regarded as the best pure shooter in the game, a guy who finished the season raining down threes on the heads of the Lakers in the -championship- clinching game. And you shouldn't discount the fact that Big Baby made some important contributions off the bench during the season. In fact, I'm not sure I'd trade Big Baby straight up for Jeff Green at this point. So how did they overpay?

Posted by rochrist | July 5, 2008 3:30 PM

rochrist: Overpaying the same way people are saying the Wizards did, in $$$.

If we measure deals by players given up, then Gil cost the Wiz nothing.

Posted by kegler | July 5, 2008 11:34 PM