Now that the dust has settled on the NBA draft lottery, I thought I'd give my two cents on the ping pong balls falling as they did and how it might affect the future of our former players. First off, I am stunned that the Nets didn't get the #1 pick. I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and I just assumed that the Russian Billionaire who just bought the New Jersey Nets had this thing in the bag. He spent something like 700 million dollars to finalize the Nets move to Brooklyn in a new state of the art arena, and you would have thought there was some sort of clause that guaranteed this guy John Wall. It is too bad, because you get the feeling that the Nets could have become the IT team in the NBA with Wall, Jay-Z, Billions of Russian Rubles, and possibly some guy named LeBron. Welcome to the NBA Mikhail Prokhorov! Hopefully no NBA employees are injured in response to last night's lottery. I guess David Stern is not scared of the Russian Mafia.... Although I am, so I am not going to talk about this anymore.
In my opinion, Washington is the worst possible destinations for Wall. In the wake of the Arenas gun situation the Wiz finally blew up this underachieving bunch. They basically traded Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, and Antawn Jamison for ten cents on the dollar. What is left is a team full of knuckleheads, and not the ideal situation for a young player coming into the league. Arenas, Josh Howard, and Blatche are the Wizards three best players, and all three have had varying degree of problems in the NBA. They were the most dysfunctional team in the league this past season, which is saying something when your competition is the Clippers.
When you add up the character and chemistry issues, along with the void of talent in D.C, it is hard to find a situation that is less attractive for John Wall. With all that being said, I think Wall is a good enough talent to overcome the bad draw. The Wizards being good anytime soon will depend a lot on luck, even with Wall on board. Wall isn't the type of number one pick that can lift a team out of the cellar single handed.
Ask Rajon Rondo about his first year in the league with cellar dweller talent vs playing alongside three future hall of famer's last few years. Although a great point guard can make others around him better, ultimately he is only going to be as good as the talent around him. Right now, there isn't much of it in D.C. Hopefully the Wizards can put some prime time talent around John Wall sooner than later.
If I were in the Wizards shoes, I would do my best to clear the team of this knucklehead label by trading Arenas and simply starting over with Wall as the face of the franchise. Big picture, I would try to set myself up to go add Carmelo Anthony in next year's Free Agent haul. Melo is a Baltimore native, and if the Wizards can find a way to add one more talented big guy to the roster alongside Wall and Melo, that could be a very quick turnaround for the nation's capitol.
More on how the ping pong balls might affect the former Cats later!
In my opinion, Washington is the worst possible destinations for Wall. In the wake of the Arenas gun situation the Wiz finally blew up this underachieving bunch. They basically traded Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, and Antawn Jamison for ten cents on the dollar. What is left is a team full of knuckleheads, and not the ideal situation for a young player coming into the league. Arenas, Josh Howard, and Blatche are the Wizards three best players, and all three have had varying degree of problems in the NBA. They were the most dysfunctional team in the league this past season, which is saying something when your competition is the Clippers.
When you add up the character and chemistry issues, along with the void of talent in D.C, it is hard to find a situation that is less attractive for John Wall. With all that being said, I think Wall is a good enough talent to overcome the bad draw. The Wizards being good anytime soon will depend a lot on luck, even with Wall on board. Wall isn't the type of number one pick that can lift a team out of the cellar single handed.
Ask Rajon Rondo about his first year in the league with cellar dweller talent vs playing alongside three future hall of famer's last few years. Although a great point guard can make others around him better, ultimately he is only going to be as good as the talent around him. Right now, there isn't much of it in D.C. Hopefully the Wizards can put some prime time talent around John Wall sooner than later.
If I were in the Wizards shoes, I would do my best to clear the team of this knucklehead label by trading Arenas and simply starting over with Wall as the face of the franchise. Big picture, I would try to set myself up to go add Carmelo Anthony in next year's Free Agent haul. Melo is a Baltimore native, and if the Wizards can find a way to add one more talented big guy to the roster alongside Wall and Melo, that could be a very quick turnaround for the nation's capitol.
More on how the ping pong balls might affect the former Cats later!
I think John Wall will be the Harry Potter of the NBA.
ReplyDeleteHow about that joke? eh? eh?