Now it’s time for the third team on our panel of 5 the former Bullets of Baltimore, the one, the only, the Washington Wizards. May we all hope they start 9-20 and progress to real “playoff like” situations. If you would listen to the Tony Kornheiser show like a good little that last sentence would be HILARIOUS.
The Good:
Bradley Beal. Young shooters are just fun to watch blossom. We all watched Steph Curry grow up right in front of our eyes (Golden State is coming soon), and that’s what made the experience so memorable. Now we get to watch Bradley Beal figure out the shots that make the most sense, and set plays where he knows he can get looks. Throw last years stats away, they’re all skewed toward a first half where he was asked as 19 year old to carry the Wizards offense. With Wall and Nene, Beal found way more open looks and showed why people were comparing him to Ray Allen.
Nene. This is a personal choice and since this whole thing is a personal project, he goes into the Good column. I’ve always just liked Nene. I had in fantasy when he had a last name, I stuck with him when he went through cancer, and I was a little excited to see him get traded to the Wizards where he could start over after some rough years with the Nuggets. The jury is still out if he’s good or not, but that’s not the criteria for “The Good” with me. A 17 PER is above average (if what I had to infer from Zach Lowe’s last column is correct the average PER of an NBA player is 15.2), but a 2.8 block rating from a big is not. He also draws fouls at a decent rate (16.8) and shot a decent percentage from the free throw line (.729). So yeah. One named people.
The Bad:
John Wall. It’s not that John Wall is bad at basketball. It’s more that he’s really fast and also plays basketball. Some of his stats from last year in 49 games (42 started) were very good in fact with 20.8 PER and a very encouraging for Bradley Beal and returning small forward Martell Webster 117 3pt assists (just 18 less than Russell Westbrook). His shooting stats were not as promising with a true shooting percentage of .521 a 3pt percentage of .267 and an effective field goal percentage of .404 while he shot 70 percent jumpers. He needs to be more of a force as a scorer if he’s ever going to live up to being the number 1 overall pick. Kyrie Irving is like a billion times better than John Wall. That’s really what the disappointment comes down to.
Eric Maynor. One thing the Washington Wizards didn’t have last year was a back up point guard for John Wall, which was hilarious since Wall didn’t play in the first half of the season. They don’t have such a problem anymore with the signing of Eric Maynor. This is another player I’ve always liked, a lot of which has to do with how I picked Maynor and VCU to beat Duke in 2006. And with OKC Maynor was a quality back-up for Russell Westbrook, almost never giving the ball away and working his way into crunch time minutes 3 years ago against the Mavs in the conference finals. You may remember him waving off a Kevin Durant pick and roll attempt so that Maynor could get an isolation, which was not his finest hour. Since then he tore his ACL and was traded to the Trailblazers last year before getting signed to Washington in the off season.
Martell Webster. If you ask anyone in Washington, you would know that they really like the re-signing of Martell Webster (I’m looking specifically at David Aldridge now), while most other are scratching their heads at the 4 years and 22 millions dollars that was given to him. Which I get, but Martell Webster is a pretty decent floor spacer, which is something a lot of teams are looking for. He shot .422 on threes while shooting 329 of them and ended with a true shooting percent of .601. Those are very good numbers, but much like Steve Novak, that’s pretty much where it ends. Though to be clear Webster is better than Novak, but he doesn’t really provide much in terms of assist and rebounds.
Trevor Ariza. Trevor Ariza arrives at the ugly based solely on how far he had fallen. Ariza was so good and dynamic on the 2009 Lakers, he used that production to score a big time contract. He now finds himself unhappily in Washington putting up a 14.0 PER (15.5 in 2009) and a true shooting percentage of .538 (.544), he shoots 73 percent jumpers (up from 56 in 2009) and has an effective field goal percentage of .525 inside 5 feet (compared to .625 in 2009) . These are decent numbers but they’re worse than his number when he was 22. This is a guy who has stopped driving and started settling for jumpers and hasn’t improved in 4 years. Which is a drag.
The Ugly:
Jan Vesely. If you haven’t read Zach Lowe’s gruesome sounding journey of watching all of the minutes Vesely logged last year. You should (he’s one of the last players talked near the end). What it all comess down to is a former number 6 overall pick who can only dunk. He can’t dribble, he can’t pass (1.3 passing rating per 82games.com), and he can’t defend (opposing power forwards had a 17.3 PER against him averaging 20.5 points per 48 minutes). Yeah, it’s ugly.
Comng soon: The Golden State Warriors.
E-mail: seamusfennell@gmail.com Twitter: Kevin_seamus
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