- 7,309
- 28,661
- Joined
- Dec 8, 1999
Pop quiz, hotshot:
Your name is Eddie Grunfeld. The highlight of your front-office career thus far has been assembling a team with a core of Ray Allen, Sam Cassell (now aWizards assistant coach), and Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson that made it to the Eastern Conference finals in 2001. You've vowed to convert theWizards, a perennial laughingstock, into a perennial contender. Luck, and history, are not on your side.
We'll begin with your liabilities. You're pasty, you have a 1980s Tom Selleck mustache, you are effectively capped out, and your team finished deadlast in the Eastern Conference.[sup]1[/sup] Your star player, to whom you've committed an additional $96 million over the next five seasons, has lost a good portion of his explosiveness and has played a total of 15 games in the last two years. Only twoplayers come off the books this year: Juan Dixon and the already departed Dee Brown. Mike James holds a player option for next season at a salary of $6.4million that he wouldn't exercise at gunpoint. Etan Thomas, known for his intelligence, is more likely to enlist in the Marines than utilize his earlytermination option to void the final year of his current deal, good for $7.3 million next year.
Your assets are as follows: you holdone of the top five picks in the 2009 NBA Draft, with a 20% chance of landing the #1 pick in tonight's draftlottery.the 5th pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. (Of course, most observers have classified this as one of the weakest drafts in recent memory.) Brightspots on your roster include the maddeningly inconsistent and routinely winded JaVale McGee, solid role player Dominic McGuire, the serviceable Brendan Haywood(arguably MJ's best trade acquisition), consummate professional Antawn Jamison, and cap-friendly Caron Butler, one of few players who bring a physicalpresence to the lineup. Perhaps most importantly, you play in the Eastern Conference where, like a legacy child applying to an ivy-league school, your resuméneed only be marginally above average.
What do you do? What do you do?
[sup]1[/sup] In fact, your team's performance was woeful even by Washington Bullets standards. The lowest wintotal for any Washington Bullets team was 22 in 1995. The 2008-2009 Washington Wizards finished the season with 19 wins and 63 losses - tied with the 2002Wizards for the worst record since the franchise's opening campaign as the Chicago Packers in 1961, who were so abysmal they had to change their name thefollowing year to trick people into coming to their games. Times may have changed, but the Bullets/Wizards are still setting the standard for ineptitude in theEastern Conference.
If Julia Roberts met Lyle Lovett at age 6, started dating him at 13, married him at 21, gave up show business and worked in a coal mine to support him,listened to him warble and whine every night, and lived with him in this fashion with unerring fidelity until she died, she'd be ALMOST as blindly,inexplicably loyal as the average Wizards fan.
Your name is Eddie Grunfeld. The highlight of your front-office career thus far has been assembling a team with a core of Ray Allen, Sam Cassell (now aWizards assistant coach), and Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson that made it to the Eastern Conference finals in 2001. You've vowed to convert theWizards, a perennial laughingstock, into a perennial contender. Luck, and history, are not on your side.
We'll begin with your liabilities. You're pasty, you have a 1980s Tom Selleck mustache, you are effectively capped out, and your team finished deadlast in the Eastern Conference.[sup]1[/sup] Your star player, to whom you've committed an additional $96 million over the next five seasons, has lost a good portion of his explosiveness and has played a total of 15 games in the last two years. Only twoplayers come off the books this year: Juan Dixon and the already departed Dee Brown. Mike James holds a player option for next season at a salary of $6.4million that he wouldn't exercise at gunpoint. Etan Thomas, known for his intelligence, is more likely to enlist in the Marines than utilize his earlytermination option to void the final year of his current deal, good for $7.3 million next year.
Your assets are as follows: you hold
What do you do? What do you do?
[sup]1[/sup] In fact, your team's performance was woeful even by Washington Bullets standards. The lowest wintotal for any Washington Bullets team was 22 in 1995. The 2008-2009 Washington Wizards finished the season with 19 wins and 63 losses - tied with the 2002Wizards for the worst record since the franchise's opening campaign as the Chicago Packers in 1961, who were so abysmal they had to change their name thefollowing year to trick people into coming to their games. Times may have changed, but the Bullets/Wizards are still setting the standard for ineptitude in theEastern Conference.
If Julia Roberts met Lyle Lovett at age 6, started dating him at 13, married him at 21, gave up show business and worked in a coal mine to support him,listened to him warble and whine every night, and lived with him in this fashion with unerring fidelity until she died, she'd be ALMOST as blindly,inexplicably loyal as the average Wizards fan.
