ESPN v. The Washington Bullets

David Thorpe of ESPN is out with his evaluation of the 2008 rookie draft class and what he writes about Javale McGee isn’t pretty: “The D-League was made for players like McGee.” Oh, snap!

John Hollinger of ESPN, one of the smartest and most influential basketball writers out there, has had plenty of doubts about the Bullets in the past and nothing Ernie Grunfeld has done in the last few days has quieted Mr Hollinger’s doubts. He writes:

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.

Washington is committing to these two for another half-decade and, in the process, tying up most of its salary flexibility. If either’s numbers plummet, his contract will make him nigh untradeable, except in exchange for somebody else’s flotsam. For better or for worse, the Wizards are stuck with these guys.

The Wizards’ alternate reality was letting both go in free agency and using what would have been a big chunk of cap space to try to remake the team around Butler — their best player this past season and the least expensive of the three going forward — and whomever else they could have signed. At worst, it seems they would have come away with Maggette, and their cap situation would have been far better over the next five seasons — in fact, they might have been able to get into the LeBron bidding in 2010; James recently named Washington, D.C., as one of his favorite cities.

One can take a glass-half-full approach and say the likes of Andray Blatche (22), Nick Young (22), Oleksiy Pecherov (23) and JaVale McGee (20) give the Wizards hope that help is on the way for their high-scoring trio. On the other hand, almost every team in the league can make the “maybe our young guys will turn out to be awesome” argument, and in Washington’s case, Blatche is the only one of the four who was any good last season.

If Arenas is healthy, and the kids are better, and the team improves on defense, and none of the veterans fall off … then maybe the Wizards will push into the mid- to high 40s in wins and grab a No. 3 or No. 4 seed in the East. Is that the upside they’re investing close to $180 million in over the next half-decade? It sure seems to me the fear of losing out on big-name stars caused Washington to miss out on a fantastic opportunity to remake its roster.

Now, I enjoy reading Mr Hollinger, but this isn’t the first time he’s predicted gloom and doom for the Bullets and he’s frequently been wrong on that subject.

Firstly, letting Gilbert and the Captawn go and replacing them with Corey Maggette and the slim possibility of taking Lebron James away from his future home in NYC is one helluva risk — one much more likely to backfire than pay off. I don’t see what Maggette gives the Bullets that they don’t already get [and better] from Gil and Caron Butler. And letting two All Stars go for the tiny prospect of getting Lebron James seems downright silly to me.

Last year, Mr Hollinger predicted a dropoff in production from Caron Butler, writing that he wasn’t as good as his numbers in his All Star 2006-07 season indicated. [It turned out Hollinger was wrong and Butler maintained his high productivity this season.] A year after downplaying Butler’s productivity, Hollinger now says the Bullets best bet was to rebuild around Butler. That doesn’t seem right.

While Mr Hollinger notes that the Bullets won 43, 41 and 42 games the last 3 seasons, he fails to note a pretty significant factor in those win totals: Injuries. Gil missed almost all of last season and the end of the previous season. Caron Butler missed significant time in both of the last two seasons and Antawn Jamison missed time in the season before this past one. A team with better injury luck with those three players would have won more games than they did each season — and perhaps a playoff series or two. It could be that Gil and Caron are going to be chronically injured and this is a cycle the Bullets will find themselves in as long as those two are on the roster. I wouldn’t assume that, though. It’s even more likely that both will come back this season, stay reasonably healthy, and be very productive. If that does happen, Washington should be good for at least 50 wins and a playoff series victory or two.

Those familiar with Mr Hollinger’s work will know that he predicted Washington would win 33 games and finish 13th in the conference last season — and that was even assuming Gil would be reasonably healthy! As it turned out, Washington finished 5th in the conference and won 42 games — almost all of them without Gilbert. Finally, Mr Hollinger makes PER [player efficiency rating] predictions for each player. His prediction for a number of Bullets players were rather low — and rather inaccurate. Let’s have a look.

Brendan Haywood
Projected 2007-08 PER: 14.02
Actual 2007-08 PER: 18.37

Caron Butler
Projected 2007-08 PER: 17.05
Actual 2007-08 PER: 20.73

Antawn Jamison
Projected 2007-08 PER: 16.25
Actual 2007-08 PER: 20.32

Andray Blatche
Projected 2007-08 PER: 13.01
Actual 2007-08 PER: 15.52

In other words, Hollinger low-balled all these players, predicting declines in PER for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM in 2007-08. In each case, the player not only exceeded Hollinger’s prediction [often by quite a bit], but improved upon the previous season’s PER. Missing a few here and there is one thing, but Hollinger is missing badly and repeatedly on the Bullets and the Bullets players.

I will still read Hollinger eagerly and pay attention to what he thinks, but as far as the Bullets are concerned, I’m starting to write him off. For whatever reason, Mr Hollinger is consistently wrong about the Bullets — and always in the same pessimistic direction. It’s not a coincidence anymore.