Wizards, Bullets, and Curses, Oh My!, Part 2

   

When we last left off, the Bullets were busy making a mockery of the draft process. The one decent player they had, Jeff Malone, was traded in 1990. The team did not make the playoffs for 8 straight years, from 1989 to 1996. During much of that stretch they had the same propensity to be just good enough to not be able to draft a sure thing, and just dumb enough to make the least of their draft picks.

In 1994, this started to change. First, the team drafted Juwan Howard in, someone who could actually play basketball without making a mockery of the game. Then, in the fall of 1994 they traded Tom Gugliotta and a couple first round picks for Chris Webber, who was also known to be capable of playing basketball. The trade was a panic move by the Warriors, who were worried that Webber would flee the following summer when he could exercise his opt-out clause. Webber hated Don Nelson (then the coach of the Warriors), and the change of scenery should have done him good.

Amusingly, the Bullets managed to trade a notoriously un-clutch, soft, overrated "superstar" in Vince Carter for the same thing in Chris Webber. Even with the draft four years away, they almost telepathically linked that pick to the very thing that always crippled them: a star that didn't feel the need to do what stars do.

Webber's first two seasons were marked by injuries. He played 54 and 15 games in his first two seasons, and the team continued to be dreadful. Amusingly, the season in which he only played 15 games the teams' record was 18 games better than when he played in 54 games the year prior, although some of that was due to the team having drafted Rasheed Wallace.

Of course, they traded Rasheed Wallace for Rod Strickland after one year. While this wasn't an abjectly terrible trade, trading away promising young big men for aging guards is never a good move. Strickland gave the Bullets 3 good seasons and one decent one before being washed up, ultimately succeeding in getting them to the playoffs once and winning zero games when they got there. Wallace went on to play on teams that went to the conference finals regularly and won a title. Rasheed also played in 4 All-Star games to Strickland's zero. Short term thinking at its finest.

The following year (96-97), with a (mostly) healthy Webber, the team made the playoffs and served as the whipping boys for the 69 win Chicago Bulls. The following year the team failed to make the playoffs despite winning 42 games, having fallen one short of the Heat and the Knicks.

Taking these developments as a whole, and considering the painful preceding decade, the Bullets were in good shape. Webber and Howard were young and talented, each having made an All-Star game at that point. While the team was far from a contender, the most common model for success in the NBA is taking a talented core of players and building around them, and the Bullets had their core.

That is, they had their core until that May, when they traded Webber because he was being a petulant asshole and the Bullets decided that they were sick of that. Wes Unseld (now the G.M. of the Bullets, a role in which he did his best to make sure no one remembered he was a great player by systematically destroying the team) was tired of Webber's immaturity and vacillating interest in playing hard, and traded him for Mitch Richmond, a consummate professional. Richmond was also 33, while Webber was 25. Richmond played two more years before retiring, while Webber went on to lead the Kings to the Conference Finals in 2002 and played in a number of other game 7's that the Kings ultimately lost.

This trade, more than anything else, is a microcosm for the failure of the Bullets. They target the wrong kind of player, and then they can't handle the ramifications, leading them to do more damage. Webber was the same player for the Bullets that he was in Golden State. They were correct in trying to obtain him for a bargain price. When you acquire a head case, though, you have to have a plan for dealing with them. They can't be treated as though they are mature, upstanding players who are without flaw if that simply isn't the case. While Webber was a great talent, he was also a head case of the highest order. A couple years on the Kings, with better and more veteran teammates around him and a better and more veteran coach leading him, helped him mature into a much better (if still flawed) player and leader. Much as Elvin Hayes needed Unseld to cover up his faults, Webber needed a group of people that wouldn't accept his faults. Webber never got this in Washington, and it won't be the last time we see this happen.

The post Webber era was again marked by both stupidity and futility. 7 straight years missing the playoffs, trading Ben Wallace for nothing, trading Rip Hamilton for the enigmatic Jerry Stackhouse, drafting Kwame Brown (in what was admittedly a pretty rotten draft).....the list goes on. They even managed to whiff in the 2003 draft, taking Jarvis Hayes over guys like Leandro Barbosa, Kendrick Perkins, and........Josh Howard. Awkward.

This era was, of course, notable mostly for the 2 years from 01-03 when none other than Michael Jordan decided that being the team president wasn't enough, and he laced up the sneakers once more.

Now, I understand that people wanted him to go out on top, the final shot of his career a picturesque game winner in the finals, our memories of him as an unstoppable force of nature intact. But being a professional athlete is a fleeting gift, and it wasn't as though he couldn't play anymore. He simply wasn't the player he once was.

His return did not, however, do much good for his franchise. Yes, they won 18 more games than they had the year prior (up from 19 to 37), but they still didn't make the playoffs in either year, and it wasn't as though Jordan was a long term solution. He was a sideshow, and one that prevented the team from moving forward and improving in a substantive way.

When Jordan moved on, the team went back to the gutter, winning 25 games. They had also, over the coure of 6 years, given up Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, and Rip Hamilton, who would of course go on to win a title as 3 of the starters on the 2004 Pistons. There was a glimmer of hope, though, as in 2003 they signed Gilbert Arenas, a player who was immensely talented and wanted out of a bad situation in Golden State after 2 years. If that sounds familiar, that would be because it's the exact same thing that happened with Chris Webber. I wish I were making this up.

In 2004 the team traded Stackhouse and Devin Harris for Antawn Jamison. Jamison's presence, combined with breakout years from Arenas and Larry Hughes, propelled the team from 27th in offense to 10th, and they made the 2005 playoffs, where they beat the Chicago Bulls in 6 games before getting swept by the Heat.

Hughes left in free agency that summer, but a trade for Caron Butler (only giving up uber-bust Kwame Brown) more than sufficiently replaced him. The Wizards had a talented core in place, but it was a core that was heavy on offense and light on defense. The next three seasons reinforced that notion, as they finished near to .500 every year. Each of those years they made the playoffs only to be ousted by Lebron James and the Cavaliers.

By 2008, the Wizards had tired of this, and DeShawn Stevenson decided that he was going to take matters into his own hands. He went out of his way to say that he was completely capable of guarding Lebron, and went as far as to call him overrated.

Anyone with a modicum of sense would have thought better than to call out someone who was definitely going to take it personally and subsequently make the Wizards pay. DeShawn does not have that sense.

Lebron, predictably, averaged a 30-9.5-7.5 for the series, with a game 6 line of 27-13-13 thrown in for good measure.

To make matters worse, Arenas had missed all but 13 games of the season with a knee injury, and yet still attempted to come back for the playoffs. He was incapable of performing, and played in only 4 of the 6 games, and in limited minutes when he did play.

Now, there is nothing wrong with being a team that can't quite get over the hump. It happens to lots of teams, and as long as you don't make any really terrible mistakes with trades, draft picks, or contracts, you will generally be able to improve your team given some patience and due diligence.

The Wizards, apparently thinking about none of this, decided to give a player who was a notorious head case, couldn't play defense, and had just played a whopping 13 games due to a serious knee injury, a $111 million contract for 6 years.

The rest is history. Arenas played 2 games the following year while openly fighting with the team about the treatment he should seek. He was ready to play in 09-10, and came back to a team that underachieved from the start. The infamous gun incident, and his unbelievably stupid handling of it, was simply the straw that broke the Wizards back. They had no financial flexibility because of Arenas' situation, and a roster that could barely win a game. The Wizards had little choice but to gut the team, a slap to the face for their fans who expected a product that was at the very least entertaining. To add injury to insult, the only real player they acquired in their dealings was hurt within 4 games, an injury that would end his season.

What's amazing is that, through all of this, there was only one constant: the late Abe Pollin. He had been the principal owner of the team for essentially as long as it had existed. He always showed an affinity for star players, refusing to be objective in matters regarding them. He hired unfit coaches and general managers, and he didn't put out a watchable product for the better part of 3 decades.

He also helped to re-build Washington D.C., particularly the area around the new stadium. Unlike many such projects, where there are grand promises of gentrification and increased economic viability, Abe actually delivered, the area having been built up considerably in the wake of the new arena.

Whatever he, and by extension the Wizards, are, though, they are not cursed. It is actually remarkable how far their predicament is from a curse. There are only a handful of devastating injuries in their history, and the players that sustained them (Arenas and Webber) were known to be injury prone well in advance of the Wizards acquiring them and signing them. The team has consistently targeted players, such as Hayes, Webber, and Arenas, that on many levels simply don't understand sublimating themselves for the team. They aren't the kind of players you want the future of your franchise to be reliant upon, and yet time and time again the Wizards created a situation in which that was their only option. They drafted terribly for nearly their entire existence, traded quality young players for aging and soon to be decrepit veterans, and when they did get flawed talent, they didn't create an environment in which they could mature and thrive.

None of that suggests a curse to me. It suggests a 30 year period of willful ignorance, a refusal to learn from mistakes, and an inability to sacrifice short term benefit for long term prosperity.

Perhaps now that can change. Maybe new leadership will have the sense to realize what mistakes have been made. But there is ample opportunity for error this summer: a draft with loads of talent but many question marks, and a free agent class with a similar dynamic. Hopefully, for their fans sake, they make some prudent moves.

Of course, they could simply be cursed into stupidity. That should probably be their new marketing plan. At least then they would have an excuse for this crap.

Image Via ScrapeTV

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com