John Wall is a high concern for the Wizards. John Wall’s backup — whether Wall is healthy or injured — is a high concern for the Wizards. So much of a concern that they made a calculated decision to sign A.J. Price as backup in late July, which is way early in the time allowed to make roster decisions before the season. John Lucas III got more money from the Toronto Raptors, Keyon Dooling ultimately retired, and it didn’t look like the Houston Rockets would be parting ways with Shaun Livingston, at the time. What other backup point guard options were there?

And then Wall goes and gets injured. Timing is everything.

To compensate, the Wizards signed the 32-year old Jannero Pargo, and ultimately cut their 34th overall 2011 draft pick, Shelvin Mack, after training camp and preseason. About Pargo, the ever-lurking John Hollinger writes in his 2012-13 season preview on ESPN Insider:

Pargo played well for Atlanta last season but obviously his combination of age (32) and track record make him a somewhat risky investment. That said, this was by far the best point guard candidate left on the market and Washington did well to get him so inexpensively. I’d argue he was a better solution than Price, in fact.

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If this summer’s frenzied free agent pace has taught us anything, it’s that vying for players on the market, restricted or unrestricted, can be more trouble than it’s worth.

Teams like the 2011 champion Dallas Mavericks can find themselves out in the cold, losing number one targets (like Deron Williams), as well as their own (Jason Kidd and Jason Terry). The Mavs are now scrambling to gauge interest in Elton Brand, the 13-year veteran who was surprisingly amnestied by the Philadelphia 76ers late last week — even a bid to secure his services would be unsure. Ramon Sessions is under consideration. Ramon Sessions. The question being whispered by NBA insiders and, likely, the Mark Cuban brain trust: Is it time to trade Dirk Nowitzki?

Other teams and their fan bases might currently be under the impression that they’ve “won” something in free agency, committing X amount of dollars in a chase to over-pay suspect basketball potential around the league. Money thrown at the likes of Brandon Roy (Minnesota, 2-years, $10 million), Landry Fields (Toronto, 3-years, $20 million), Michael Beasley (Phoenix, 3-years, $18 million), and Omer Asik (Houston, 3-years, $25 million), could quickly backfire. More crazed spending likely on the way.

And not to mitigate the risk involved with building a team almost exclusively through the draft and trades. The Wizards, as much as any franchise, know about the failures in those maneuvers. One only need to start rattling off names like Mike Miller, Randy Foye and Kwame Brown. Different options come with varying repercussions and risks across team situations.

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Jan Vesely lets the jumpers fly at Wizards summer mini-camp day one (with a cameo from Bradley Beal).

“I’m not thinking about to show anything, I’m just happy to play and I will try to do my best on the court and try to get the wins.”

Those were Jan Vesely’s words on Monday afternoon when asked what he wanted to show the team about his game this summer. The quote was so him. Vesely plays  just to play, not for display.

The Vesely we saw flashes of last year is that instinctual, always-around-the-basketball guy. He doesn’t have to show the game, he knows it. Still, people expect to see something new, even if Jan claims he isn’t thinking about showing anything.

Two words: Jump. Shot.

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One of the benefits of the “soft salary cap” in the NBA is that it purportedly enables a team to retain its own players easier than a “hard salary cap.” Teams can offer their own free agents more money and more years than any other team, thus rewarding hometown fans and promoting player loyalty. Of course, it is not a flawless system, and there will always be players who have their minds firmly set on taking their talents to a different market to play with different teammates. But for the most part, a player’s current team will virtually always be able to offer a more lucrative and longer contract.

Back in 2003, the Washington Wizards were able to take advantage of one of the few loopholes in this soft cap system when they outbid the Golden State Warriors for Gilbert Arenas, a restricted free agent (RFA) after being a second round pick in 2001. The Warriors were over the cap and thus could only use an exception to re-sign Arenas. Gilbert was classified as an “Early Bird” free agent, meaning he had played with the Warriors over the previous two seasons without changing teams. A team can use the Early Bird exception to re-sign its own free agent for up to 175-percent of his salary in the previous season or 104.5-percent of the league’s average salary, whichever is higher. Therefore, Golden State could only match an offer sheet, or extend Gilbert’s contract, for up to the amount of the Early Bird exception ($4.9 million in 2003, the league average at the time). The Wizards smartly (two words you don’t hear next to each other very often) signed Arenas to an offer sheet nearly doubling Golden State’s exception, $8.5 million in starting salary, and left the Warriors without an option to legally match within salary cap rules.

This loophole was seemingly closed in the 2005 CBA with the “Gilbert Arenas Provision,” where it was ruled that an offer sheet made to a restricted free agent in his first or second year in the NBA could not contain a first-year salary greater than the non-taxpayer mid-level exception ($5 million for 2012-13) and a second-year salary no greater than the standard 4.5-percent raise from the first year. The third year of the offer sheet has no such restrictions and could be as high as the player’s maximum, given the offering team’s cap room. However, if a raise from year two to year three is greater than 4.5-percent, the team proposing the offer sheet must be able to fit the average of the entire contract under the cap, rather than the first-year salary, and that is how it is applied to their ledger. But if the original team decides to match the offer sheet, the annual salary is applied to the original team exactly as it is laid out in the standing offer sheet. To put this in context of 2003, the Wizards would only have been able to offer the full mid-level exception in the first two seasons, which at the time was $4.917 million. Golden State therefore would have at least had the option to match this offer sheet for Arenas, if they chose to do so.

The So-Called “Gilbert Arenas” Provision

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“Having been from Cleveland and everything we’ve gone through, you’d like to see your hometown do well, so I’m disappointed from that standpoint.”
-Flip Saunders

Yep, ol’ Flip is from Cleveland. But you probably already knew that. The high school All-American and 1973 Ohio Class A Player of the Year averaged 32 points per game during his senior year at Cuyahoga Heights, a school located in the burbs of the Mistake By The Lake.

Actually, my bad. I shouldn’t make fun of Cleveland. Even though Cavs fans lined up by the miles to witness and laugh at the Wizards after the Arenas gun fiasco and the rest of the implosion (including gladly taking the Gentleman Jamison), I cannot laugh at them at this moment. I feel very, very bad for those guys. And with that I say, ‘Join me people of Cleveland, in your distaste for Lebron.’

One quick question … who’s now more indefensible, LeBron or DeShawn Stevenson?

What? Too soon?

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[Editor's note: Below is the debut guest post of Arish Narayen. Arish is 23-years old and is currently in his second year at the University of Maryland School of Law. Arish has always been a basketball fan, especially of the Terps, but became enamored with the Wizards around the time Gilbert Arenas was hitting game winning shots and stealing game five from the Bulls in Chicago in the 2005 NBA Playoffs. The Wizards have gone nowhere but downhill from since, but somehow Arish has stuck around ... and now he wants to write about the Wiz for Truth About It.net. Go figure.

Check out Arish's debut below as he analyzes the Wizards' attempts to fill their potentially open small forward/wing position. Mike Prada has a quick breakdown of several wing candidates on Bullets Forever, but check out what Arish wrote too -- he worked on this post over the course of several days and goes in-depth statistically on a handful of players the Wizards are rumored to be interested in ... although Arish does use the much too vaunted 'Win Shares' stat that I recently went on a Twitter-rant against. I won't hold that against him. After all, the stat isn't good for nothing, it's just not all what it's cracked up to be. -Kyle]

The Wizards’ Small Forward Situation

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[Editor's note: This is the second piece on TAI by John Townsend, check out his first one here.]

photo courtesy of K. Praslowicz (Sjixxxy)'s Flickr - www.kpraslowicz.com

“Just because you have money doesn’t mean you should overspend on someone that won’t be a part of your long-term future.  If the right opportunity comes along, I think you want to look at it, but I’ve said all along that we might save our powder for down the road, to see what the new CBA brings, to see if there’s a hard cap or a soft cap.  We don’t really know all the rules going forward, so just because you have the cap room doesn’t mean you should go out and spend it if it’s not for the right player.”[1]

These were wise words spoken by Wizards GM Ernie, a new herald for operational procedure and organizational preparedness, at a press conference on June 10.  As a long-time Green Bay Packer fan (my first memories of football were watching Packers games at 4am in New Delhi, India with my Wisconsin-born dad), I understand and fully endorse building a team through the draft.  There seem to be philosophical parallels between Grunfeld and Packers GM Ted Thompson, who firmly believes that the most effective way to build a winning football team is through the draft.  Thompson sees free agency as a complementary tool which can be used to add the types of players to a roster that may otherwise be difficult to find. In practice, this means that the Packers re-sign as many of their own players possible.  Rebuilding post-Mike Sherman, the Packers made 14 draft-day trades, all but one of them down, turning 31 picks into 44.  The Packers’ picks filled the roster with solid “glue guys” and have been able to add impact players including QB Aaron Rodgers, FS Nick Collins, OLB Clay Matthews, TE Jermichael Finley, WR Greg Jennings, and NT BJ Raji.  The result? The Packers are a team poised to make deep playoff runs every winter and are near the top of the NFL in just about every statistical category.[2]

Ted Leonsis, the Wizards new majority owner, made public his commitment to building a “generationally great team” that will ultimately win a championship.  Under new management, the Wizards will aim to hit their targets in the draft, spend prudently, create a competitive, cohesive team on the court that plays with an identity and within a system, and (most importantly) win games.[3] In an open note to Wizards fans, Leonsis also dismissed the generalized notion that the franchise was unwilling and averse to bringing in free agents.  Leonsis noted that that teams must consider using all of the tools at their disposal: the draft, free agency (small, medium, and large), rookie free agency, waiver wire pickups, developmental league players, and finding players in Europe.

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Most Wizards fans wouldn’t mind seeing Mike Miller on the team next year, but know there is virtually no chance of it happening, despite Miller’s offer of loyalty immediately after the last game of the season, and more recently telling Comcast’s Chris Miller, “the Wizards landing the number one pick changes everything,” and that he would “love to play with John Wall.”

We know Mike wants to play for a championship contending winner, desperately. His hunger was only increased by the sour taste of 2009-10 with the Wizards. And the 2010-11 Wizards won’t quench his thirst either.

We also know Mike is boys with LeBron James. We know Mike went so far as to name his son, Maverick, after the close friend and adviser of James, Maverick Carter … or so LeBron claims. We know that the 2010 NBA Free Agency dominoes are held hostage by Mr. James. Mike Miller knows this too.

“That’s when everything will start,” Miller recently told Stu Whitney of the Argus Leader, “LeBron and those guys will start making their decisions, and that will open the floodgates for some of the second-tier guys.”

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While Dwyane Wade is living it up on South Beach, probably wondering like Shaq and Bubs how the Heat managed to win that ’06 title while they were all partying their STDs off …

While LeBron is trying to determine which city will most make him a global icon (for the record, it’s NYC #1, Brooklyn #2 and D.C. #3) …

While Chris Bosh is wondering if those first two will be apart of his ‘Hey look at me!’ YouTube campaign …

While Joe Johnson is dribbling around at age 30, preparing to be the pre-1999 Susan Lucci of free-agency …

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We’ve heard it from Ernie Grunfeld before, most recently in an interview by Mike Prada of Bullets Forever.

We were the first to make a move, so everybody’s following us (chuckles).

True, the Wizards were the first to strike when they landed Mike Miller and Randy Foye. But it’s hard to laugh, or continue to pridefully boast about the move, when the cream of the Eastern Conference crop keeps passing the Wizards by.

Let’s quickly go through what the top three teams in the East (Orlando, Cleveland and Boston), have done this off-season. Read more »