Truth About It.net will turn a whole five years old at the end of this October.

Hard to believe/interesting. Nonetheless, over the life of the site from the 2007-08 season to 2011-12, we’ve seen/lived/suffered through 131 wins, 263 losses, four coaches, two owners, one GM/team president, one Phil Chenier mustache removal, and 56 total players (amazingly, 48 players over the last three seasons).

You may have heard of ESPN’s #NBArank project, now in year two. Now hear of #WizardsRank, where we rank each of those 56 players during Truth About It.net’s five-year run.

TAI anonymously polled 27 members of the Wizards pixel establishment — from mainstream media to new media, TAI staffers included, to a few pixel consumers (readers of the site) — and got 17 responses.

Participants were given the full list of 56 in alphabetical order, and included for each player were total games, minutes, PER (player efficiency rating), and WS/48 (win-shares per 48 minutes) only from the last five seasons. Participants were asked to rate each player on the scale of 1-to-10 according to this criteria: on court performance; off court performance; intangibles; and own personal memory. Yes, this is totally subjective, but relatively collective. So let’s get it started…

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The Washington Wizards continue the road trip in Dallas tonight for a matchup against the Mavericks. These two teams are most recently connected by the seven-player deal they completed on February 13, 2010. Washington sent supposed cornerstone pieces Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson (and cash, don’t forget the cash) to the Mavericks in exchange for Josh Howard, Drew Gooden, James Singleton and Quinton Ross. The crew from Washington helped Dallas win an NBA championship; the crew from Dallas helped Washington accomplish nothing but a chance to clean up after mistakes. Haywood is the only player from the trade remaining on either team. What maneuvering. Moving on, for tonight’s 3-on-3 we have Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh) from the ESPN TrueHoop Network Mavs blog The Two Man Game (amongst other blogs), Beckley Mason (@BeckleyMason) of HoopSpeak.com/ESPN, and TAI’s Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It). Three questions, three answers starts now…

#1) Although questionable in general, Brendan Haywood is evidently not physically questionable against the Wizards tonight and is set to return to the court for the first time in five games,  essentially (he sprained his ankle in the opening minute of Dallas’ loss to Oklahoma City on March 5th and missed the next four games). This will be the third meeting between the two former practice sparing partners, former Wizards teammates Haywood and JaVale McGee, and the numbers for each player over the previous two look pretty paltry. Who prevails in the matchup tonight and what does it mean for their respective teams?

IAN LEVY: I think Haywood gets the better of McGee, and it means a ton for the Mavericks. The Mavericks have capable depth in the front-court but when Haywood is out, everyone has to move up a chair into a role that asks a little more of them then they are capable. Getting Brandan Wright back will help settle the rotation as well.

BECKLEY MASON: McGee prevails with his activity and earnest effort. If McGee can control the glass, it might make up for what I predict will be a decided shooting advantage in the Mavs favor. The Wizards need to get more possessions, and while Dallas won’t test McGee at the rim too often on drives, he’ll need to be active and communicative on the perimeter. What I’m saying is: McGee will likely outplay Haywood, but he has to do more than that to swing the game.

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A lot of people were disappointed when the Wizards traded for Kirk Hinrich.  Mike Prada of SB Nation alone gave the move a “Nay”, a “Feh”, and a “D-”.

There is no question that “Kurt” is overpaid, but salary cap space only gets you so far.  Even if the Wizards had upwards of $25 million to spend, it wouldn’t get them any closer to signing a “max” contract player.  Let’s be serious.  None of the league’s top players ever really considered coming to D.C., even with John Wall.  The Wizards will be a work in progress for a couple of years, and when we are honestly competitive, Hinrich will no longer be under contract.

So is he worth it for this Wizards team?  I turned to Synergy Sports Technology to find out.

OFFENSE

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{flickr/Buou}

Mere minutes after the introductory press conference of 2010 draft picks Trevor Booker and Hamady N’Diaye ended, rumors began to surface that Ernie Grunfeld had another trade up his sleeve to absorb the Wizards’ cap space while gaining misspent potential in the process.

The team has officially announced that they will acquire 2007 sixth overall draft pick Yi Jianlian from the New Jersey Nets in exchange for Quinton Ross. New Jersey will also send Washington “cash considerations,” estimated to be $3 million.

Ross recently exercised a player option that will pay him $1,146,337 next season. Jianlian is set to make $4,050,499 in 2010-11 with a qualifying offer of $5,403,366 for 2011-12.

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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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The Pick and Roll is a staple of many NBA offenses. The Wizards, in particular, starved when it came to defending P&Rs in 2009-10.

Once again turning to Synergy Sports Technology, we learn that as a team, the Wizards defended the P&R ball handler 1,128 times in plays that ended with a FGA, TO or FTA. This accounted for 12.6% of the team’s defensive plays. Defending these plays, the Wizards gave up 0.89 points-per-possession (PPP), which is tied for the most allowed in the NBA.

Against the Wizards, the P&R ball handler shot 43.2% on field goals and scored 42.9% of the time, which is the second highest scoring rate allowed in the league.

Conversely, the Wizards had to defend the P&R roll man 406 times and fared slightly better in the PPP department.

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After a recent Detroit Pistons practice, Ben Wallace said, “They say losing builds character, I say losing sucks. That’s what I think.”

The Wizards are just as bad as the Pistons … same 24-53 record that’s currently tied for fifth worst in the NBA. Actually, one could say the Wizards are worse because their expectations going into the season were much higher, according to most experts.

But regardless of Washington’s downtrodden ways, the question of losing, ‘Does it build character or does it suck?’, was worth posing to several Wizards before Tuesday’s game against the Golden State.

Al Thornton, Quinton Ross, Randy Foye, Cartier Martin, Mike Miller, Cedric Jackson, Shaun Livingston and Earl Boykins answered … well, not really Boykins. Video below the jump …

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Eight seconds left in the game. Your team is up three points, having just hit two free-throws making the score 90-87. Your opponent must go the length of the court, i.e., no timeouts left in the NBA or a regular made basket scenario in college.

Do you foul and put your opponent on the line for two-free throws (no fouls to give/in double-bonus)?

Or do you play straight-up defense, allowing the other team a chance to tie the game with a three?

Opponent can be a factor, and that did come up when I posed this basketball strategy question to several Wizards before Sunday’s Nets game: Mike Miller, Quinton Ross, Cedric Jackson, James Singleton, Al Thornton, Randy Foye, Cartier Martin and JaVale McGee. Here’s what they had to say:

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Quinton Ross has a player option for $1,146,337 million next season. I’m sure some Wizards fan out there don’t want him to take it. Get over it. He probably will.

But yea, Ross is bad … well, at least his stats are, which certainly serve as a partial reflection of his abilities as a player, but are incapable of telling the whole story … such as his reputation for being a good defensive player, which can certainly be debated.

Leading up to Saturday’s game against the Jazz, in Ross’ 19 games and 193 minutes with the Wizards he had a PER of -0.3.

On Saturday, taking and making one shot, along with committing a single foul in five minutes of action pushed his PER with the Wizards into positive territory at 0.1.

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