Can We All Handle the Truth?

Michael Wilbon writes a great column here.

An individual great player doesn’t guarantee a championship — teams win championships. Sometimes it takes time for a franchise to weather the storms and win a title. Cook slowly to perfection.

8 player rotations are the norm in basketball –13 to 15 players on a team. In the NBA, 3 core players are the foundation, but a team needs to be 8 players deep to contend for a championship. Role players matter. Team chemistry matters. Coaching a consistent system matters. Lots of hard work to be done. Very few have figured it out. Winning a championship is the hardest accomplishment to reach in business, I believe.

In the NHL, free agency is important, but hockey is the ultimate team game. 23 active players on a roster. The best players play 24 minutes or so per game. In the NBA, a great player sees 40 plus minutes of action per game. And the NHL has a hard cap. Make a mistake in free agency in the NHL, and it is a huge set back for a team, more so in the NHL than the NBA right now.

We have been truthful to our fan bases on our plans — about how we view free agency, and how we intend to rebuild the Wizards and get the Capitals to the next step of excellence. I know some folks don’t agree with the plans. Time will tell who is right and who is not right, but to be surprised (as some fans are) that we aren’t making a big splash in free agency, is incomprehensible to me. We have been very straight forward with our plans and strategy.

6 thoughts on “Can We All Handle the Truth?”

I fully support your plan of having a tissue paper defense. I guess since you’ve arrived, no improvements are necessary.

We understand, but at the end of the day, free agency and trading….is there really a big difference (outside of the obvious)?

Unfortunately rebuilding the Wizards involves a proposed trade (Hinrich et al) that will directly help a rival team (Chicago)land LeBron James. I’m sorry, Ted, but deals like these will not help you rebuild the Wizards, and it greatly helps the Bulls in potentially dominating the league for years to come. The NBA is different than the NHL. Superstars really are all that matters – role players are virtually interchangeable, and chemistry usually takes care of itself. What is essential is understanding the specific value of every player on your NBA roster. Check out my blog for specific examples of this, particularly this post – http://www.nbafocus.com/the-future-is-now Cheers.

I think the concern is not that there wasn’t a ‘big splash’ so much as no one is seeing any corrections made, or even replacements made for our departed 2nd line center and top-6 d-man. Free agency is only one way to make those changes, but for a team like the Caps, who are only a few pieces away from serious contention but who have obvious holes, it seems to make the most sense.

Huge deals for old players is bad. No-move clauses are bad. But a free agent in and of itself is not bad. Everyone else is doing it.

All I know is…the defense is less than average and continues to be ignored. This team is beginning to look a lot like the San Jose Sharks….

With all due respect to Michael Wilbon, “tempered expectations” would have been a far more accurate word choice than “low expectations.” Low expectations seems to imply we are looking for no more from the future than we have had in the past, and furthermore that we would be content to sit on our laurels as another 26 win season comes to fruition. What would be fair to say is that Wizards fans want to see a team that competes every game. Fans do not appreciate it when a team looks as though it has given up on itself. While that was most certainly a concern in the past, I believe the moves being made by the Wizards organization, whether actual, expressed, implied, rumored, or otherwise publicized, are directly in line with the plan we were advised of from Day One. I think it only fair of Wizards fans to give more than a month before we start writing the plan off as an epic failure of Biblical proportions and a rival to the greatest of Greek Tragedies.

Acta exteriora iudicant interiora secreta – Outward acts indicate the inward intent. It would be unreasonable to claim the outward acts of the Washington Wizards organization are a mens rea, a state of mind of an ownership or an organization intent on failure. We have good people doing good things. I think some people look for reasons to complain.

Michael on July 3, 2010 at 12:02 PM said:

I fully support your plan of having a tissue paper defense. I guess since you’ve arrived, no improvements are necessary.
darrin on July 3, 2010 at 7:43 AM said:

We understand, but at the end of the day, free agency and trading….is there really a big difference (outside of the obvious)?
Tim on July 2, 2010 at 11:57 AM said:

Unfortunately rebuilding the Wizards involves a proposed trade (Hinrich et al) that will directly help a rival team (Chicago)land LeBron James. I’m sorry, Ted, but deals like these will not help you rebuild the Wizards, and it greatly helps the Bulls in potentially dominating the league for years to come. The NBA is different than the NHL. Superstars really are all that matters – role players are virtually interchangeable, and chemistry usually takes care of itself. What is essential is understanding the specific value of every player on your NBA roster. Check out my blog for specific examples of this, particularly this post – http://www.nbafocus.com/the-future-is-now Cheers.
Adam on July 2, 2010 at 11:17 AM said:

I think the concern is not that there wasn’t a ‘big splash’ so much as no one is seeing any corrections made, or even replacements made for our departed 2nd line center and top-6 d-man. Free agency is only one way to make those changes, but for a team like the Caps, who are only a few pieces away from serious contention but who have obvious holes, it seems to make the most sense.

Huge deals for old players is bad. No-move clauses are bad. But a free agent in and of itself is not bad. Everyone else is doing it.
hockeyphenom2007 on July 2, 2010 at 11:11 AM said:

All I know is…the defense is less than average and continues to be ignored. This team is beginning to look a lot like the San Jose Sharks….
Mike on July 2, 2010 at 10:27 AM said:

With all due respect to Michael Wilbon, “tempered expectations” would have been a far more accurate word choice than “low expectations.” Low expectations seems to imply we are looking for no more from the future than we have had in the past, and furthermore that we would be content to sit on our laurels as another 26 win season comes to fruition. What would be fair to say is that Wizards fans want to see a team that competes every game. Fans do not appreciate it when a team looks as though it has given up on itself. While that was most certainly a concern in the past, I believe the moves being made by the Wizards organization, whether actual, expressed, implied, rumored, or otherwise publicized, are directly in line with the plan we were advised of from Day One. I think it only fair of Wizards fans to give more than a month before we start writing the plan off as an epic failure of Biblical proportions and a rival to the greatest of Greek Tragedies.

Acta exteriora iudicant interiora secreta – Outward acts indicate the inward intent. It would be unreasonable to claim the outward acts of the Washington Wizards organization are a mens rea, a state of mind of an ownership or an organization intent on failure. We have good people doing good things. I think some people look for reasons to complain.