Saturday, June 9, 2007

More Wiz Draft Talk...Again

Agreed on Navarro, we've both been slurping the guy for years now. There needs to be a greater sense of urgency to get him on the right side of the Atlantic; he's already 25 or 26 and not getting any younger. I think it's ironic that a guy who hasn't even played for this team might be the best draft pick of the Jordan Era.

As for a Garnett trade, McHale knows he doesn't have much leighway. Because of Garnett's contract he knows he's backed into a corner...it's too hard for him to acquire players that can put them over the top. They're not even a playoff team right now! By the way, a trade like this happened only a few years ago when Miami traded for Shaq. They gave up a huge contract who contributed little (Brian Grant), Lamar Odom, who was a young guy but risky because of past suspensions for pot with LA's other team, and a former rookie of the year who had just gone through a fairly major sophomore slump (dropped six ppg., played ten less games) in Tuff Juice. None of those guys was an All-Star, and Miami still got one of the best big men ever for that package. Now, part of this was because Kupchak is a horrible GM, but McHale is arguably beating him in a race to the bottom. There's a lot of pressure on McHale right now to win at some point with one of the best players in the league, and internal grumbling from Garnett, similar to the internal pressure (from Buss, or Kobe, or both) to trade Shaq. They're similar situations.
It'd need a good sell job, but it's do-able, and it's more realistic than Tiago Splitter or Yi Jianlin, or any other stiff big man that would be available after Oden and Hawes in this draft. Maybe the Wiz could try to trade for a high draft pick next year and get Hibbert, but he's not a good fit for a running team, and it'd be hard to get any pick as high as he might go in next year's thinner draft. By the way, show of hands for those who cringed when they read that Josh McRoberts was at the Wizards draft workouts. I think I'd rather get Christian Laettner back than draft that big puss.

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