Ah yes, our seven-man smorgasbord of veterans with faults and unproven youngsters.  Depending on who you ask, this unit may or may not need to be consolidated or upgraded, but for the time being, it's what we've got.

And what, exactly, do we have?  We have two solid starters, one that's an absolute ace offensively and normally a sieve defensively and one that's awkward offensively and an underrated presence defensively.  We have two veterans who are limited, but are trusted by the coach even when they are blocking players who deserve some of their minutes.  Then, we have three young guys, all with the potential of being a difference maker, but all projects that need playing time despite being in different stages of their development.  

You don't have to be Eddie Jordan to have trouble allocating 96 minutes a game to this group.  (Though he's particularly "good" at it).  

There are so many trade-offs to consider.  Play Etan Thomas for his rebounding...but do so at the expense of Brendan Haywood's defense and (maybe) attitude.  Play Darius Songaila for his offensive smarts...but do so at the expense of Andray Blatche's much-needed development.  Play Antawn Jamison 40 minutes a night for his essential all-around contributions...but do so at the expense of providing developmental minutes to Blatche, JaVale McGee and Oleksiy Pecherov, projects drafted to eventually replace him.

96 minutes, seven guys, all power forwards or centers. How would you specifically allocate the minutes? 

Some considerations:

• Last year, only Jamison played more than 20 percent of the team's minutes at a position other than power forward or center.  Otherwise, these guys were exclusively playing the 4 or the 5. 
• In 2006/07, when Haywood played more than 25 minutes in a game, the Wizards were 18-8.
• According to Basketballvalue.com, Darius Songaila had the second-highest adjusted plus/minus on the team last year, behind only Jamison.  
• The highest PER of any reserve on the team last year belonged to Andray Blatche at 15.5.  In 2006/07, that honor belonged to Etan Thomas.
• To review: Though Haywood has never posted a higher defensive rebound percentage than Thomas in a year both played, the team's defensive efficiency has always been better with Haywood on the floor instead of Thomas.  

Good luck!

I'll be honest, I really don't how to preface this post, so let's jump past the thin candy shell and right into the ooey-gooey chocolate center of the post shall we?

WHAT THE WIZARDS WOULD BE IF THEY WERE CANDY

Gilbert Arenas = Pixy Stix: The complaints about both are the same: Very sweet, good for a quick thrill, not a whole lot of filling substance.  Yet you rarely see fans of either complain about feeling empty.

Andray Blatche = Twizzlers: Both could benefit from being a little thicker.

Dee Brown = Skittles: In the interest of full disclosure, nothing about Dee Brown's game reminds me of Skittles, but whenever I watch him, he reminds me of a hyper kid running around after eating a whole bag Skittles.

Caron Butler = Snickers: With a Snickers bar, you're getting a nice, diverse package of chocolate, nougat, peanuts, and caramel.  Caron also gives you a little bit of everything and puts it into a sweet package that everyone can enjoy.  (Not to mention, that every so often you see both wrapped in gold.  But let's not talk about the alternate jerseys right now.)

Antonio Daniels = Hershey's: Sure, there's stuff out there that might taste a little better, or have some fancier packaging, but these two give you what you're looking for every single time.

Brendan Haywood = Peanut Brittle: At first look, they both look kind of clumsy.  Brendan isn't exactly Pete Maravich and peanut brittle looks like a rejected batch of semi-processed peanut butter.  But when you get down to it, you realize that both are pretty doggone good.

Antawn Jamison = M&M's: A timeless classic.  And like Jamison's shot, you can find M&M's in just about every variety imaginable.

JaVale McGee = Bacon Bar: At first, they both sound kind of gross (Chocolate flavored bacon?  An athletic 7-footer that has 3 pt. range but struggles with rebounding?) but they're both intriguing enough to make you want to try it out at least once.

Dominic McGuire = Shock Tarts: Need I say more?

Oleksiy Pecherov = Laffy Taffy: They give you some flavor, and they're good for a chuckle.  What more could you ask for?

Darius Songaila = Twix: What? He likes things dipped in chocolate.

DeShawn Stevenson = Everlasting Gobstopper: You can try to wear them down, but you know at the end of the day that they're too durable to let something like saliva or a knee injury keep them from playing.

Etan Thomas = Gourmet Chocolate: It's a decent product, just a little more pricey than it should be.

Nick Young = Airheads: Being the youthful player that he is, Nick Young makes some decisions on the court that make you wonder what's going on in his mind.  But then you remember that one day the maturity will come and then we can stop wondering about his head and we can devote all of our focus to his air.

Last season, had to be a bit of a relief for Ernie Grunfeld.  While other GM's had to try and shuffle rosters depending on injuries, D-League callups, and the like, Grunfeld roster set-up was quite simple.  The Wizards only carried 13 players on the roster (except for Mike Wilks' two week ) and Etan Thomas was on the Inactive list all season, so Ernie was left with 12 players to fill 12 spots on the active roster

Now with Etan getting healthy, as well as the addition of JaVale McGee, the Wizards have 14 players to fit into 12 spots on the active roster. In other words, two players are going to have to get used to watching the game from the bench in suits. In my mind, the only rational choices for the inactive list are JaVale McGee and Oleksiy Pecherov.  While part of the reason I say that is because they're the 13th and 14th best players on the team, the more important factor in my reasoning is a valuable asset that we can use to our advantage like never before: the D-League.

The D-League was made for players like McGee and O-Pec who need experience to help realize their potential.  Players in their first 2 years (a qualification both players meet) can be optioned down 3 times in a season, so we can let McGee and Pech get playing time that they need and wouldn't get in Washington and still have them available for when/if someone gets injured.  If there's a drawback in letting those two develop their games in Dakota, I haven't seen it.

The Wizards haven't used the D-League a lot in previous seasons, partly because of a lack of prospects and partly because of a lack of warm bodies.  Now that both of those issues have been resolved (for now), there's no reason why we shouldn't be using of the Developmental League to help develop our players this season.

Because brevity is the key to good writing...

Andray Blatche: Looks stronger.  Played inside more.  Still struggles finishing.

Dominic McGuire: Displayed mid-range game.  Still a tiger on the glass.

Nick Young: Very concerning performance.  Lacked explosion to change speeds and finish.

Dee Brown: Pushes the ball well.  Was a bit erratic.

JaVale McGee: Very raw, but when he looks good, he looks good.

Gary Forbes: Shot poorly.  Strong defender.  Good finisher.  Bad handles.

Vladimir Veremeeko: Knows how to play.  Too small and slow for NBA.

Jonathan Wallace: Good shooter.  Deceptively quick.  More of a combo guard.

Dontaye Draper: Erratic, poor shot selection, not a Princeton PG.

Frank Elegar: Athletic, plays extremely hard.  Should have received more minutes.

Taj McCullough: Barely noticed him.

Oleksiy Pecherov: Injury meant no buckets.

Over the last few years, lots of new ways have been developed to analyze and express statistics in a lot of different ways.  What's can be lost in all of this is how all of this newfound information translates to the game being played on the court.  Sadly, I haven't been able to find a way to bridge that information gap, but I have managed to find a new, highly scientifical way to chart the mentality of players when they have the ball in the half court.  As you'll see, the courts are color-coded for each mentality shift, so I'll provide a little legend to explain each mentality after the jump.

Of course, this is still a work in progress so I've only been able to test this with our Summer League players.  You may be shocked at what you discover...

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Tonight, for the first time we'll get a look at the newest additions to the Wizards, Javale McGee and Dee Brown.  Tonight, we'll also get our first look at Vladimir Veremeenko, who you may remember was the WIzards' 2nd round choice in 2006.  Unlike our first round pick from '06, Oleksiy Pecherov, VV hasn't had a chance to play with the team until now.

While gaining clearance to play in this year's Summer League doesn't make Veremeenko's buyout from BC Khimki any easier, it does give a chance to see how he does against players of NBA or near NBA talent, which will go a long way in helping management determine if he'll be worth buying out at some point down the line.

From the little that I've been able to find about Veremeenko on the interwebs, it looks like we won't be getting a stiff:

He runs the court very well, and enjoys a very good first step and nice handles that allow him to penetrate, giving him the ability to punish his defender with his superior quickness. He can also produce from the low post, although he usually looks for a turnaround jumper in those situations.

Veremeenko understands the game pretty well. You can feel it while watching him pass the ball, quickly and to the right place, or just by observing his efficient movement without the ball while looking for room to operate.

He's quite a nice team defender, careful with rotations and sometimes even energetic while trying to come up with a block from the weak side, showing a nice vertical leap and good timing. He has good lateral quickness for the power forward spot as well.

Not only does he have that going for him, but he's also is familiar with the Princeton offense, so he won't have to deal with the learning curve that other players have have struggled with when they're learning the offense.

His strengths show up quite nicely in the stat sheet, where his shooting numbers continue to rise.  This season he's shooting at nearly a 65% clip while hitting 50% from beyond the arc.  That's pretty daggone good.  You'll notice that most of his other averages are down, but that's a result of playing less minutes which I think can be attributed to BC Khimki using him as a spark plug off the bench in the same way Dallas used Jamison during the year he spent with the Mavs, but I can't say for sure, since I just haven't been able to get the TiVo to record to Russian SuperLeague games yet.

Like most of you, I'm salivating over what the three headed monster of Dee Brown, Nick Young, and Dominic McGuire will bring on the fast break, but make sure to keep an eye on the mystery man from Belarus tonight as well.

I found this news very interesting, and not because it involved former Wizard Calvin Booth:

Philadelphia 76ers forwards Rodney Carney, Calvin Booth and a future No. 1 pick have been traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves to free as much as $2 million in additional salary cap space for the Sixers to offer Elton Brand or Josh Smith, multiple league sources said.

Minnesota sends Philadelphia its $2.8 million trade exception from a 2007 deal of Mark Blount to the Miami Heat.

I'll admit that my first thought was that the Sixers were taking an awfully big risk dealing a future No. 1 draft pick just for the slight chance that they could secure Elton Brand or Josh Smith. 

But after thinking about it more, the Sixers' situation is pretty similar to ours.  They don't know exactly how much room they'll have under the salary cap until tonight, but they do know that it probably wouldn't have been quite enough to get Brand or Smith.  Therefore, they found a team that could take some of their spare parts for nothing, providing them a little extra cap room to achieve their goal.  Better yet, in trading Carney and Booth, they remove guys they don't need.  Carney is blocked on the wing by Andre Iguodala, Thaddeus Young, Willie Greene and Louis Williams, while Booth is clearly behind Young, Samuel Dalembert, Reggie Evans and Jason Smith.  If they put protection on the pick, that devalues its significance as well. 

We, of course, aren't looking for room under the salary cap, but we are looking for room under the luxury tax.  If we save two million dollars, it might be enough to use the full mid-level exception on a guy who could fill more of a need.

What fits the bill?  Well, we have three young prospects up front in Andray Blatche, Oleksiy Pecherov and JaVale McGee, but they're all competing for backup minutes with Darius Songaila and Etan Thomas.  Surely we don't need all of those guys going forward. 

Ideally, the first two guys we'd get rid of would be Thomas and Songaila, but my feeling is their contracts are too large for a team under the cap to take on.  Plus, they're veterans.  I doubt Minnesota would agree to the above trade if Carney, still a young guy with potential to improve, wasn't in the deal.

So what about Pecherov?  We probably don't have enough evidence on him, but with all the bigs on the roster, it seems like he's redundant.  He's owed about 1.5 million dollars next season, and with the drafting of McGee, I'm not sure how he's going to be able to play.  Why not try to dump his salary on a team under the cap?  How about sending him to Memphis along with the Grizzlies' draft pick we took from Navarro?  That 1.5 million saved can be used to shore up our backup small forward position, thereby balancing out the roster more effectively.

Ernie should be pursuing trades like those this offseason.  Every little bit under the tax counts.

A few days ago, Mike Jones (who!) gave us a look at this year's summer league roster.  Mainly, this is going to give some of the younger players like Blatche, Young, McGuire, Pecherov, Veremeenko and McGee a chance to get some playing time and work on their games during the off-season.

The thing is, unless you're the Trail Blazers and you have loads of draft picks available, you're going to have to sign some players that aren't a part of the team to fill out the roster.  Most of the time these players are just that serve as minute eaters for the starters, but you never know when you might luck out and find someone that could help the team down the road.  With that in mind, here's some info on the players that were invited to play on the Wizards Summer League squad.

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Previously: Etan Thomas.

Stats: Per-game: 9.1 minutes, 3.6 points, 1.9 rebounds, 0.2 assists, 1.7 three-pointers attempted.

Per-36: 14.1 points, 7.4 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 1.9 turnovers

Percentages: 35.2 FG%, 28.3 3PT%, 64.5 FT%, 42% eFG%, 45.1 TS%

Advanced (explanations): 9.6 PER, 12.1 REB%, 22.4 UsgR, 10.9 TOV%, 94 ORtg, 111, DRtg, 3.6 AST%, -1.5 WSAA (Win Shares Above Average).

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Pradamaster: Normally, 35 games is too small a sample to make this determination, but I feel confident in saying that the Wizards should not count on Oleksiy Pecherov for anything in the future.  An injured ankle limited his development as a rookie, but when he played, he shot often, made very few of those shots, and showed a pathetic disinclination to do anything more than launch three-pointers and blow defensive assignments.

I think the stat that tells all you need to know about Pecherov is this: of his 125 shots attempted this year, nearly half (60) were three-pointers.  Of those 60, only 17 actually went in.  Going one step further, 81 percent of his shots were jumpers this year.  81 percent!  Granted, Pecherov is a perimeter-shooting big man, but nobody who is seven feet tall should have nearly half of his shots be threes. 

Worse yet, his trigger-happy three-point nature killed a ton of possessions.  Twenty-two percent of Pecherov's possessions ended with him, a figure matched only by Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison, and Nick Young.  Those four each had true shooting percentages over 52, while Pecherov's was 45.  Not good.  I don't think Pecherov was being selfish, but it's disappointing to see someone so inefficient use so many possessions.  If we're counting on Pecherov to be a role player, and not someone who scores very much, this shot-jacking is very troubling.

The maddening thing about Pecherov is that he actually rebounded pretty well.  His rebound rate was higher than Darius Songaila's, and it was also higher than Dominic McGuire, who entered the league as one of college basketball's best rebounders.  The sample of shots he took in the lane is very small, but I imagine he'd be relatively efficient on those types of shots.  The biggest knock on Pecherov coming into the season is that he wasn't physical enough to play in the paint, but this makes it seem like the problem is more mental than physical.  Again, not a good sign.

I suppose there's a way that Pecherov can become more of a paint presence and shoot fewer threes, but seeing as it's a mental problem rather than a physical one, I doubt it happens.  I bet Ernie Grunfeld counted on Pecherov to be a center of the future, but it's becoming clear that Grunfeld overstated Pecherov's potential.  Ernie tends to be hit-or-miss in the draft (Michael Redd and Blatche are hits, John Wallace was a miss), and Pecherov is looking like one of his misses.

But hey, at least he's a funny guy.

JakeTheSnake: Good old O-Pec. If nothing else, I'd love to see him become the team's mascot after he retires.  The kids would love him.

As for Pecherov the player, I'd give him a grade of incomplete for the season.  That ankle injury at the start of the season really hurt any chances to have an impact this season.  It's hard enough to make the transition to a new league on a new continent without an injury that sets you back for a month and a half.  Give him an off-season to get more comfortable with everything and he'll get better, probably not starter quality, but a serviceable guy off the bench for sure.

I was irked by his shot selection at times and it doesn't look like a post-up game will ever be his strong suit, but I was impressed with his rebounding rate, which was better than Songaila's and McGuire's.  We can work with that.  Let's just hope he hits the weight room this summer.  At some point his arms have to get bigger than Steve Nash's right?

Truthaboutit: Good ol' Oleksiy Pecherov......the fun-loving Euro cut-up whom many have compared to Stewie from Family Guy. Personally, I like to think of O-Pech as the Ukrainian Balki Bartokomous.....a much more fitting, obliviously foolish, type of character than Stewie (although O-Pech and the youngest Griffin do favor each other in looks).

I think a player with Pecherov's skills is necessary for the Wizards offensive style. You need a big man who can spread the floor and nail the long jumper off a pick-and-pop. Songaila currently fills this need, but Pecherov has more range.

I know many have clamored for Pecherov to get more time, sacrificing Songaila's minutes.......let's just calm down on that thought - or as Balki would say, "Don't be ridiculous!" I admire Oleksiy's lack of jump shot conscience, as killer instinct is always wanted. I also have been pleased with his aggression and desire in terms of rebounding.

However, as much as people talk about those who contribute positive intangibles which do not show up in the box score, there are those who bring unseen negative intangibles to the table. Right now, Pecherov lacks the strength to secure defensive rebounds, the lateral quickness to on-ball defend his man, and the basketball IQ to limit turnovers and make intelligent contributions to the system.....among other adverse traits.

Outlook: Oleksiy Pechrov may eventually replace Darius Songaila, possibly allowing Ernie Grunfeld to unload D-Song's contract. However, I'd say O-Pech needs another year of seasoning in the least. He appeared in 35 games last year (he was injured until mid-January), averaging 9.1 minutes per....I wouldn't mind if Eddie Jordan found a way to up that to 60-65 and 13+ per in 08-09.

In last week's edition of Pollin' Antonio Daniels ran away as the choice for which Wizard would be the most likely to be a future coach, taking 35% of the vote.  Antawn Jamison (20%), Oleksiy Pecherov (Rock the vote! 12%), and Caron Butler (11%) followed in order.

During Ivan and Mike's weekly WaPo chat (HT: WRG), Ivan Carter threw out a darkhorse candidate to become a coach one day:

Washington, DC: Ivan and Mike, what current NBA players do you think would make good coaches down the line? I think you’ve mentioned Antonio as a guy with aspirations—what about Antawn?

Ivan Carter: Antonio could do it but he’s told me that he has no interest in doing so. Antawn would be driven nuts by the lack of focus and drive exhibited by some players. No way I see him dealing with that. You know who would be a surprisingly good coach? Brendan Haywood.

I know some of you are probably thinking "What?  Our Brendan Haywood?  The one that gets in fights with Etan Thomas and throws hissy fits when Nick Young steals his Capri Sun?"  and I understand that viewpoint.  But let's not forget that Haywood used to be a TV analyst for the Mystics for a few years, so he knows his stuff.  Granted, I can't say that I know that from actually watching Mystics games, but I'm assuming that he was competent.  (If anyone did watch, can you tell me if Brendan wore his headband during telecasts?  Thanks.) 

As weird as it sounds to say, I think Brendan might have more potential as an WNBA coach than a NBA coach.  I don't really have any factual evidence to support that claim, but as you're reading this you're probably sitting back and thinking "You know, I could see that happening," so there has to be some truth in that somewhere.  He wouldn't be the first NBA player to go into WNBA coaching.  Bill Laimbeer, Michael Cooper, and Tree Rollins all had successful careers in NBA before coaching In the WNBA.

Now for this week's poll, you have to decide what the best trick shot of the season was.  Here we're looking less at the importance of the score and more at the degree of difficulty.  After the jump, we'll take a deeper look at your choices...

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