After the 2021 season, Allstar Bradley Beal was finishing a very impressive campaign. He had averaged 30 PPG, almost capturing the scoring title, and had announced loudly to the league that he was a legit star and surely one of the best guards in the NBA. He was around 28 years old. Unfortunately, the team around him was one of the worst in the NBA. While Westbrook had enjoyed a nice season with us, it was clear that his efforts were fruitless and we moved off his contract, ushering in the new era… or so we thought, as we kept Bradley Beal.
2 years later, Bradley Beal’s trade value, while still solid, plummeted. We got an old Chris Paul, which we turned into a 32 million dollar Jordan Poole. Before, we could have likely gotten a top-5 pick and maybe more! As a non-playoff team, we made a terrible mistake allowing our best player to peak on a losing team and overlook their value.
Fast forward to today, Kyle Kuzma is averaging 23.4 PPG (25th in the NBA), 6.1 rebounds, and 4.8 assists. He is also 28 years old. He is peaking and we are 3-15. Do not make that mistake again. We kept Wall too long. We kept Beal too long. Do not keep Kuzma too long; trade him in his prime.
At this moment, our young core consists of Bilal, Deni, and Kispert (though he is 24), we need more.
This was 100% me. I’m not a fan of “the process” since it has yet to work, and the idea at the time wasn’t to get rid of everybody…just Beal. So 2 different things and though I’m opposed to both, it’s for different reasons. If you’re only dealing your best player so you can get future picks, etc, then it’s not doing much if your stated goal is to make it past where you were previously. So if it’s just getting rid of one player and then going from there, bleah.
If it’s trading everybody for anything you can get, and doing a “The Process” style teardown, still bleah, and still likely to fail, but here we are, because for most fans, at least it’s different than what we were doing prior.
So the “The Process” process has failed, because it’s been 10+ years now and they never achieved what they set out to do, which was make it past the second round. Will our “Process” work? Assuming we trade Kuz/Poole/Jones/Gallo/Shamet/Muscala and go into full reboot, when are we gonna hit our goal, which is surely to get to an Eastern Conference Finals (as well)? I don’t see that happening for at least 7 or 8 years unless magical things happen with 2 players we currently don’t know about, and a coach we currently aren’t thinking of. So like by 2030, MAYbe we’re able to get past the FIRST round of the playoffs. Maybe.
And yeah, we’re going to sit around and hope we draft somebody that can break Beal’s positive franchise records. Dude can ball. No need to try to rewrite history cause we’re mad his teams with Wall never got to the ECF. Take away Kuz and not a single guy on the roster is anywhere close to Beal. Not even close. Take away Kuz and not a single guy on the roster is getting a solitary vote for any player award - DPOY, MVP, Most Improved, ROTY, nothing. So yeah, we are indeed gonna be drafting the next 5, 6 years, hoping and praying someone as good or better than Beal comes up as a Wizard, and doesn’t decide to leave the team the moment he gets that good.