Wizards Can’t Whiff Tonight | Sports Junkies

Wizards Can’t Whiff Tonight | Sports Junkies

it’s Keith Smith NBA writer for Spot Rock what’s going on Keith
hold on one second uh a lot
there’s all kinds of stuff going on
there’s a lot
yeah it’s the best time of year right now for uh transaction junkies and cap heads like me
yeah so for Wizards fans the team has been going through a rebuild the last couple of years and you know they acquired Jordan Pool and everybody knew that he wasn’t going to be part of their future but explain why they would trade Jordan Pool for CJ McCullum yeah in that deal because P and Sadique Bay both have contracts that extend into next season and CJ McCollum and Kelly Olen do not uh for completely off the court reasons uh related to the salary cap washington now can clear in excess of $100 million in cap space uh next off season so a year from now much like how people have been talking about the Brooklyn Nets and all their cap space this summer we’ll be talking about Washington and double what the Nets have in cap space potentially they they will be in a spot where very realistically the only player under contract not on a rookie deal uh would be Cory Kiss uh which is just that’s incredible considering where this team was just a couple years ago where it looked like it was going to take a long time to dig out from under the mass of some of the contracts that they had on the books so do you foresee them making even more moves maybe even trying to trade off someone like McCullum to gain I don’t know gain draft picks um just to get rid of that money
i think so i I think what you’re going to see them do is continue this roster shuffling i I personally I really appreciate how transparent and candid the Wizards current front office has been uh this is going to take time and it’s going to uh take a little bit of time for us to sort this out and rebuild but that that group is has heavy ties to the Oklahoma City Thunder and we saw what the Thunder were able to do now I’m not going to set that as the bar cuz that would be ridiculous um but you’re you’re trying to set yourself up for having options and if you nail some of these draft picks and and I think they’re on their way there all of a sudden things start looking pretty good uh for a team that was stuck in the middle for decades and now at least they have a very clear direction but yeah I think there’s a good chance guys like Chris Middleton Marcus Smart acquired last year CJ McCollum Kelly Olen they they might be on the move again i’m not going to say right now this summer but maybe uh by the trade deadline and the best thing for Washington is at that point you might have got some draft assets for them coming in and you may get some further draft assets for them coming out which again is another page right out of the Thunder playbook yeah it’s kind of funny when you look at their roster if they don’t make moves and trade some some of these veterans we’ve got a a kind of a a interesting mix of proven veterans making a bunch of money coupled with a bunch of young guys like you mentioned like the SARS and the Kulabalies and now Bob Carrington and guys like that um so if they don’t sell off some of these pieces you know if Middleton and and McCullum and Smart stay healthy I’m not going to say they’re going to be a playoff team but I think they’re going to win a lot more games they did last year i I completely agree with that and I think a big part of where teams can get a rebuild wrong is when they just go fully young and they hand the team over to a whole bunch of guys who are uh 20 to 22 years old that don’t really they haven’t experienced much life and they certainly haven’t experienced a lot of life in the NBA having guys like Smart McCollum Middleton and Olen is just going to help keep the Wizards organized it’s kind of like having Malcolm Brogden uh last year was able to just kind of get guys in the right places that helps young players uh Valenunis you know I am sure the time he spent with Sar helped Sar level up quickly because it was a chance of hey let’s you know work on this you know you don’t want to do this this way and that that can be both on and off court and those are uh big things now the key is you don’t want to turn the team fully over to the vets and forget the kids and I thought they did a really good job of balancing that last year making sure hey the kids are our future they’re going to play and play plenty i I like to say you know the Wizards last year they they didn’t tank they were just naturally bad because they played a lot of young guys and that’s okay right that that that’s not the end of the world i’ve heard from more Wizards fans in the past year that were like “Hey I had more fun watching a team that at least is trying to do something than this team that was stuck in the middle forever.” So I I think they’re you know very much on the right track
all right so speaking of stuck in the middle they’re frustrated at Fooert’s fans that we you know didn’t get higher in the uh in the lottery we end up I think with our worst outcome getting six but um you know I’ll be honest having not watched as much college basketball these last few years you know it’s hard for me to watch even the NBA at times you know when my team is struggling so much i finally went through and started looking at these guys i think you can get a good player at six i mean I I’ve been kind of surprised it’s way deeper than just Cooper Flag um I’m you may or may not agree but the one thing that’s really going crazy is this Ace Bailey drop where he’s not working out with people like is he getting bad advice is he a bad guy has he gotten assurances he’s going to go somewhere what’s going on with Ace Bailey because his talent seems to jump through the roof to me
yeah I’ll let you know in about 12ish hours I think when you when we see it play out but you know my thought on it is I can tell you 100% he’s not a bad kid right he’s a really good kid he’s a little immature but he’s 19 right i mean I forid anybody knows what I was like at 19 um so you know with him I’m not worried about that part at all i’m also not worried about the skills i think Ace Bailey he came into this uh draft cycle if we go back even like two years ago when these guys were finishing high school and there were people who were saying he might push Cooper Flag um near the top of the draft now it hasn’t played out that way cuz Flag is set himself apart as a generational type of prospect and then Dylan Harper moved past Bailey as well but I still got Bailey third on my board but there are teams that are like the fit’s a little weird this whole won’t not even won’t work out won’t even meet with teams um you know his his combine interviews are a little weird i think this is the classic we’re trying to engineer a destination here and find a place that’s really going to work for us now we’ll find out if it works or not i’ve heard Washington is a team he’s okay with i’ve heard Brooklyn is there the Nets now have five picks in this first round so they’re they’re certainly going to be moving around on the board and they may try to go up and get him but that’s going to be the story to watch the first two picks we all know we could start the draft at three and just say “Hey Flag and Harper are already off the board and everybody would know it.” And then then then we’ll see where it goes with Ace Bailey and the Sixers at three because things are going to get weird starting there it
Do you do you have a sense that the interest is mutual from the Wizards you have any sense at all yeah I’ve heard that they like him i’ve heard that they see him as different from their other guys and able to fit in alongside uh the other young guys that they have what they don’t have in that group is somebody who can really go get his own buckets uh right now bub Carrington maybe gets there we’ll see what that looks like but the rest of the guys are a little bit more dependent players bal Kabali improved quite a bit but he’s still a guy who is uh more of a uh you know system transition player he will improve more you know in his on ball creation ability as he ages but but Ace Bailey can come in day one it’s I’m not saying he’s going to come in and be super efficient because very few rookies are but his best ability is his ability to go get baskets and and I’ve heard that the Wizards like that and like that fit alongside the rest of that young core
all right so let’s go around the league as we talk to Keith Smith NBA writer for Spot Rock uh Celtics win NBA Finals then this year Jason Tatum gets hurt in the playoffs obviously they don’t win they’re shaking it up porzingis gets dealt to Atlanta drew Holiday goes to Portland what are the Celtics looking to do yeah so the minute they lost that changed everything and then when Jason Tatum went down that that you know only changed it further i’ve long held that if they had were coming off back-to-back championships they they’d run it back write a really big check uh to to the rest of the league for luxury tax penalties because you’re not breaking up a title team like that especially not as a new ownership group coming in the fans would you know you pillar them right right immediately if they did that so so now though they have and this isn’t the exact right word to use they have a little bit of cover to start this process of getting under the second apron you’re going to hear that uh term used a lot uh here over the next few weeks is you know that second apron restrictions they are so tough on you to build to build out your roster you’re pretty much limited to you know very minor trades um uh signing guys to minimum contracts and signing your own free agents and draft picks and that’s about it you can’t really do anything else in addition Boston because they were over the second apron in the last two seasons already saw their 2032 draft pick get frozen which means they can’t trade it and it gets moved to the end of the first round if they don’t get out of the second apron three or four years before that so they’ve begun what I call the thawing process for that pick they’re under the second apron now they’re resetting but they have no intentions of tearing this thing down to the bottom and trading Jaylen Brown and Derrick White they’re listening if some team wants to bowl them over with a really ridiculous offering the way things are going who knows i’m not going to rule it out but their intentions are to keep those guys they feel like they got some helpful players and you know very very needed uh flexibility uh with their team and that that’s what they’re going to move forward with now
all right i’m I’m interested in what the Lakers might be able to do they of course traded for Luca Donuch got bounced out in the first round of the playoffs what can they do in the offseason to get to another level yeah another super expensive team um they’re they’re but not quite at that second apron level but they’re not far away from that some of that’s dependent on what happens with LeBron James and Dorian Finny Smith but all indications are they’re going to retain those guys lebron will be around a max deal finny Smith will be you know probably 15 million or so range that leaves them with a little bit of flexibility to use the smaller mid-level exception which is about 5.7 million and then that can put them in a spot to go after a center they need center depth in the worst way they they they don’t really have one on the roster right now uh that they trust they they they know that’s something Luca excels with he can play with a rim running lob catching center that’s huge for them uh so they’re going to be involved on probably guys like Clint Capella uh you’ll hear them mentioned in trade rumors for anybody who makes let’s call it 25 million or less uh that plays the center position and they’ll probably be engaged with those guys so it’s a that that’s their priority and then from there it’s rounding up to depth around what is a pretty good core group in LA led by LeBron and Lucas
all right before we let you go your take on the Durant to Houston deal i questioned it just because you’re giving up young players stars like Jaylen Green plus all those draft picks so essentially you’re trading eight players for one who’s 36 who’s already had injuries your take on the deal
yeah I’m not really worried about the second round picks that was more just Phoenix needs any form of draft capital because they’ve traded everything else under the sun that they could no pun intended um there so they they they are really in a spot where they they needed the draft capital jaylen Green good player on the right night looks like he’s an all-star AllNBA guy on the wrong night he looks like he’s a backup who you know should play 15 minutes a night off the bench he’s just wildly inconsistent and he really struggled in the postseason especially when the Rockets needed somebody who could go get a bucket that’s what Kevin Durant’s going to give him i’m with you i I don’t know that it’s the move I would have made but I get why they did it they saw how badly they struggled in the first round loss they don’t want to be in that position again and if they think Kevin Durant can get stay healthy and most importantly stay happy because there’s usually about a one-year clock on that for him in a destination then the Rockets are going to be really good they’ve got enough left in reserve to round out that roster nicely they still have a bunch of extra draft picks coming their way so not too worried about giving up the 10th pick so they’re they’re they’re in pretty good shape i I think moving forward as long as Kevin Durant is healthy and happy there
keith good stuff hopefully we’ll talk to you again and it’s Keith Smith NBA writer for Spotrack thanks pal i appreciate it thanks so much for having me
yeah thank you buddy
of course if you missed our mock draft and who EB selected with the sixth pick grab the podcast wherever you download your podcast just search the sports junkies

Keith Smith joins The Sports Junkies to preview the 2025 NBA Draft.

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