who selects:
Jason Lawson

 



My pick is Jason Lawson, C Villanova.  I initially shied away from 
him as 235 lb sounded light to play C but Lorenzo Williams is who
he is insurance for isn't any heavier.

My pick had been Lorenzo Coleman C- Tennesee Tech.
I liked his size and realized he is very much a project
but had chosen him as insurance that the Wizard's current Lorenzo
(Williams) fails to recover from his knee problems. Upon receining
additional info from our commish on how poorly he played in
the pre-draft camps, I changed my pick to Lawson. Coleman was also
reported to have a work ethic problem. So Lawson it is.

I chose to go with a backup C rather than a backup
PG but it was close. As PGs, I considered Kiwane Garris, DeJuan Wheat
(Louisville, Wes may have his eye on this guy as a 2nd rd choice) but
my first choice as a PG would have been Anthony Johnson (Col of
Charleston was for real last year).

Many thanks to Craig, Owen and everyone who helped in the
scouting as I'm not a close follower of the college game and
would have been totally clueless without the resources Craig
has placed on the Usenet Draft webpage.

Bullets analysis-97

First let me publicly thank Doug Steele for his great NBA stats web 
page. I've used it for a couple of years in writing these analysis so let 
me praise him here and now for this great resource. I should have 
given him credit in previous years of my GMship. I also made use of
Patricia Bender's fine webpage for salary and FA info. 

Review of the previous year

This was something of a breakthrough year for the Bullets (who will 
be the Wizards next year) having ended the longest playoff drought 
in the league even though they got swept by CHI in the first round of 
the playoffs. For much of the year, the team was heavily criticized on 
this NG and elsewhere for underacheiving. To the extent that that is a 
valid criticism, let me provide some reasons why. The year started 
out with some of WAS' key players either on the IL or playing at less 
than 100%. Large among these reasons was that Muresan started the 
year on the IL with a problem with his hip flexor. This was after 
finishing the previous year with a knee injury so 77 was both 
injurred and rusty having been unable to play during the offseason. 
So the season began with Webber playing center. Muresan's 
projected backup, Lorenzo Williams also started and spent 
most of the year on  the IL so WAS was not particularly deep 
at the center position.

Juwan Howard returned to WAS after the MIA saga about which 
different people have their own strongly held opinions. Bottom line is 
that Juwan signed with WAS for 7 years at just over $100 M. But he 
started the year with both physical and mental distractions. On the 
physical side, he had shin splints. On the mental side there was a 
paternity suit for a child that was fathered while Juwan was still in 
college and a well publicized arrest for DUI. Both matters are now 
settled, Juwan attended a program for DUI offenders after making a 
public apology and admitting poor judgement and settled the 
paternity suit. These factors may well have played a role in 
Juwan getting off to somewhat of a slow start. 

Strickland played quite well all year but especially flourished after 
the firing of Jim Lynam just after the AS break when new coach 
Bickerstaff made it clear he wanted the ball in Rod's hands. Tracey 
Murray started the year shooting very poorly due in considerable 
part to a sprained wrist. By the end of the season he was shooting 
much better. He has or will undergo off-season surgery on his wrist.  
Lorenzo Williams was a major disappointment for WAS this year. He 
was signed after McIlvaine was lost to major $$ in SEA. For the 
money, he appeared to be a great bargain considering the times but 
spent most of the year trying to get a knee into the playing condition. 
He ended up playing less than 20 games.  So at the start of the 
season, CWebb was the only C was had and he's not a true C. WAS 
also missed the outside shooting of Tim Legler who was a key bench 
player for the Bullets the prior year. With Murray struggling early in 
the year, the Bullets went from being one of the best 3 pt shooting 
teams the previous year to one of the worst early in the season. 
Legler will be a FA this off season, one that WAS should try to retain.

That they did not play as well as many expected could largely be due 
first to injuries and losing some close games at the start of the 
season. This led to some discouragement, loss of confidence and 
simply uninspired play which finally led to Lynam's dismissal. While 
not having the immediate impact in the W-L department as 
Adubato's hiring had in ORL, Bickerstaff's arrival eventually led to 
better play and a playoff spot. In fairness it should be noted that 
WAS late season schedule was relatively easy. At one point WAS had 
not won a game against a team in 1st or 2nd place in any division. 
They were beating the weaker teams on a pretty regular basis but 
had a lot of trouble with teams like CHI, NY, UT, SEA, LAL, DET and 
MIA winning only 2 games all year against these teams although 
many of the games were competitive.

WAS added Rod Strickland, Tracy Murray, Ashraf Amaya and Jaren 
Jackson and Lorenzo Williams in the off-season. Notable departures 
were Pack, BPrice, MPrice, and McIlvaine.

Team stat summary (again, all stats courtesy of Doug Steele's 
fantastic web page)

Good shooting team from the floor finshing 2nd in the league in FG%
10th in scoring avg; 18th in def scoring avg; 13th in pt dif;

very poor FT shooting team 28th; poor 3 pt % 26th;
avg def FG% team (14th) but good FG% dif 6th
rebound dif ended up decent (9th) after spending much of the season 
ranked poorly with a neg reb dif;
TOs mediocre at 19th (Doug's page did not explicitly have TO 
differential but WAS reportedly ranked well in this area); 

Blocks and fouls average at 13th/15th respectively

Position by position breakdown

Point guard- Rod Strickland came via the often maligned Rasheed 
Wallace trade. This was a good trade for WAS!  All of WAS' PGs were 
FAs and Rod was/is better than any of them. Given that Rod is signed 
through the coming season, WAS got far more bang for the buck with 
Strickland than they would have had in any other reasonable 
scenario. Rod is one of the best at penetrate and dish (half-
court) and transition (open court) PGs in the league. He is also a very 
capable PG at posting up when the opposing PG is of the smaller 
(more typical PG size) variety. However, he does have his 
weaknesses. These include shooting range (terrible 3 pt%), FT% and he is only 
average at best defensively and that may be being generous. But 
overall, Strickland is quite satisfactory for WAS. Chris Whitney is 
Strickland's backup and fills that role quite well. Whitney is a FA. 
WAS should try to retain Whitney even though he suffered a 
shooting slump towards the of the year provided they can do so at a 
reasonable price. There are a number of other possibilities which 
might be considered as well IE Wesley. Overall, Whitney plays well 
and is often more effective defensively against quick PGs than Rod 
is/was.

Shooting guard- Calbert Cheaney, Jaren Jackson, Tim Legler, Tracy 
Murray (some of these also slide over to SF at times specifically CC 
and/or Murray). Cheaney has been consistently criticized for not 
playing up to expectations. I do not completely share that view 
although I understand where it's coming from. CC has shot well 
during most of his career reaching a high this year of .505. His 
problem has been that his talent is so obvious, people can't 
understand why he doesn't put up better numbers plus his 
demeanor is pretty casual. He does need to be more focused and 
more intense (he improved in this aspect this year) but that he keeps 
cool is fine by me. This year he finally began to more consistently 
use his athleticism at the defensive end of the floor. Other than MJ, 
few opposing SGs had big games against WAS, especially down the 
stretch of the reg season. Early in the season, CC struggled to 
establish his role on the team and his stats suffered as a result of the 
lack of shot attempts. One of Cheaney's biggest deficiencies as a SG 
continues to be his lack of 3 pt range which was more of a problem 
this year in the absence of Legler and the early season 
shooting woes of Murray. Jaren Jackson, a FA, often provided an 
offensive lift early in the season before eventually tailing off as CC's 
role became more solidified under Bickerstaff. Jaren is a reasonably 
decent defender with appropriate size to play and defend at SG. He 
was also the team's emergency backup PG but the Bullets were 
fortunate they did not have to rely on him in this role except for 
very limited periods. That Strickland and Whitney played without 
injury was key in this regard. Murray was in a lengthy shooting 
slump at the start of the season due to a wrist injury. Murray is 
having off-season surgery to fix this problem. As mentioned above, I 
was under the impression that Murray was another Don MacLean, 
good offense, no defense SF type. While his 1 on 1 skills are average 
at best, he played with hustle and made numerous key steals and 
rebounds. That he is signed for a number of years in WAS should 
benefit this team. He *could be* (as in might be) an ideal 6th man as he 
showed during the CHI playoff series when he was the team's leading 
scorer and totally abused the defensively hapless Kucoc and moreso 
than he has been abused since in the 97 playoffs. An improvement in 
the area of consistency is what separates Murray from being one of 
the better 6th men inthe league. Both Murray and Cheaney are 
capable (at 6-7) of playing SF as well as SG. Tim Legler basically 
missed the entire year recovering from the dreaded ACL blowout 
late in the previous season. WAS sorely missed his league leading 3 
pt shooting. He is a FA and should be resigned provided his knee is 
truly healthy which was not entirely clear based on limited 
appearences late in the season. Re-signing Jackson is a lessor priority.

Forwards
WAS plays with what many would consider to be a forward line that 
includes 2 PFs rather than the more traditional and common PF/SF 
alignment. That is when their Cs are all healthy which they were not 
for much of the past year. In that case, Webber shifts over to C (and 
he did so quite willingly knowing the team needed him there) and 
Howard played the PF. Harvey Grant was normally either the 5th 
starter or the 1st forward off the bench. Webber had a great year 
finishing among the top ten in tendex and with a 20/10 avg in 
pts/reb. As former coach Lynam said, Webber is a box filler by 
which he meant he gets alot of stats (mostly positive ones) in many 
categories. Howard had a somewhat off year after his stunning 2nd 
year performance and subsequent huge contract but still finished 
with very respectable numbers, 19 pts/ 8 reb /.486 FG%. In the 
years to come I would predict he will do somewhere between these 2 
numbers ie maybe 20 pts/ 8 reb/ 49-50% FG. Harvey Grant is 
something of an enigma to me. As a rookie with the Bullets, he was 
skinny kid with a respectable standstill "jumper" who had little 
strength but was still an adequate defender due to long arms. Now 
he more closely resembles his twin bro Horace having bulked up 
considerably, he can guard almost any position on the floor but no 
longer is a very good shooter either from the floor or the stripe. 
Apparently the added muscle throws off his shot. Too bad. If he 
could still shoot the way he used to be able to, his rather large $4M 
salary would be (more easily) justified. As is he is still a useful 
player especially given his defensive versatility since WAS generally 
does not need much offense from him. Now I read from our 
esteemed commish that Harv is a FA. I had not realized this. He is a 
useful player but the question of cap management comes into play 
here. I would see how he feels about playing for approximately half 
of what he was getting previously. Ben Wallace was a very raw 
rookie who showed some promise as a rebounder and shotblocker 
but saw little playing time. He is a FA. Depending on other moves 
WAS makes, it might be worthwhile to re-sign him. He reminds me a 
bit of Dale Davis. Ashraf Amaya, along with Wallace, spent much of 
the year languishing on the end of the bench and showed little 
reason why he should get more PT given who those minutes would 
be coming from (Webber/Howard/Grant). Amaya was cut late in the season
so Lorenzo WIlliams could be on the playoff roster.

Center
Big Gheorghe Muresan started the year on the injurred list and 
finished the year with an injury although he still played in the 
playoffs. As is well known he is huge and slow. Injuries limited 
Gheorghe's effectiveness this year although he once again finished 
near or at the top in FG%. He injuries cut down more on his 
rebounding and blocks which may have partly been due to lesser 
minutes due to foul trouble caused by (more than his usual) 
immobility. Still you can't help but like a guy who shoots over 60%
(and does great commercials). Interestingly, his FT% has gone down 
somewhat since he came into the league finshing this year at .618. 
One major disappointment for WAS was the lack of a meaningful 
contribution from Lorenzo Williams who was signed when it became 
clear that McIlvaine was leaving for greener pastures. Williams 
appeared to be a much better bang for the buck with better stats 
across the board except for blocks per minute where Jimmy Mc led 
the league the previous year. Unfortunately for WAS, Williams only 
played in 19 games and did not have the hoped for impact when he 
did play. He is signed for several more years I believe so hopefully 
he can make a contribution in years to come.

Team needs

Depth at PG and C
With Whitney being a FA and Lorenzo Williams coming off an injury 
riddled season, WAS needs to evaluate Whitney vs other available 
PGs or the relative health of Lorenzo Williams. In most other 
respects, the team simply needs time to mature and develop and 
most importantly, how to beat good teams. On a local basketball talk 
sports TV show, Ricky Mahorn (who broke in with the Bullets) was a 
guest and indicated an interest in coming back to Washington. He 
could be useful in a teaching role for the young Wizards to be. In 
making my draft selection, I will look at possible projects at the 1 
and 5 positions.