Can someone post the rest of this insider article...

Ready to talk trades yet?

The trade deadline is more than two months away, but we're watching and waiting already. The reason: The biggest variable in any trading season is which clubs will look to retool (or dismantle) their rosters based on disappointing starts to the season.

On this front, two clubs in particular bear watching given their high expectations entering the season and subpar performances thus far -- the Washington Wizards in the East and the Portland Trail Blazers out West.

Washington is 6-10 after Tuesday's less-than-emphatic win over the also-struggling Raptors. That's a bit disappointing for a team that loaded up in the offseason, put itself well over the luxury tax and dreamed of contending with the Eastern Conference's elite.

Portland, despite its 12-8 record, has lost three straight games by surprising margins, two on its once-impregnable home court. The Blazers rank only ninth among Western teams in my latest Power Rankings, even though they, like the Wizards, harbored ambitions of contending.

Let's start with the Wizards, whom I believe to be the more interesting of the two stories.

Washington has admittedly looked better since forward Antawn Jamison returned after missing the first nine games with a shoulder injury, going 4-3 in the past seven games. But is that really enough? The past few seasons, Washington has been a .500 or so team when at least two of their Big Three of Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Jamison have been healthy. But the Wizards have never been able to sustain themselves at a higher level. Why would this year be any different?

The hope was that new coach Flip Saunders, a pair of new guards (Mike Miller and Randy Foye) and some improvement from younger players like Andray Blatche, Nick Young and JaVale McGee would propel Washington forward.

Thus far, the Wizards are continuing the same string of uneven efforts that plagued them for the past half decade. Here's the biggest problem: Although theoretically an offensive team, the Wizards aren't scoring. Washington ranks only 25th in offensive efficiency, a deplorable state of affairs for a club that realistically needs to rank in the top five to achieve its goals. In a related story, the Wizards are a mere 24th in my Power Rankings. Even in a dilapidated Eastern Conference, Washington would not make the playoffs in its present form.

Worse yet, two of the main culprits comprise two-thirds of Washington's alleged Big Three. Gilbert Arenas is still struggling to regain his form. While he hasn't been bad (16.25 PER, and a solid 22 points and nine dimes against the Raptors on Tuesday), one wonders if his Hibachi days are permanently behind him. In the Wizards' past two wins, over Miami and Toronto, the club ran more smoothly with 5-foot-5 Italian League refugee Earl Boykins at the controls.

Then there's Caron Butler. While the loquacious Arenas gets most of the attention, Butler's struggles have been even more pronounced. Sporting a measly 12.57 PER through 16 games, he's been one of the league's most disappointing players in the first quarter of the season. As a jump shooter, we shouldn't expect his output to crash suddenly, but it appears he's struggling to get the looks in Saunders' system that he routinely got in Eddie Jordan's Princeton offense.

Here's where it gets really interesting -- the Wizards stand in the midst of an ownership transition following the recent death of longtime owner Abe Pollin. He approved the moves to put the Wizards into the luxury tax, presumably because he knew he didn't have much time left to win a championship. But with Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis poised to take over, whether the financial floodgates remain so wide open is an open question. While Leonsis is nobody's idea of a cheapskate, I doubt the idea of paying luxury tax for a team that has won 25 of its past 100 games sits well with him.

That, in turn, opens the possibility that Washington will be active at the trade deadline to reduce next year's payroll, with Butler seeming the most likely name on the block given his hefty contract and production. The Wizards may also look to unload some dollars to get themselves under this year's tax; trading Mike Miller's expiring $9.8 million deal to a team well under the cap, for instance, might get them to a reasonable financial footing without costing them one of their three core stars.

Of course, the Wizards still have time to make this a moot point by turning things around, and perhaps they will. Ironically, the Wizards have provided answers to the other big questions they faced heading into the season:

• Brendan Haywood has been outstanding in his return from a wrist injury and Blatche has been among the league's most productive sixth men.

• The Wizards' defense, while below average, has been good enough, and if their offense were meeting expectations, they'd be a top-five seed in the East.

• Finally, the return of Miller would gloss over their glaring weakness at shooting guard. Nick Young (42.4 true shooting percentage, 7.87 PER) has been disastrous at both ends and DeShawn Stevenson (40.2 TS%, 5.29 PER) even worse, save for one night when he goaded LeBron James into breaking Cleveland's offense.

In the big picture, however, the inescapable conclusions are that the Wizards are underperforming, and that the struggles of their two best players are the main reason. If those facts don't change, the uniforms of a few players very well might.

We can draw a similar profile in Portland, where the "What's Wrong With the Blazers?" alarm bells reached DEFCON 4 after Tuesday night's dispiriting home loss to the Heat. As with the Wizards, the Blazers' main problem is that two of their three key players have underperformed. While Greg Oden has emerged as an All-Star-caliber force when fouls don't put him on the bench, Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge are both falling well short of last season's output.

Roy was a superstar in 2008-09 but his production is way off this season. He's lost nearly three points per 40 minutes compared to last season, has a lower TS% and a higher turnover rate and just an 18.89 PER compared to last year's 24.08.

Aldridge's numbers have also slipped a bit. He is rebounding more but has lost 1.4 points off his 40-minutes average without any uptick in his percentages. As a result, his PER of 16.96 pales next to last year's 19.13.

Ancillary issues also haven't helped. Steve Blake and Joel Przybilla both have declined after unexpectedly strong campaigns a season ago; injuries to Travis Outlaw and Nicolas Batum have robbed Portland of its wing depth and ability to play small; and the team has struggled to incorporate Andre Miller into the rotation.

That said, the intense focus on Miller may be overblown. He's been better than Blake, for one. Plus, the combined production of those two isn't much different from what Blake and Sergio Rodriguez gave the Blazers a season ago. About the only difference Miller's addition has made is that Roy virtually never plays point guard anymore, but that would be the case anyway in light of the multiple injuries on the wings.

Thus, the Blazers rank only 10th in offensive efficiency after finishing second last season. Portland has defended decently, if not great -- the Blazers are seventh in defensive efficiency, thanks in equal parts to Oden's ascension and the fact that they've played Minnesota three times -- but just like the Wizards, this team needs to be a top-five offense to win big.

So far, they haven't been, and that may influence their decisions at the trade deadline. Andre Miller would seem to be the most likely trade asset, but the expiring contracts of Outlaw -- who won't return until late in the season, if at all -- and Blake also could prove juicy for trade partners looking to shave costs. (And if you're reading between the lines of this story: Yes, I do believe Butler would fit well in Portland. But we're still a long, long way away from connecting those two dots.)

Regardless, I can't imagine the Blazers will stand pat with this group if they continue to underperform. While Roy and Aldridge are a big part of the reason, Portland won't be parting with either of them anytime soon, especially after signing both to extensions over the past four months. Instead, they'll likely use their other assets to bring in more weaponry, especially long-range shooters who could give their two stars more offensive breathing room.

We still have more than two months to the trade deadline, and it's very possible that a couple of hot weeks by either of these clubs could turn today's chatter into a distant memory. Nonetheless, these two teams bear close watching in the coming weeks. If things don't change, I suspect each will be among the league's biggest movers and shakers come February.



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• There's one other bit of housekeeping to discuss: We have yet another new No. 1 in the Power Rankings, and it's another score for the traditional powers after interlopers like Atlanta and Phoenix spent time at the top spot in the first month.

The Celtics are back on top after blowing away Charlotte on Tuesday. And it gets even better for the league's presumptive favorites: Boston, the Lakers and Orlando now comprise the top three after Phoenix's embarrassing 126-99 loss to the Knicks sent them all the way down to No. 8.

Still, the numbers are very low -- Boston is No. 1 with a rating of just 106.3, something that won't hold up all season. The Lakers and Magic are now second and third, respectively, continuing their recent charges that coincide with recent runs of good health. I suspect those three teams will widen their lead over the pack in the coming days and weeks.

 

The title of that article is misleading. It should be, "lets talk about the Wizards for no reason"

 

I think the Blazers will fire their coach before making any major moves