Moving on from John Wall, the Wizards have since done this....

Al P and Jalen Green, I'll take that over keeping Westbrook and possibly winning a few more games.

If Wall can show enough that we can dump him without having to lose assets this trade is a complete landslide victory for us, it may already be.

 

John Hollinger’s NBA free-agency winners: Nets, Wizards among teams in a better place
https://theathletic.com/2766222/202...s-nets-wizards-among-teams-in-a-better-place/

Washington Wizards

By turning John Wall and a protected first-round pick into Russell Westbrook, and then turning Westbrook and a few seconds into five useful players with reasonable contracts, Washington somehow managed to turn the worst contract extension in recent NBA history into five rotation players on reasonable contracts and did so at a non-extortionate price.

The Wizards essentially did nothing else this offseason because the Wall/Westbrook contacts left them so close to the luxury-tax line. The Westbrook trade didn’t offload salary as much as spread it among more players (still important; even if it only added minimum contracts, Washington was screwed tax-wise with Westbrook on the books for $44 and $47 million the next two years). Yet the flexibility and depth they gained from doing that should make it much easier for the front office to operate from this point forward. The handcuffs are gone.

The linchpin of the offseason was Dinwiddie, whose deal is a bit more reasonable than first announced; it’s three years and $62 million, but $8.5 million isn’t guaranteed and another $8 million is incentive-based; in particular, the injury-prone guard reportedly loses $1.5 million if he doesn’t play 50 games.

The status of Bradley Beal hangs over everything in D.C., of course, and it will be an issue into the offseason. Financially. Beal’s best move is to play out the season, decline his player option and sign a five-year, $242 million deal with the Wizards in the offseason. That possibility should make everyone in Washington just a bit tense this year, as the possibility looms that he could leave Washington high and dry. (Beal can sign for four years and $189 million with another team, but virtually the entire difference is in the fifth year). But that was going to be the case either way; these moves give Washington more of a future either with or without Beal.

Washington isn’t out of the woods yet by any means, but you can see a hiking trail to the parking lot from there. The Wizards have some quality depth that should help them bring along their young forwards (Deni Avdija, Rui Hachimura and Corey Kispert) at their own pace and quietly got much younger over the past year by trading for Daniel Gafford, Aaron Holiday and Kyle Kuzma. This situation looked completely impossible two years ago. Now it seems … possible?

 

Kuzma, KCP are all very movable pieces. We could have got something for them and still tanked.