Washington Wizards NBA Trade Deadline 2017 Reaction: How Bojan Bogdanovic Will Help the Wizards
By Ben Mehic
By: Nithin Kuchibhotla (@nkuchibhotla)
I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this trade, so the one adjective I’ll use is “tepid.”
To get the obvious out of the way, this makes the Washington Wizards much better in 2017. Bogdanovic can shoot the lights out at times (career 37% from three) and is an aggressive scorer, averaging 19 points per-36 minutes.
He’ll clearly be an essential part of Washington’s putrid second unit that is in the bottom three in the NBA in bench scoring. Though Bogdanovic is not a willing or capable defender, the hope is he provides the offensive punch while Satoransky, Kelly Oubre, and Ian Mahinmi anchor the team defensively when the starters are resting.
I’m a fan of adding the player (especially given neither Nicholson nor Thornton were going to see the floor again), but I’m not a fan of the price.
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Washington hasn’t been in this situation since the heyday of Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison Jamison and Caron Butler (and not even nearly to that extent back then), but it will soon be a team with three max contracts on its books.
With a top-heavy roster like that, the only way to truly get depth is to acquire cheap, cost-controlled talent, namely through the draft.
This is now the third season in the last four that Grunfeld has given up the pick, and while the first two moves panned out, eventually he could be playing with fire.
Secondly, the pick was only necessary because no one would touch Nicholson’s contract otherwise, which if memory serves me correctly, was just handed out about 8 months ago.
We all know the cyclical nature of Grunfeld’s tenure – completely botch a decision, then make up for it soon after. Rinse and repeat, and still employed 14 years later.
I’m excited about the spark Bogdanovic can bring, especially given his stats should be somewhat inflated now playing on a good team vs. the trainwreck known as the Brooklyn Nets.
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And this is definitely a win now move (with another possibly coming) to position the Wizards nicely in the Eastern Conference race. But let’s hope Ted Leonsis doesn’t balk at the luxury tax, knowing it was a product of making these types of deals.