How many Band-Aids can you stick on a gaping wound?
That’s essentially what the Washington Wizards are trying to figure out with their latest trade for Trevor Ariza, a 33-year-old who is shooting 37.9 percent from the floor and statistically mired in the worst season of his career.
The wound here is an active payroll that is the sixth-highest in the NBA for the league’s sixth-worst team in the standings. And the payroll is likely to grow next season when John Wall’s four-year, $170 million extension kicks in.
By acquiring Ariza’s expiring $15 million contract, the Wizards tossed in two of the only young players in their rotation, 23-year-old Kelly Oubre and 26-year-old Austin Rivers. Moving Oubre, who is set to become a restricted free agent this summer, is not a franchise-changing transaction, but it’s another stop-gap move by a team compensating for a previous decision.
It started with Otto Porter Jr. and the decision to match Brooklyn’s $106 million offer sheet in June 2017. The Wizards could have let the Nets, who weren’t a rival, take on that contract. Such a move would’ve allowed the Wizards to focus their efforts on Oubre Jr., the Wizards’ 2015 first-round pick who also played Porter’s position.
When the Wizards matched, execs around the league began to wonder: What did this mean for Oubre? Could they afford both?
That question was all-but-answered a month later when Wall signed a max extension, ensuring the Wizards would owe him $207 million through 2022-23 season. That meant Washington’s trio of Wall, Beal (due another $105 million) and Porter were locked in for a whopping $418 million.
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Oubre’s fate in Washington was sealed two summers ago. This is not baseball where teams can spend exorbitant payrolls and not worry about finding cap space for the supporting cast. This is the NBA. There is a luxury-tax line and a repeater luxury-tax line. With that much money dumped into three players, the Wizards had little choice but to throw darts at cast-off veterans on the downsides of their careers.
It has not gone well.
This summer, the Wizards traded away Marcin Gortat for Rivers and replaced Gortat by signing 33-year-old Dwight Howard, who was just waived by the Nets. While Rivers was a worthwhile gamble at age-26, Howard has played just nine games and may not play again until the All-Star break. Despite his modest $5 million price tag, the Wizards granted him a player option for 2019-20, which may loom large if he doesn’t fully recover from back surgery.
The Wizards also became the fifth team (Grizzlies, Clippers, Magic and Cavs before Washington) in the last five years to take a flier on 32-year-old Jeff Green. And on Saturday, the Wizards flipped Oubre and Rivers for 33-year-old Ariza.
Look, Ariza isn’t as bad as he’s been playing this season in Phoenix. He’s a solid catch-and-shoot option who can run in transition and, when feeling fresh, defend multiple positions.
Defensively, he’s lost a step since the Rockets’ deep playoff run and with the Suns. Synergy Sports tracking places him in the 27th percentile on that end of the floor. He’s also less disruptive, generating 2.2 deflections per 36 minutes, down almost a third from his 3.1 deflections per 36 minutes last season. More glaring: the Suns allowed 10.5 points per 100 possessions more when he was on the floor compared to when he was on the bench. All in all, the Suns were 12.6 points-per-100-possessions worse with him on the floor this season.
The Suns added Ariza because he’s been a glue-guy veteran who could ostensibly mentor and improve the youngsters around him. Except the Suns got worse, not better.
They cut bait.
So why do the Wizards think it’ll be any different in Washington? Well, they do have fond memories of Ariza. Back in 2013-14, Ariza was instrumental in the Wizards’ 44-win season and surprising first-round playoff win. But the, “Hey, maybe he can turn back the clock and be like he was five years ago!” strategy is what led them to Howard, Green and Ian Mahinmi’s $64 million contract.
Maybe Ariza just needed a change of scenery. Maybe Phoenix was a toxic environment. Maybe he can turn back time. Maybe he can do what former Sun Tyson Chandler has done with the resurgent Lakers.
But these hopeful maybes have to feel hollow for a fanbase that hasn’t seen a 50-win team in nearly 40 years.
The good news is that the front office didn’t panic and flip Oubre and Rivers for 25 cents on the dollar after Friday night’s three-team trade fell apart over confusion about whether the Grizzlies were including Marshon or Dillon Brooks in the deal. On Saturday, the Wizards cut Memphis out and got it done anyway.
Ariza figures to stay in D.C. for a playoff push, but if it doesn’t work, the Wizards also have the option of trading him again, as long as it’s a one-for-one deal, according to the collective bargaining agreement. If Phoenix owner Robert Sarver truly was hell-bent on not trading Ariza to the Lakers -- like The Athletic’s David Aldridge reported late Friday night -- perhaps the Wizards can extract more value from the Lakers than Phoenix could.
One deal to monitor in that scenario would be flipping Ariza to the Lakers for 25-year-old wing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. The potential trade works from a CBA perspective and would endlessly tickle every Sarver adversary out there.
Regardless, the Wizards could still make the playoffs simply because there are only six teams in the East with winning records. As of Monday morning, FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO model offers the rosiest outlook, with a 70 percent likelihood of making the playoffs in its simulations (It’s pure ELO model, at 40 percent, is not as bullish). However, Basketball-Reference’s model paints a darker picture, giving the team just a 13 percent chance.
Yes, the statistical models are just as confused about the Wizards as all of us.
If the Wizards weren’t going to pay Oubre this summer, perhaps it’s worth taking a flier on Ariza and hoping for the best. But in Wiz land -- with the sixth-highest payroll and the sixth-worst record -- patience might be wearing thin.