Roster - Washington Wizards

The Washington Wizards have been hard at work in the last two weeks, trading away assets for future draft picks and younger players. But lets see how the deals are holding up so far. The biggest trade that happened was sending Carmelo Anthony to the Kings for Klay Thompson. Melo was the star for the Wizards, and he carried the team to wins every week. So it was interesting to see GM Darko part ways with such an important player, that maybe trading him would hit the Wizards hard. But the Wizards only won three of their last ten games before Melo was traded. Cant exactly say Melo was giving up on the team, he was their leading scorer for nine of those games. But the team wasnt winning, and the move was made. The following week the Wizards won two of their four games. Thompson was their leading scorer for three of those four games, averaging 25.5 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, and 0.5 blocks a game while shooting 44% from the field. The following week Thompson stepped up even more after shifting to shooting guard. Thompson scored 28 points, 3.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 1.5 steals a game, while shooting 45% from the field. So for the Wizards, replacing Melo with Thompson is looking good so far.

Things started to get better, but the moves kept on coming. Another big deal was the Wizards moving Marc Gasol, the other franchise player the Wizards had to use as a trading chip. Gasol was close to moving to Denver for a while, Denver was offering Gortat, Taj Gibson, and a 1st for Gasol and Ingles. At the time the Twolves werent interested in moving Gibson in a three way deal, so the deal hung there. The Wizards tried to get Gortat and Favors in the deal, but Denver wasnt having it. After the Thompson deal went down, and the Wizards also acquired Bismack Biyombo, there was no reason to trade Gasol for Gortat and Gibson. So the Wizards went another direction and traded Gasol to the Jazz for Julius Randle, Jeff Green, and a first round pick in 2019. So Randle came in from a bench role on Utah, to the starting role on the Wizards, and he didnt disappoint. Randle averaged 17.8 points, 11.5 rebounds, 2.3 assists, and 1.5 steals on 50% shooting for the Wizards. Lets compare that to Gasols 17.1 points, 9.4 rebounds, 1.4 assists, and 1.0 steals per game on 48% shooting and we can clearly see that Randle is having a bigger impact on the stats sheet than Gasol had so far.

Lets not forget about another player that was traded to the Wizards, that the Wizards tried to send off to anyone who would take him, Jeff Green. Green came along with Randle from Utah, and he is part of the Wizards unlikely "big 3". Green is averaging 19.8 points, 3 rebounds, 0.8 assists, and 1.5 steals on 56% shooting so far with the Wizards. With the play of Klay Thompson, Jeff Green, and Julius Randle, the Wizards have had some pretty tough games. They lost to a very good Denver team by seven, lost in Cleveland by two points, won against the Pistons, and beat the very same Cavs by seven in Washington. GM Darko is happy with how close those games were, and even happier about the two wins. Next week they will have to go up against the Sacramento Kings twice. We will see if Klay and the Wizards can top Melo and the Kings, should be an exciting game to watch, two former star players playing against their former teams. The Wizards also have a game against the struggling Bulls, and the Atlanta Hawks whom look a lot tough after recent trades. Currently the Wizards are only 0.5 games back from the playoffs, they are still very much in the hunt as the end to the season is closing in.