50 games is hard to take when this is the result, eh?
But there you have it. With the depature of longtime Wizards stalwarts Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood, so begins the beginning of the demolition of a group that plenty thought would be knocking on the door of the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference this season. Instead, it’s the end of an era, as the Wizards knock over the first trade domino. The bigger question is, will it be the last?
I go back to the quote I had in my story about the trade, that the Wizards can “jumpstart summer right now by getting rid of a lot of dead wood,” said a source close to the team on Friday. “When you do that now, you give the scars time to heal. Why hang on to everybody. It’s quite obvious this group is pretty much done with themselves, as it’s constructed.”
After all that has gone horribly wrong this season, from injuries to Antawn Jamison and Mike Miller to the death of Abe Pollin to Butler being mentally checked out to the Gilbert Arenas/Javaris Crittention gun fiasco, it’s probably about time the team finally came to that realization. Observers of the Wizards had been shaking their heads since November.
In fact, that’s all I’ve gotten to do. I didn’t cover the team when things were going right or when there was a good vibe in the locker room for more than one day in five or six. I guess I’ll never know how much fun the group was.
Still, I understand it will be stark to see Washington this week start over without two of its longtime starters, three if you count the best seasons of DeShawn Stevenson’s career. Butler was a team captain. Haywood was the longest tenured Wizard.
Who knows if Josh Howard, Drew Gooden, Quinton Ross and James Singleton will be around next season — and only Ross is signed through next year. But none of that matters now, only the cost cutting that is taking place with the Wizards, and it would be surprising if they were done dealing.
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