Jamison trade finalizes dismantling of roster
For the second time in less than two months, the massive Washington Wizards banner on the 6th street side of Verizon Center needs to come down, the latest after the team dealt the banner’s subjects — three non-suspended and now former star players — in the days before the NBA’s Thursday trading deadline.
But despite a complete dismantling of the roster, Wizards president of basketball operations Ernie Grunfeld sounded prepared to start next year with the subject of the season’s first banner, Gilbert Arenas. The star guard brought down himself and his huge picture with the words “character, commitment, connection,” with a fiasco that may have been the final straw that forced Grunfeld to implode the team in the first place.
“He’s part of this organization, and he’s under contract,” said Grunfeld of Arenas, who is suspended for the rest of the year and is scheduled to be sentenced for felony weapons possession on March 26, “and if he wants to play, this is the place where he’s going to play.”
But the team that Arenas returns to next year will look far different than the group that went to the playoffs in four consecutive seasons over the last decade, with Antawn Jamison now in Cleveland and both Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood in Dallas. All that is left is six players under contract next season — not including Arenas — and a quartet of 2010 draft picks, two in the first round and two in the second.
“I think that was an entertaining ball club,” said Grunfeld, who came to Washington in 2003 and helped put the Wizards in the playoffs in his second season. “I think the city enjoyed these players.”
But Grunfeld could not explain why there was no chemistry with the roster he had anticipated would go deep into the playoffs this year.
“We thought we had a solid ball club,” said Grunfeld, “and we had a lot of situations that were really out of our hands. But maybe that group got stale. Not maybe, I think it got stale, and went about as far as I think we could go, and I thought now was the right time to make changes and put us in a situation where we can have a bright future, and I think we do.”
