Wizards can seek trade to transform roster, but biggest problem sits above players

Let’s start with Dwight Howard, not because he is at the heart of the Wizards’ problems, but because he is the most prominent symptom of the franchise’s primary malady: team president Ernie Grunfeld, who has been in the job for 15 years, or about a half-decade too long.

We know that things never go well when Howard comes to town. That dates back to his exit from Orlando in 2012, which unraveled with a trade demand, a behind-the-scenes sniping battle with coach Stan Van Gundy, a temporary mending of fences and, finally, a back surgery from which Howard has never fully recovered.

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We know what happened in his one bitter season in Los Angeles, his clashes with star Kobe Bryant, coach Mike D’Antoni and the Lakers as an organization.

We know how his career imploded after signing — with great fanfare — in Houston, and that, within three years, he was not speaking to fellow Rockets star James Harden, the two creating a poisonous internal environment that one teammate called "the worst locker room I’ve ever been in in as long as I’ve been playing basketball."

Look at Howard’s full slate of teams before this year — five, altogether. See how they performed in Howard’s final year against the previous season, whether he was playing for the team or not:

*adjusted for 66-game schedule

History, then, shows us that signing Howard hurts your team in the standings, mostly because it will torpedo any semblance of intrasquad chemistry. Howard has played only nine games for Washington, as he has dealt with gluteal soreness, a fitting injury for a guy who has been a pain in the tuchus for the better part of the last decade.

Yet, Grunfeld went out and made Howard a top free-agent target last summer, awarding him a two-year contract.

Now, the Wizards are 7-12, on pace for a 30-win season and their first sub-.500 season in six years. Seeing as the Wizards were already a mess of dysfunction last season, signing Howard was akin to trying to put out a tire fire with kerosene.

But, lately, this has been typical of the Grunfeld era. The players don’t much like each other, and never have. Meanwhile, Grunfeld adds more prickly personalities, like Howard, to the roster (Clippers guard Austin Rivers, brought in this summer, fits that bill), and the chemistry problems balloon.

Owner Ted Leonsis, amazingly, has stood by and watched his franchise slowly and embarrassingly circle the drain for better than a year now. In fact, according to The Washington Post's Candace Buckner, he gave Grunfeld a secret contract extension last fall and graded Grunfeld’s offseason an "A" when asked about his moves this summer. If you’re wondering what kind of genius owner could keep Grunfeld in place this long, the answer is Leonsis.

No one should be surprised, now, to see the Wizards bungling and in-fighting through the first month-and-a-half of the season. It’s been more than a week since the Wizards had a contentious, rough-and-tumble practice in which Rivers and star guard Bradley Beal exchanged words, and guard John Wall offered two choice words of his own for coach Scott Brooks. (The first was four letters, the second was "you.")

Since then, nothing of note has happened with the roster. Just about anyone on the team is open for a trade discussion, but the reception the Wizards have gotten as they look to make a deal and salvage this season has been chilly. The Wiz are holding a yard sale and sadly finding that none of their neighbors want their junk.

Grunfeld has handed out generous contracts that have not held their value. Wall has a four-year, $164 million extension that kicks in next year (he’ll make $19 million this year). His backcourt mate, Beal — the two have acknowledged their on-court dislike of each other — has two years and $56 million on his deal after this season.

Wing Otto Porter, who is averaging just 12.0 points per game, also will make $56 million combined over the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.

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Ask around among front-office executives, and it’s not merely the size of the contracts for the top three Wizards that is frightening. It’s that improvement among the three has been minimal during their time in Washington.

"It’s not where you want to see a guy go to get development," one executive said. "I don’t think they’re bad guys, but they must be frustrated. Beal has gotten better, but he does a lot of work on his own, not with the team. Otto Porter does some nice things, good role player, but he has been the same player for the last three years, really. He could be better if he were somewhere else.

"And Wall, the game passed him by. He has had nine years to learn to shoot, and he still can’t shoot. I can’t go to my coach and tell him we are getting a starting point guard who can’t shoot. Not for $40 million a year."

Beal has trade value, but given his shooting ability and the importance of the 3-pointer in today’s game, Beal is the guy the Wizards would most like to keep. Porter also has value, but the Wizards likely would be forced to take back a bad contract to move him. Washington might be able to wring a draft pick from such a deal, but trading Porter for a deadweight contract and a pick will hardly solve the team’s problems.  

As for Wall, a five-time All-Star and the No. 1 pick in the 2010 NBA Draft, there is little trade market. His upcoming payday and persistent shooting woes are just not worth it.

Asked which Wizard might be the easiest to trade, the executive said that Markieff Morris, in the final year of his contract, would be a welcome addition to a contender seeking a versatile big man who brings toughness. But the Wizards would seek a first-round pick for Morris, and the executive doubted that teams would be willing to cough up a first-round pick for a few months of Morris.

It’s a grim picture. This is a group that doesn’t much like each other, that is being paid too much, that is underachieving and that has fostered very little internal individual improvement. It was only natural, then, for Grunfeld to layer Howard on top of this mess, and for Leonsis to applaud the move.    

The Wizards would like to clean house. When it comes to players, that won’t be easy. But Leonsis should acknowledge that the team is a mess by removing the architect of that mess. It all comes back to Grunfeld, whose firing is past due.