What is kracklak in fellow them, We are a efforts. I am Damp Valley coming at you with a solo reaction to the Lakers Wizards trade at the Lakers agreed to send three second round picks to the Washington Wizards in exchange for Ruby Hachimura, who will be restricted to free agent this summer. Before we dive into the impact of this trade on both teams, let me remind you that please, it's time to subscribe to us wherever you consume us. If you're on YouTube, hit that sub button, like comment help the algorithm of us back. This is your first time checking us out. Please hit that I subscribe button on your favorite podcast player of choice as well, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, wherever you're consuming us, and then follow us on the socials as well at Hardwood, Knox on TikTok and Twitter at Hardwood, unders Were Knox on Instagram, and finally, if you've done all those things, join our discord. The link to that is in the YouTube and podcast descriptions. 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It was reported by Yahoo Sports is Jake Fisher that the Wizards, after trying to get a first round pick for Ruehatching Moore, which I think we all kind of wasn't going to happen when he's in the final year of his deal, we're holding out for just more and they ended up getting a third second round pick as part of this deal, while Los Angeles was originally offering two. My guess is that they were probably dangling twenty three, that Chicago pick, and then twenty nine and then that twenty twenty eight second is kind of which has bridge the gap here. I think for the Lakers, there are two prisms through which we need to view this move, the cost and fit of Hachimura, and then what this deal says about how they'll approach the rest of the deadline. Nothing nuclear needs to be taken away from LA's overall logic here. This team is not one ruey away from title contention, but they're not bridging the galaxy separating them from championship aspirations without a mega deal. That's going to include forking over those twenty seven and twenty nine first rounders. And just as you don't jettison those picks for the sake of doing something anything, you can't not make moves if you're Rob pink on the rest of the front office because they don't come with conditional tickets to the playoffs or they're not getting you a star. You need to figure out a way to upgrade your roster, diversify it, deep in it. Taking on Hachimura, to me is a quality dice roll both now and if you want to look over the long term. He doesn't turn twenty five until February eighth, so he's still twenty four, and he arms the Lakers rotation with some much needed size at that combo forward spot where they just didn't really have anyone. I think his offensive armory, while it's still beset by all this inconsistency, it's definitely taken a more discernible form over the past year plus. Through his thirty appearances this season, Ruby is averaging thirteen points while connecting on a career high fifty four point five percent of his twos and hitting thirty three point seven percent of his threes. He did just drop thirty points against the Magic on January twenty first. That's an outlier. Had everyone up in arms about what he could do. I don't think to that extent he's not going to be that type of player on a regular basis. That's not a spicy take, but it did sort of. It is sort of an indicator of what he might be able to do in a higher volume role. He's averaging this season about eighteen points on sixty two true shooting while hitting over forty percent of his threes when he plays more than twenty five minutes, and so we're talking about a sample. I think it's thirteen or fourteen appearances there, but he should have the opportunity to get more playing time than the Lakers' rotation even after a d comes back, just because he doesn't theory fill that void him though, building on his accuracy from deep will be critical to his fit with the Lakers. He's been extremely low volume from beyond the arc for his career, about three point two attempts for thirty six minutes, but he has downed his spot up triples at a quality percentage. He's at thirty. This is per Kevin O'Connor of the Ringer. He's at thirty six point six percent on spot up triples this year. He was at forty six point six percent last year and thirty four point one percent in twenty twenty two, twenty one. Now last year we're certainly an outlier. But and the volume is going to go up. So is that going to help or hurt? I will say that him catching passes from Lebron is going to be a lot different than when he's being fed by Kyle Kuzma or Delon Wright. Those are the two guys who have assisted him most. By the way, in Washington, He's also going to see an uptick, not only an uncontested volume, which a lot of his threes are already uncontested, but he's going to be seeing more volume from the corners. The Lakers are tenth in corner three point a tenth right, and Ruey shoots about forty two percent from the corners this year, and so he should get more of those looks. Teams will probably still really sag off him from above the break where he has struggled again if he's being spoon fed, being spoon fed by Lebron in those instances, even Russell Westbrook and his tribal penetration, I think that's a benefit. There's also a quality fit here, and when you look at the Lakers transition offense, they're committed to getting out on the run in part because they're they're at such an asset or a weapon disadvantage in the half court. When you put the ball in Ruey's hands, he can still get a little bit loosey goosey there, but he knows how to get behind defenses away from the ball and then also just attack in open space. I think what becomes not problematic but potentially thorny here is the rest of Ruey's offense. More than forty percent of his field goal attempts this year are coming from mid range. That's just that's par for his course, that's too high. He's knocking down forty three percent of them, which is above average, but it's just not a high enough clip to justify that type of volume. He's also but what you juxtapose that against this year, he's shooting about fifty percent on his pull up two pointers, and he's also shooting sixty eight percent on his paint touches. That might intrigue enough to say, hey, let's see what maybe he can do in some of these second units, or if we want additional shot creation on the floor, and maybe we don't want to play Russ because we're worried what that might do to the defense. I get it, but I just can't see the Lakers really testing Ruey's on ball volume all that much. He doesn't give you enough as a passer right now. Among two hundred and seventy five players who have finished at least fifty drives this season, only three passed the ball less Austen on those plays. And also, when you look at Ruey and what he's been able to do in open space as a driver, that space isn't going to be easier to come by in LA when you look at who is surrounding him, and I think the Laker's response, I don't think this, Darvin Ham is smarter than this. But if the Laker's response is to just zero out his on ball volume, it could throw him out of rhythm. It's not clear how effective he's going to be strictly as a play finisher. Might they try him out as a screener a little bit more? They really going to rely on that off ball three point shoot volume where they gonna count him just to make maybe quicker decisions with the ball where it's really get those catch and go situations where he was allowed to operate a little bit more methodically at points in Washington, even if inconsistently, I think regardless, you're going to see him play a fairly prominent role just because of his archetype, like his positional flexibility kind of you know, straddling between the three and the four. That being said, whether he can sponge up higher stakes defensive minutes kind of remains to be seen. The Wizards insulated him against taking on premier assignments and responsibilities they've had Kyle Kuzman Deny Afia do a lot of that. Rui has flashed the ability to close out hard on shooters and a race possessions and passing lanes, but he's otherwise just sort of low activity on that end. The Lakers can't just expect him to come in and be there go to wing defender during crunch time. I'm not saying that's the expectation for them, but if you're going to play him with Lebron and a D and that's your front line, is Lebron all of a sudden your primary wing defender there, that's going to be touch and go, especially if you're still looking for him to create a crap ton on offense. None of that, like those concerns are damning. LA is not giving up centerpiece assets to land Achimura. None is on an expiring contract, and he's been up and down, mostly down for a chunk of this season, and the Lakers just have all these guards to spare. The Chicago second rounder could be in the thirties low forties, but you could say the same about LA's own second rounder, and they still have that. You can always buy another second rounder in the draft. I can't get myself to care about the twenty twenty eight second rounder all that much. Either it's the less favorable of Washington or La either one of those picks will just land in the bottom half of the draft and that's what you're sending out, or even if they're both good, you're still getting to keep the better of them. That's not a huge deal. If you want to look at the twenty twenty nine second rounder, like, that's a little bit tougher to stomach that you can always buy more stans. It loses a little bit of luster when you're talking about distant drafts just because second round picks are not sold until the night of and while looking just at the draft specifically, okay, that's fine, it does hamstring your ability to sweeten up other packages, and so just not having that twenty twenty nine second in the chamber, it does put you in a little bit of a disadvantage in future trade talks, whether it's in the coming years or even for the rest of of this season. That being said, like, I look, you didn't give up a ton of value here for Ruey, Like it's a relatively small dice roll even a reasonable price to pay here, especially if you are invested in him beyond this year. Wode says the Lakers want to sign Ruey after this season. I would take that with a grain of salt. Let's see how he fits. First, he is younger, but the Lakers are currently slated to have like between thirty and thirty one million dollars of cap space. If you want to resign Ruey, his cap hold restricted free Asian caphold to keep his bird rights is going to be almost nineteen million dollars. Now, he will sign for less than that, so it could be cheaper to use his actual salary. But even if he gets let's just say he even gets below the MLI, let's say he signs like his qualifying offer or something about eight million bucks. That still cuts into Lakers cap space. Free agency is not what it was. But the Lakers are the Lakers, and I don't think that they're just going to punt on potentially bigger plans, bigger fish because they have Ruey Hutchmore and there's just no other way for them to clear real salary off the books. They're big salaries on the books or Anthony Davis Lebron and then that's it. And then Ruey's cap hold if you go that route. So I think that this will be very much just sort of, you know, not that Ruey's a placeholder, but they're going to need to explore this an experiment, and it's not a given that he comes back unless he plays really well. I think the Lakers are going to value that flexibility. At the same time, the Lakers did add ever so slightly onto their tax bill here. They took on about one point three million in salary. That adds a total of three million dollars to their tax bill. Does this imply one of two things, or maybe both things, that they are willing to spend this season more so that if they can find a more expensive player by dangling the Patrick Beverley and another small contract package, that they would make that deal. That might be a good sign. Does it also mean that if they are interested in Ruey, that they're open to them trading for someone now who has money that goes on next year's books. That was one of the biggest sort of questions here was, well, would the Lakers even put their first round picks on the table if it means they're also cutting into their cap space this summer, If it means you're going to have a player on your roster who you value leading into next season. I think the stands always should have been, yeah, you make the trade. Now it might seem more likely than ever, not that they trade their first round picks, but like, are they going to package salary in a set if it gets them someone who is actually on the books into next season, because they might look at it as, oh, well, we have Ruey and that's going to take up some of our flexibility. And if we need to clear someone who maybe their contract is not expiring this year but next year, we'll figure out a way to move them in the moment, or we think that our biggest blash is going to come via the trade market anyway, because it doesn't seem like they're going to trade those first round picks. So, for what it's worth, this maybe does show that the Lakers are not only trying to improve this year's team, but are also open to making moves for this year's team that might impact their flexibility for the immediate future being this offseason. And I think if you're a fan of seeing Lebron James play meaningful basketball, that's good. That all being said, the Lakers can't be done. This can't be shouldn't be the move of the season. They need to do more to figure out how to acquire bigger, more bankable difference makers, because we don't know that Ruey is just going to be this dependable contributor. I think he is far from a home run fit. He's interesting enough to where yes, if this was the deal that was on the table, go ahead and make this. We also can't grade it or view it in tandem with what hasn't been done right now. The Lakers still have a few weeks to kind of figure that out. If this proves to be the only move they make, or if we go back and we see that, oh, teams were able to get better players or someone who's a better fit like a Josh Richardson for the Lakers roster for cheaper, let me can come circle back and say, oh, was this really worth the swing? In the meantime, though, I think the Lakers flyer on Hatchamore is entirely reasonable, if not ever so slightly encouraging here for what they're trying to do, And so I think this is a trade you just make if you're the Lakers. Let's see what else they do. They still just need more shooting, more higher volume shooting and like end quality depth on the wings, because Rue is like more of a if you want to stretch at at three point five, I would say he's more of a four. They could use like some bigger twos and threes, like just real wing types that aren't you know, there's Lebron James. You want to consider him a wing point wing whatever, that's fine. Like then you have wan Tisconnoll Anderson, and you have Loannie walk with the fourth and you have Austin Reason Like you just get into sort of iffy territory there. They need another wing tight body and this should not stop them from going out and getting that player. And so it's again a really good sort of not even a stab in the dark, but taking a flyer on the younger guy who's showing a lot of offensive upside shouldn't torpedo what you're trying to do defensively, but does open up some questions if you're playing him with Lebron n ad down the stretch of crunch time. Very interesting to see how LA uses him. And the bigger question for me, if we're looking at his fit and whether they keep him long term, what is his role in the offense? Look like and is he comfortable maybe being off the ball less. I think we tend to understate how important the flow or the rhythm of the game can be to players if they've been used to operating on ballmore, being able to attack a little bit more with some self creation in the half court. I don't think he's going to have the same opportunity in LA. Maybe I'm wrong. So I like this trade for the Wizards. Excuse me, I like this for the Lakers. The Wizards sign of things. So again, the Wizards are getting the Bulls twenty twenty three second the less favorable of their own in LAS twenty twenty eight second, and then Lakers twenty twenty nine second rounder. I think the way that this needs to be evaluated this move it does absolutely nothing to clarify the direction in which the Wizards are headed. For the most part, that doesn't make it malpractice or complete with it just isn't totally telltale. I think the reaction from Wizards fans was pretty holistically pissed off when they saw this, and they believed that Washington was getting hosed. This franchise has for the most part, flat out sucked at drafting. So with smattering of second rounders for the number nine pick in twenty nineteen. Ruey is nothing if not uninspiring in a vacuum. We still need to take harsh realities into account. Hutchmore was not bagging a first round pick on his own, not with his restricted free agency on the horizon, and so much of his game and fit just still unsettled. We could look, he's put together these stretches a really good offensive basketball, but they're stretches. They're never like these new normals. And regardless of what you think about general manager Tommy Shepard and the rest of the organization, I don't read into reports like the one from Sam Amaco that said a rival scout told him, why do you rush to make that trade? If you're the Wizards, I know for a fact they can do better than what the Lakers are offering for Hatchamura. Those reports, if they're not going to assign specific context, what was the offer? Who are the teams put your name on it or something? They're dumb. Teams are not out here front, believe it or not or not in the business of deliberately or knowingly accepting crappy offers to move players they want It's one thing to say the Wizards should have just kept Hachimura. It's another to claim they didn't adequately canvass the league or actively passed on better returns without providing any context or support whatsoever to that end. Though, when you look at the surface value of this trade, the Wizard should have just kept I think that there was just more upside there. Moving him doesn't serve any immediate purpose. You're not suddenly vaulting any deeper into the victim women Yama sweepstakes, and I think that Ruey's offensive skill set would have been worth further exploration if you were concerned about the bigger picture and decided mid season to sort of steer in to this tank job. You also can't use Ruy's pending restricted free agency as an excuse. He was also reportedly unhappy with not receiving an extension, and he was asked by the Washington Post. I believe whether he requested a trade and responded no comment. You don't get to imply urgency with any of that. The Wizards would have had the right to match any offer for Hatchamore this season, and if for some reason he left for nothing, they would have missed out on two second round picks, and I guarantee you they're probably not keeping them anyway at like the twenty twenty nine pick. Are they gonna be the ones making that selection? Are they even gonna be the ones making the Bulls pick this year? So the return wasn't massive in that sense. And to me, you only make this deal if you're just out on Hachimura. The Wizards might be at that point, and that's really not an egregious place to be because of how inconsistent he's been. The other element who consider here is that it does feel more likely now that they're going to pay now that they're going to pay Kyle Kuzma and keep him. There's been a lot of reports lading around should they trade him? Does he even want to be there? He has a player option for this summer. You have Ruey Hatchamore going into restrictive free agency, you have Kyle Kuzma being a free agent. You're Denny Avdya, who's extension knowledgeable and I think more valuable than Ruey Hachamoura when you're looking at his defense and the passing off of triple penetration. By the way, while he's injured right now, supposed to return in two weeks. Christops Porzenki has been really good this season. He has a player option, so he's going into free agency. You're looking at some contract decisions that we're all coming up at the same time. The Wizards weren't going to pay everybody, I mean especially weren't going to pay all three of Ruey, Kuzma and Avdia have to make this decision right now. Again, you could have just seen what does really do to close the season, but it's not. They're not out of place to say, well, we weren't going to keep him anyway, We're more invested in Avda and Kuzman. We also want to have the flexibility to keep Christops Porzingius. I'm fine then with them taking two seconds, and then they increase their wiggle room under the tax this season should they want to make additional movies. It's not a ton they're still inside two million dollars of the tax line, but any breathing room helps when you're that close. I don't think there's traded anything to do with Kendrick Nunn. He doesn't profiles on long term piece. He does give you some on ball jet fuel and unpredictability, and maybe that adds some much needed change of pace to Washington's offense. But I don't think you acquire him thinking, oh, like, we just need the diversification from bio Monte Morris and Delan right. I just I don't see it. I mean, maybe he ends up being more valuable to Washington's offense than Ruey, but I would still be surprised. For the most part. I would argue this deal is more tbdview when kind of evaluating it for the Wizards, what does hatch Moore become in LA that's going to matter to this and what does Washington do next? Is this a long term cost cutting dump? Are the Wizards contemplating more seller type moves to where, oh, things heat up with Kyle Kuzma on the block maybe when we hear some Krissosporsindius rumors, Are the Wizards contemplating more like buy now trades to where they wanted these second rounders to glitz up those offers. And that's something to consider. By the way, the Wizards as it right now, because of the way their obligation to New York is structured, they can't guarantee teams the first round pick before twenty eight. They can trade conditional selections, but they can't guarantee them a pick before twenty eight. That's going to matter to certain teams. They're gonna want a guarantee. And so if you can include just seconds to glips up, maybe not blockbuster offers, but smaller time or medium size offers, they might have just wanted the extra second round equity there, especially as a team that has not necessarily drafted well in the second round over the last decade or so. And that's why I'm more interested to see what they do in the weeks and even the months to come, because we have to look at what happens in the off season over free agency. Do they extend Davidya, do they keep Kuzma? What happens with porzingis if he opts out. I'm not going to be a fan of team saving money. They could have just kept and paid everyone. But I do understand the team building logic here. I don't think that it needs to give you any more confidence in the Wizard's direction, which I would argue is among the most hopeless or aimless in the NBA. They actively seem like they're trying to just float around the middle or the sub middle. I would have by now torn everything down and rebuilt the roster that is still on the table for them if they want to do that. No one expects them to do that. I just don't see how their path to something better than they are now. Where you're going to contend for a play in spot or a low level a lower level playoff spot in the East, what is their pathway to being better than that or winning a playoff series in the next few years. I don't see the path, especially when you look at you know, Johnny Davis, Chord kiss Bert, like some of the guys that they've drafted of late, not being these huge different makers. I don't think trading Ree Hotchimore though, hurts that path in any way. It feels like, if anything, a lateral move, did you really think that Hotchimore was going to play well enough over a longer period of time to be this huge swing piece for them? Maybe you didn't. If you did, you're not gonna like this trade. Like I said, if the stance is you think they could have done better for Hotchimore, you were banking on the market for him increasing in appeal over the next couple of weeks. If your stance was he's just going to help this team, we need to see more of him, then yes, keep him. I think that that's a fine stance and a fine critique to make. But the bigger issues facing the Wizards still stand, and this trade doesn't really help or hurt that. I don't even think it's really clarifying. If they did it to keep Kyle Kuzma and to reinvest in this exact core, I understand it. Do I support reinvesting in the core? Probably not at this point. I would rather see them strip it down. But you also have to evaluate these trades within the character of the organization, and the Wizards have been frankly flat out obsessed with sort of being where they are right now. Yes, they want to be better than like ten places in the Eastern Conference, but they're trying to chase a playoff Berth. That's why you keep Bradley Beale, and if you're operating on his timeline, this isn't the type of trade you make. I want to make that clear, like, this wasn't a win now trade. But you do reload your assets or you look at your assets in the vein of well what can we do to maximize now or the immediate future. And I think with them, they believe maximized the immediate future involves resigning Kyle Kuzma, maybe reinvesting, imposing this if he goes into free agency. And I would argue, with all the rumblings out there that Kyle Kuzma wants to leave, the Wizards have shown in the past that they have a pretty good pulse on whether guys are going to resign. Look at what happened with Thas Berton's he was I mean, a contract ended up being fucking nightmare, but they thought the news was that get at least one first round pick for him that season, maybe even two, or just the equivalent of a pick and prospect. They kept him because they knew that they could resign him, as did it with Bradley Beale. He didn't actually trade him. You knew you had the trount's card of offering him that contract, but you had to have insight into whether he would actually stay. So I would imagine even if the leaks right now aren't coming from Kuzma's camp about the Wizards being confident in his ability to resign, this trade makes it more likely that they resigned him, unless again they pivot leading into the trade deadline, which I would be very surprised to see if they do, and I would categorize this immediately. The Ruey Hodgmore trade exists in this unspectacular but not damning vacuum. If you want to have a problem with the way the Wizards do business, I think you need to look just at the more fundamental scale, more wholesale mistakes that they've made, or more wholesale moves that they haven't made. It. I don't think that they've squandered some potential sleeping giant and Ruby Hadgimore. It's should they have kept him? Like I said, if this was the value on the table, I would have kept him. But I also would have made that move. And I'm of thinking, well, I'm also trading Kyle Kuzma. I'm also looking at maybe even trading Porzingis, and I'm looking at more of a gradual rebuild. And I just don't think that that right now is on the table for the Wizards. We'll have to see what else they do leading into the trade deadline, and so there's a TBD there for them. I like this trade a lot better for the Lakers than the Wizards. That's all to say. But I don't. I think people are being too hard on Washington and I don't think they ended up squandering this massive asset in Ruey, and I think it matters more to look at what do they do before the February ninth trade deadline? What should they do? Let me know comment add onto it. Would you blow up the Wizards? Would you tear them down? I don't. I think the overwhelming sentiment, even among Wizards fans would be yeah, like, let's go to the nuclear route. But if you're not going to go to the nuclear route, you kind of have to plan around while keeping this core together, which I think is what they did here. That's what to me if we had to pull away. A sweeping conclusion is that the Wizards are mapping out a blueprint to keep the crux of their core together, looking at Beal, looking at Christos Porzingis specifically, looking at Kyle Kuzma, and maybe even looking at Offia. That's something that really hasn't been talked about. Hope you enjoyed this. Until next time, please remember to subscribe YouTube, Apple podcasts, follow us on all the socials at Hardwood Knox. Links are in the podcast YouTube descriptions. Join our discords and link to that is in the YouTube and podcast descriptions as well. I'll be back with another podcast, I believe before we begin our trade deadline previews, I might do my most interesting teams at the trade deadline, just to throw something else out there, and then we will be rolling out division trade deadline primers. I think one of them is going to have to be released on a Saturday, as we use the Western Conference this week, So please download and listen to podcasts on a Saturday to help the numbers and keep us rolling in name brand and no show socks. But yeah, other than that, we need to shout out to the one, the only, the indelible, the legendary, right, you know,