HILL: What's going on everybody, I'm sitting here with GM Xist2Inspire/J2 of the Washington Wizards, and first of all, I have to ask...what's with the aliases?
X: (Laughs) Well, I'm a big fan of the wrestler Jeff Hardy, and my nickname comes from the title of his and his brother Matt's book. I switched to "J2", which is a play off of my real name, as well as the moniker I use whenever I'm doing design work, as a part of a storyline I created back on the old forum for my "WIZtory" project. When we switched to this forum, I found out that I couldn't use a name with less than 3 characters, so I just dropped it and went back to Xist.
HILL: Interesting. So, we're getting straight to the big one here. Only about a month or two into last season, you traded away a former #1 pick in Julio De La Rosa, regarded by many as a future superstar, and who was thought to be the face of your franchise moving forward. I think I speak for us all when I ask.......why?
X: I didn't like him, plain and simple. It's nothing against Julio personally, or even talent-wise. In all honesty, I had an uneasy feeling about him from day one, and had it not been for several GMs whose opinion I greatly respect, he would've been gone much sooner. You'd be surprised how close he was to being moved last offseason. I just came to the conclusion that out of all the GMs in the league, I was the one guy who he just wasn't a good fit for, so it was best that I moved him.
Going into the concerns I had, when I scouted him, I actually forgot that he couldn't be trained, like, at all, due to his purple potential. I began looking at him with a more critical eye. Every flaw minor flaw that would normally be a relatively easy fix (middling athleticism, low current ratings, foul-prone tendencies, one-dimensional attributes) became a glaring issue, and for some reason, one name kept popping up when I looked at him and tried to gauge what I was likely to end up with: Doug Christie. Now for those who don't remember - I know you do Grant - Christie was a longtime Seattle Supersonic, active during the mid/late 90's and early 2000s. Personally, I regard him as one of the most, if not the most, unimpressive purple/purple players to ever exist in this league. Not only did it take him quite some time to go purple, but at no point was he ever a legitimate game-changer.
HILL: C'mon, Doug had some bad teams around him.
X: Yeah, but so did some other purple/purple potential guys, and more often than not, they still dominated games and impacted the win-loss column. Even Jim Jackson consistently brought his teams to the playoffs (though he did have major help in Gary Payton). Now that I think of it, JJ is probably the best comparison, because like JJ, Julio has the sheer offensive potential to be a game-changer, at least from a scoring perspective. But the question of "when will he get there" is still there, and that weighed heavily on my mind. I just didn't think he would be able to do in a timeframe I was comfortable with. I could've purposely left him open to lose potential in RFA (he actually was set to lose potential his first two TCs, which triggered a very specific phobia of mine), but then the question of just how much I'd need to spend to reclaim what was lost, as well as fix the holes in his game and accelerate his growth. Not only that, but what if those Cs turned to Ds instead of As to Bs? Disastrous.
So talent-wise there were flags. There was also the issue of contract. Duren got his money in RFA while he was still developing, but he was much farther along than DLR looked to be by that time. Did I really want to eventually commit money to a player who might not totally justify it until halfway through it? How do you manage a rebuild when a guy like that is your best asset? Then - and I'll get into this later if we have the time - it was just one of those days. The Celtics called, and I was like "You know what? Screw it. I'm tired. D'Angelo's ceiling isn't as high, but he's further along than Julio's going to be until about year 5. I like Bonifaz. And maybe it's time for me to stop playing it safe all the time and go for broke with a veteran lineup. I think I can work with Dame. Whatever. Why not." My only regret is that there were better offers out there, or at least offers that wouldn't have given me as many raised eyebrows. I wasn't feeling them at the time, so I turned them down. But I still handled negotiations poorly, and that I regret. Trading Julio, though? Not so much. I had questions about how effective he'd be at max level. I had questions about how long it'd take him to reach that max level. I had questions about how to build him. I had questions about how to build around him. That's too many questions for a guy who's supposed to be the centerpiece of a rebuild, and is pretty much the only real future talent I have besides Webb. So doubts + decent offer + mood = trade. That's pretty much it.
HILL: Well, that clears a lot of things up. But how do you feel about your team now?
X: Honestly, I'm satisfied. The original plan was obviously to use my cap space and gather a team of vets around Lilliard and IT. Ideally I'd end up with AD, but realistically I hoped to pick up Thomas Robinson and re-sign everybody. That would give me an extremely tough rebounding and defensive frontcourt to go with an explosive backcourt. Of course, that didn't happen, but I was able to pick up Jarvis Chambers and Aubrey Broomfield, as well as re-sign Paul Webb. Suddenly I've gone from a one-man rebuild to a solid young core who can grow together. I do have some concerns - I always do - but overall, I feel a lot better about our direction moving forward. This is the kind of team I like to have.
HILL: Going back to the Julio deal, you mentioned something about your mood being pretty much the deciding factor in the trade. What did you mean by that?
X: Basically, I've been out of it for quite some time. Not fully engaged, mentally distant, that kind of thing. I'm that kind of person normally, but I tended to put my best foot forward when dealing with the league, as well as interacting with other GMs. But I haven't done so as of late. I've thought about stepping down countless times over the past 5-11 seasons, but deep down I know that even though I'm burnt out, a large part of walking away - temporarily or otherwise - would be due to my disillusionment over my spotty record as a GM, and my overall lack of success. I can't quit so long as that's a key factor. Some things are slightly out of my control - I have a computer as tempermental as I am, for example - but other things, such as taking forever to respond to PMs, giving soft, non-committal answers, leaving articles half-written and thus unposted (or worse, posted and half-written), not bothering to even start writing when I have an idea for an article, leaving my computer turned off in a corner rather than just dealing with it until I get a new one, forgetting deadlines, etc. - those things are on me. I just have to find ways to be effective in a funk, that's all.
HILL: I see. Well, we have a few questions from our viewers up next...
