The Washington Wizards roster looks significantly different following Thursday’s NBA trade deadline. Kristaps Porzingis, Ish Smith, and Vernon Carey Jr. join the team with Spencer Dinwiddie, Davis Bertans, Montrezl Harrell, and Aaron Holiday exiting. Here are the most noteworthy things that President and General Manager Tommy Sheppard and former All-Star center Porzingis had to say.
On Bradley Beal’s season-ending surgery decision on Tuesday impacting the organization’s plans heading into Thursday’s NBA trade deadline:
“When you go into every trade deadline, you have a plan ahead of time and then life happens and sometimes your plans get altered.”
On advice received from Jerry West:
“You can’t be afraid to take big swings.”
On the Kristaps Porzingis trade going down late:
“It came together very quickly after several days of conversations about something totally different as that’s what happens on trade deadline. It probably gave us about 20, 30 minutes until the deadline before that thing was really shook on so things come up.”
On Porzingis’ injury history:
“Every consideration was made about who’s coming in, injury history, everything.”
On why the Spencer Dinwiddie pairing with Bradley Beal did not work:
“I don’t know if there’s enough time that elapsed to say it didn’t work. It certainly wasn’t what we thought it would be.”
On the plan at point guard for the future:
“We certainly went into that trade knowing we’re going to have to find a better solution at point guard this summer, but we have a lot of time. Last I checked, today is the 11th of February. Free agency is the back end of June, we got some time to put some plans together. I think we’ve shown a willingness to be very aggressive, we showed a willingness not to sit still, we’re going to continue to push to make this team the very best.”
On playing the long game:
“I still look at the moves we made yesterday for the betterment of the franchise. Getting draft capital, trade exceptions, better talent coming in the door to help us for the future. … We got to keep making improvements and it’s never fast enough. We’re never satisfied, never, but to get where you want to go, you have to be willing to take steps and not jump steps. There’s a lot of trades we could’ve done yesterday that I guarantee we would have been very successful for the rest of this season. It would have cost us forever in the future. I wasn’t going to get pot heavy on the rest of this year if it was going to mess our future up. Now we have the opportunity this summer with some of the things we did yesterday to make a lot more moves. I think that was far better than trying to just go gas up our record for the rest of this season.”
On justifying a likely 5-year, $246 million supermax offer to Beal come summer free agency trying to keep him in D.C.
“Players like Bradley do not come along very often.”
On a fresh start:
“I’m excited to be here in D.C. … Honestly, it was just excitement that ook over in that moment when I got the news. I’m here and I’m ready to go.”
On his near-term goals:
“Right now the only focus is, get back on the court as soon as possible, healthy, 100 percent and finish the season strong.”
On the team’s goal the rest of the season:
“We can finish the second part of the season strong and hopefully make some noise. First goal I would say is to make it to at least the play-in tournament and play for a chance to play in the playoffs.”
A promise that the best Kristaps Porzingis is still yet to be seen:
“I’m gonna take my game to the next level because my body is going to be healthy.”
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
