- 2 days ago
One trade can change the league. And that's what happened in 1998.
When the Wizards traded Chris Webber to the Kings for Mitch Richmond and Otis Thorpe, they crushed whatever up-and-coming, no-longer-terrible momentum they had. While at the same time creating a new Western Conference Super team (albeit a temporary one) in the Kings. It's not easy to be a Wizards fan, I'll say.
Written and produced by: Clara Morris
Directed and edited by: Charlotte Atkinson
When the Wizards traded Chris Webber to the Kings for Mitch Richmond and Otis Thorpe, they crushed whatever up-and-coming, no-longer-terrible momentum they had. While at the same time creating a new Western Conference Super team (albeit a temporary one) in the Kings. It's not easy to be a Wizards fan, I'll say.
Written and produced by: Clara Morris
Directed and edited by: Charlotte Atkinson
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SportsTranscript
00:00One month after a disappointing 98 season, the Wizards shipped Chris Webber and his legal troubles to Sacramento for Mitch
00:06Richmond and Otis Thorpe.
00:09This was one way to look at the trade.
00:12But there was another way, too.
00:15Mainly, the Kings might have just pulled something off.
00:20At the expense of Wizards fans.
00:22I did not write this Reddit post, but as a D.C. suburb native of a certain age that I'm
00:27not going to reveal, it is almost exactly my experience.
00:31With one trade, Washington not only stomped their first glimpse of relevancy since the 1970s, sending themselves back into the
00:39depths of the league for years and years and years.
00:42But they also created a new Western Conference title contender that rivaled the Kobishak Lakers.
00:48In other words, the Wizards' trade of young for old, of big for small, of Chris Webber for Mitch Richmond
00:55was a big deal.
00:59The Secret Base Patreon has bonus stuff every Monday.
01:02So if you like stuff that's fun and cool and interesting and maybe a little weird, might be worth checking
01:07out.
01:08Alright, back to the action.
01:12After the 97-98 season, the Wizards had a problem.
01:15Or many problems.
01:18Partly because one year prior, they were on top of the world.
01:22The height of the world is a sliding scale when you haven't seen the playoffs in nine years and haven't
01:26been over 500 in ten years.
01:28So yeah, a playoff berth where you're swept but only lost game three by one point.
01:33And by the way, you're playing the defending champion Bulls, was the top of the world.
01:38Didn't hurt that Michael Jordan was impressed.
01:41The Wizards' big three was the engine.
01:42There was speedy Rod Strickland, unbelievable off the dribble.
01:46Juwan Howard, an all-star in 96, a reliable scorer, a cornerstone of the frontcourt along with...
01:53There he is.
01:55Chris Webber.
01:56Washington's sole all-star of 97, he led the team in scoring and rebounding.
02:00A big man who could pass with finesse, post up, or handle the ball.
02:04So quick, he averaged as many steals as his point guard.
02:07With a new name, a new stadium, and a new trajectory, the Wizards were ready to take a huge step
02:13forward in the 97-98 season.
02:16Oops, a step backwards, the new name is stupid.
02:19Oops, a bigger step backwards, no all-stars this year.
02:22Oops, oops, oops, guys, you're running backwards, actually.
02:26What happened?
02:27Well, 7-7 center George Miroson was out all season because he got hurt filming a movie called My Giant.
02:35Unfortunate and also embarrassing.
02:39But wait, there's more.
02:41Teammates fighting.
02:43Required stitches, did it?
02:45Great, great optics.
02:47The team needed some leadership.
02:49So how about the leading scorer, leading rebounder be the leader?
02:55Only looks at his own stats.
02:57Okay, perhaps he's not interested in the role.
02:59Anybody else?
03:02Oops, careful, guys, you don't want to make a pattern out of off-court trouble because management might get super
03:09pissed.
03:09Because, see, Rod Strickland wasn't the first on the team with a DUI.
03:14Juwan Howard was charged in 96 and...
03:17Wait, oh my god.
03:20Could that be why they changed their name from the Bullets to the Wizards?
03:24Like, I know Howard didn't do anything with guns or whatever, but it's still like,
03:27We love the law.
03:29Forget what he did.
03:30Look over here.
03:31We're casting spells.
03:32Moons and stars.
03:33Hooray!
03:34Ooh, uh-oh.
03:36Pulled over for speeding ever so slightly on his way to practice,
03:39cops found less than half a joint in Weber's car,
03:42and then the face of the franchise got pepper sprayed because he allegedly assaulted a police officer.
03:48PR-wise, not ideal.
03:51Actually, anything-wise, not ideal.
03:54Oh, sixth-highest payroll.
03:56Good, good, good.
03:57That's probably not something management mumbled to themselves as they read the previous headline.
04:01How many playoff spots are there?
04:03Eight?
04:03Seems like we should have gotten one.
04:05It's actually 16 if you count the whole league,
04:08which you are when you say sixth-highest payroll.
04:11But that's a bad one.
04:13Like, on a human level, this fucking sucks.
04:16And it was kind of the nail in the coffin for the hopes and dreams of the Howard Weber wizard's
04:21rise from the graveyard.
04:22I think it's important to say off the bat that a grand jury investigation found that no charges should be
04:28brought
04:28and this case was closed without prosecution.
04:31However, that conclusion wasn't reached instantly.
04:34And owner Abe Polin and GM Wes Unsel didn't want to wait around and see how big their problem really
04:40was before they started solving it.
04:43Polin, in particular, was eager to act quickly.
04:45And that act was going to be trading Chris Weber.
04:48Everyone knew D.C. was likely to break up Juwan Howard and Weber.
04:52They'd been together in college as part of Michigan's Fab Five,
04:55and reuniting on the Wizards was supposed to bring more success than off-court embarrassment.
04:59The legal run-ins were an issue, but there were also basketball reasons to break up the duo.
05:05For example, they were both power forwards.
05:08When Weber was hurt in 96, Howard got to play power forward all season, and it worked out pretty well
05:14for him.
05:14So if Weber was gone, could Howard return to all-star form?
05:18And look, while they had that one promising year, if you remove the sliding scale of Washington's success,
05:25having two highly paid guys for four years and never winning a playoff game is not ideal.
05:31Even Howard knew the writing was on the wall.
05:34One of them was leaving.
05:36And it wasn't going to be Howard, who had a massive, untradeable contract.
05:41Now, you might be thinking, why don't they just trade him for a different massive contract guy?
05:46And if that's what you're thinking, you might be well-suited for a career in late 90s basketball journalism,
05:51because there was chatter about the Wizards doing exactly that.
05:54David Robinson's name was floated in the press.
05:57He was expensive.
05:58And maybe San Antonio didn't want him after rookie Tim Duncan's impressive debut.
06:03Plus, the Admiral was 33, and he had a bad back.
06:07Now, of course, we know that trade didn't happen.
06:09Perhaps because the Spurs knew they could use both big men effectively.
06:12Or perhaps because they didn't see the value in trading an eight-time All-Star
06:17for a one-time All-Star with a drunk driving arrest and zero playoff wins.
06:23Was using this picture too mean?
06:25I'll change it.
06:26Howard was untradeable because he had a massive contract,
06:29and he didn't deserve a massive contract.
06:31So it had to be Weber who left.
06:34But did Weber's replacement have to be Mitch Richmond?
06:37Look, the guy had been quite good earlier in the decade, but, uh, he was about to be 33 when
06:43DC got him.
06:44And spoiler alert for something that happened decades ago, he was not one of those guys who could defy age.
06:51So who else was out there?
06:53Latrell Sprewell said he wanted to play in DC just a few months prior.
06:57Oh, that's because he wanted to play with Chris Weber again.
07:01And considering some unpleasantness in December, it's possible he would not do wonders for the Wizards' image,
07:08nor provide the leadership they needed.
07:11There were rumors of Weber for Penny Hardaway,
07:14two guys who'd actually been traded for each other before,
07:17and also Weber for Grant Hill, who was from the DC area.
07:20But little birdies can be wrong.
07:22They're dealing with a pretty steep language barrier.
07:25There wasn't a lot of reporting on options other than the Richmond trade,
07:29because the Richmond trade happened really fast,
07:31just a month after the Wizards' season ended.
07:33So maybe there would have been a better deal if Abe Polin had waited a bit before pulling the trigger...
07:39Oops, sorry, I said trigger.
07:40I mean, before he waved the magic sparkle trade wand.
07:44Now, after the Weber-Richmond trade went through,
07:47we heard about some other options and got to imagine an alternate timeline to the life we live.
07:51This trade potentially had a lot of benefits for both sides.
07:55Let's discuss.
07:57The Lakers used Campbell alongside Shaq, but the guy was a true center.
08:01Hey, that's exactly what Washington needed ever since George Mirosan got hurt filming a movie.
08:07Well, hurt himself not wearing his orthotics while filming a movie.
08:11My God, can we buy a non-embarrassing moment.
08:15DC had even expressed interest in Campbell earlier that year.
08:18There had been Howard for Campbell talk back at the February trade deadline.
08:21But that didn't happen, in part because everyone still believed in the Weber-Howard combo.
08:27Man, that trade would have preempted the sexual assault complaint,
08:31maybe helped the Wizards win some games, maybe saved us all.
08:35But it's not what happened.
08:37Let's stay on track imagining a different alternate world that Wizards fans can only dream of.
08:42Also in this world, I'm a millionaire somehow.
08:44If we're dreaming, why not dream? Nobody knows how the butterfly effect works, not even Ashton Kutcher.
08:49Where was I?
08:50Right.
08:51Eddie Jones.
08:52A shooting guard.
08:53So, Lakers won't be needing him much longer.
08:57And the Wizards don't need their disappointing former six-over-all pick now.
09:02Sorry, Calvert-Chaney.
09:03You were really good at not getting into PR trouble, though, to be fair.
09:07Nick Van Exel was a great point guard, but maybe L.A. would ship him to free up more touches
09:11for Kobe?
09:12Why would the Wizards need a great point guard? They already had one.
09:16Well, Strickland was 32, and Van Exel was 26, and why not have lots of good players?
09:22That sounds great. Doesn't sound like a major problem to me.
09:25So, this alternate reality trade looks great. Why aren't we living it?
09:29Could have been a million reasons, but Weber had a simple theory.
09:34Spite.
09:35And off to the Sacramento Kings he went.
09:38In the summer of 98, Sacramento had been so bad for so long, they were likened to jail and or
09:44jail-adjacent entities.
09:46And hey, Mitch Richmond proved to be a disappointing replacement.
09:49But in the summer of 98, he had some plus sides, especially if he couldn't see the future.
09:54He was coming off his sixth consecutive All-Star appearance.
09:58He finished 15th in MVP voting.
10:00But even without fortune-telling abilities, you could have predicted that the Wizards were kind of fucking their future because
10:07DC had given up three first-round draft picks to get Weber in the first place.
10:11So even if Richmond hadn't gone all grandpa on us out of the gate, he would have eventually, and the
10:17Wizards had no easy way to add young talent for that eventuality.
10:21In the immediate aftermath, Wes Unsel was like, I get how this trade looks bad.
10:26But Washington was desperate for maturity and leadership, so that was that.
10:32Also, as a side note, look at this ad for a knife and gun show with a door prize of
10:38a rifle.
10:38Is this ad placement teasing Wizards fans?
10:41Like, haha, your team sucks and the rest of the country gets to talk about bullets but not you?
10:46For the record, I'm anti-gun but pro my team being called the Bullets.
10:50In his first season as a Wizard, Richmond began his descent.
10:54Jawan Howard did not return to All-Star form, even though he was in his natural power forward spot.
10:59And I guess the team was more mature.
11:02But all that did was take away an excuse for their abysmal performance.
11:07That summer, Washington both drafted a promising young two-guard and made Richmond the highest-paid two-guard in the
11:13league.
11:14Kobe, Reggie, Ray Allen, try putting up a career-worst shooting percentage and maybe you too can secure such a
11:21bag.
11:22Oh, the Wizards also traded away Ben Wallace that summer.
11:25When researching this story, it was around this point that I simply googled,
11:30When the hell was Wes Unsel fired?
11:32Only to learn he was never fired.
11:34He retired of his own accord in 2003 because owner Abe Pullen was a uniquely loyal guy.
11:40In the world of the cutthroat-in-it-to-win-it NBA, Abe Pullen was a decent man.
11:46Isn't that nice?
11:48I'm being salty, but look, I have reasons.
11:51The Wizards eventually paid Richmond $10 million to go away.
11:54They bought out his contract.
11:56Meanwhile, Chris Webber flourished in Sacramento,
11:59making a super team, albeit a temporary one, out of a perpetual league bottom dweller.
12:06Exactly what he was supposed to do in Washington.
12:09But outside of a D.C. perspective, this is a pretty happy ending.
12:14It's not often a team goes from the Siberia of the NBA to the conference finals in just four years.
12:20It's even happy for Mitch Richmond, who had a deep bench role on the Laker team
12:25that beat Webber's Kings in the 2002 Western Conference finals and then won it all.
12:30And honestly, even from my perspective, there's a happy ending angle.
12:33I was in middle school when all this went down.
12:36Don't do the math to figure out my age.
12:38That's not fair.
12:39And middle school is a time notorious for sapping the self-confidence of young women.
12:43But you know what's good for a preteen's confidence?
12:46Being like, wow, I'm smarter than an owner and a GM.
12:58Thanks to our patrons.
12:59Thanks to everyone for watching.
13:01We got a little personal with this one.
13:03Gave you a little glimpse into my childhood.
13:05Hope it wasn't TMI, as they say.
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13:14For Secret Base, I'm Clara Morris.
13:16Good night and good game.
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