Some players, like Michael Jordan, hit the league and everything works out for them like there is some grand Hollywood script at work behind the scenes. Cue a picture of a scheming David Stern tapping his fingers together like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.

Other players, like Kwame Brown, have the exact opposite thing happen to them. In Kwame's case, just about everything that could have gone wrong with his entry into the league did and it left him where he is now: reviled by the fans in Washington, harped on regularly by the media and by people who really don't know what they're talking about.

Let's start with a brief look at Kwame's history and the year before Kwame was drafted.

The year is 2001 and the league is furious at the Lakers for having the temerity to be the first dynasty in the wake of Michael Jordan's retirement three years earlier. Jordan is working for the Wizards and trying to take a miserable team to the playoffs for the first time since his last title. It's not going well so far, as they've landed with the first overall pick. MJ decides to make a gutsy move and go with a high schooler with the number one overall pick.

First mistake.

Jordan and the Washington organization loudly proclaimed that they were picking Kwame as a "project" and that they fully expected him to take 3 or 4 years to start really producing, as was the case with previous high school picks such as Tracy McGrady or Kobe Bryant. This was a reasonable plan. Most college players don't really hit their stride fully until their fifth year in the league anyway and contribute within the first two or three years. As a high schooler and as a big man, his learning curve was expected to be long and slow. If Michael Jordan had not solved his mid-life crisis by returning to the NBA for one last shot at the playoffs, the Wizards might have actually taken this tactic. In fact, if the Jordan had not returned, the league would have seen a very interesting Washington team. We'll have a look at that in a different article.

The previous year, the Wizards were headed by Rip Hamilton, Juwan Howard and Mitch Richmond, with Christian Laettner, Hubert Davis and Rod Strickland rounding out the other major players on the team. In essence, there were a number of overpaid veterans on the tail-end of their career and the team was holding itself up by its bootstraps. They won 19 games. Richmond played 37 games, Strickland played in 33, Laettner in 25. Courtney Alexander looked really promising in the 27 games he played. He was scoring 17 points per game on 45% shooting, hitting the three at about 39% and shooting about 86% from the foul line. The other guy that looked great was Rip Hamilton. He'd doubled his scoring average from his rookie year and was starting to look like a hell of a player, a young mid-ranged version of Allan Houston without the bloated contract. He was 22 years old and had all kinds of upside.

The Wizards were plagued by injuries. If they'd been healthy, the team had a legitimate shot at the playoffs and might have even made some noise there but they were a team of older players after all. They traded Juwan Howard around the All-Star break.

Jordan made it his first order of business to start clearing out the big salaries. Richmond, Howard and Strickland were gone by the end of that season and the Wizards were suddenly devoid of any scoring besides Hamilton (and, they hoped, Alexander). Well, looking at another lottery season and staring mid-life crisis in the face, Jordan decided to return and in doing so, sabotaged Kwame Brown's developmental curve. He fired Leonard Hamilton and came back as a player.

Second mistake.

Then he hired Doug Collins.

Third mistake.

Doug Collins is a renowned basketball mind, among the best analysts of the game of basketball but he was neither the choice for a rebuilding team nor a good teacher. He proved in Chicago and then again in Detroit that he couldn't take a team over the hump and in Washington he reinforced everyone's opinion that he was a poor instructor for his young guys. Furthermore, he was just a stooge for Jordan anyway, a yes-man whom Jordan had by the neck.

Instead of entering a developmental situation that would have given him the time he needed to develop with a patient coach and organization (and fans that would have understood), Brown entered the NBA on Jordan's team, a team expected to win early and often and to make the playoffs. Players that couldn't contribute right away were shelved so the vets who knew what they were doing could play. This undercut Kwame Brown mentally and from a basketball perspective.

He played in 57 games in his rookie season and even in the games he played, he didn't get many minutes (14.3 minutes per game, actually). Those minutes aside, they weren't even consecutive; Kwame would get pulled every time he made a small error on the court, the kind of errors you expect from rookies, the kind of errors you certainly expect from a kid drafted directly out of high school. He was embarassed in front of his peers instead of instructed and generally made into Jordan's whipping boy. This is not the way you teach someone how to play the game of basketball.

What Kwame needed was the terrible team that WOULD have been so that he could have gotten floor time. He needed a coach that would have allowed him to make mistakes and show him what he did wrong and how to fix it, who'd let him play through those mistakes. A team without real pressure on it for the first year or two (the so-called grace period fans give their teams after they've started a rebuilding project).

One way or another, Kwame didn't contribute in either of his first two years. He showed noticeable improvement in his second year but not as much as was hoped.

At the end of another disappointing season in '02-'03, the Wizards fired Jordan. His contract as a player had expired and they "chose not to renew him" for management but they essentially said "you can't come back."

The 2003-2004 season was different from the first two seasons Kwame had played in. The Wizards were rebuilding again, without Mike. They had a new coach, Eddie Jordan from New Jersey, who was supposed to be good with the young guys and was going to look to get Kwame more involved, to teach him, all that. To some extent, it worked.

By accident, in some ways, by design in others.

Early in the season, Eddie Jordan established his coaching style. He was firm with Kwame and not afraid to bench him for a mistake but he would also give Kwame some decent minutes and he'd let Kwame know what was wrong and how to fix it. After a slow start for the first 20 games or so, Kwame had worked his way into the rotation and then into a starting spot.

That was the part by design.

The accidental part was all the injuries freeing Kwame to become an offensive option. With Arenas, Hughes and Stackhouse missing large portions of the season, Kwame had to shoulder more of the offensive load and he took to that role rather well. Kwame is a rare specimen; he’s listed at 6’11 but the Wizards measured him at 7’0.5” in training camp this past summer and he came in at about 275. He’s also quite athletic. He’s got a good face-up game, something he wasn’t really allowed to use a lot with MJ and Collins running the show, he’s developed a nice mid-range jumpshot and he’s a great post defender. He’s also an excellent passer.

Kwame’s biggest problem is a mental weakness; if he’s not actively involved in the offense (read: if he’s not getting something like ten shots a game), his focus drifts. Some of that is the result of being ignored on offense, some of it’s that he gets himself fired up on one end to play on the other and some is just that it is a plain mental weakness. That’s the biggest problem with him right now. It isn’t that he can’t play (see the games where he pasted Chris Webber and Jermaine O’neal or shut down Tim Duncan) and it isn’t that he’s a bust (because he isn’t yet), it’s that he’s in the wrong situation.

From about January on during the 03-04 season, Kwame averaged something like 15 and 8. He had Arenas and Hughes on and off returning from injury and some of the other guys were doing some scoring (and a lot of shooting and missing). He played 74 games that season. In the 25 games where he got ten or more shots in a game, his averages were:

16.72ppg, 9.16 rpg, on 53% shooting from the floor.

Think about that; averaging ten shots a game, he’s posting about 17 ppg and nearly 10 rpg while shooting more efficiently than Tim Duncan usually does. This is before he really developed a jumper as well and before the refs started to give him a little respect on his spin move and while banging with his back to the basket.

In the six games he got twelve or more shots, he averaged:

20.2ppg, 11rpg, on 52.8% shooting. No real drop in efficiency and he became a 20/11 player. Now obviously six games is a rather limited sample but from the way he was playing, it was clear that he had the potential to be a perennial All-Star if put in the right situation. For one thing, he has post game; he’s got a couple of hooks, a drop step and a spin move, as well as the power to just push many of his defenders out of the way. Beyond that, he can face up from all over the floor, put the ball on the hardwood and blow by his opponents. As a center, in the style of what Phoenix did with Amare Stoudemire, Kwame would dominate if he was allowed to mix up his back-to-the-basket game with face-up isolations from the wing. With the jumper he’s been developing the last year or two, he suddenly becomes an even more versatile offensive threat, especially since he can be integrated more readily into a pick-and-roll offense. All that’s only as a scorer. You have to recall that Kwame is also a brilliant post passer. He’d flourish in Sacramento in the 1-4 high sets that Rick Adelman runs.

Kwame was starting to take off, so what happened?

A couple of things.

First, the Wizards traded the fifth pick and Christian Laettner for Antawn Jamison. Great for the team, bad for Kwame. Second, Hughes and Arenas got healthy. All of a sudden, Kwame was at the bottom of the food chain on offense, completely ignored a lot of the time while he was on the floor. Third, he broke his foot in the off-season. He did a lot of work on his set shot, which was good, but he missed training camp and was no longer a major factor in the offense. He missed a whole bunch of games at the start of the season and the Wizards were winning, so Eddie Jordan didn’t want to mess with a working lineup, so Kwame got passed over for shots time and again.

It didn’t help that Arenas and Hughes were both pretty bad about chucking shots and not looking inside but that’s another story. There were conflicts with teammates (Arenas, mostly) and his coach. Eddie Jordan totally changed the way he handled Kwame this past season and it didn’t sit well with him, so he spoke his mind. As a result, he was punished and also vilified by Wizards fans for “disrupting team chemistry.”

The playoffs came around. After being ignored and not played much in the Chicago series, Kwame was summarily dismissed by his team and told not to show up for games. Why? Because of a confrontation with Eddie Jordan over playing time and involvement in the game. The Wizards handled it quietly… and were promptly stomped on by the Heat. If they’d had Kwame (who has proven to be the only player who can guard Shaq straight up without fouling him with any kind of success), they still probably wouldn’t have won the series but he would have made it more entertaining, less of an embarrassing blow-out and who knows? Anything is possible.

So where are we now?

The summer of 2005 has been interesting for more than one reason but from a Washington perspective, Kwame Brown has a qualifying offer on the table from the Wizards that makes him an unrestricted free agent and there are some talks about a deal with the Lakers for Caron Butler.

The Los Angeles Lakers . What’ve they done lately? Well, they had an injury-plagued lottery season, drafted a high school big man and re-hired Phil Jackson after a one year hiatus. Where does Kwame fit in?

The Lakers’ frontline sucks. There is no dancing around the issue, they’re terrible. Brian Grant and Vlade Divac are both done. They’re old (by sports standards, of course), injury-prone and are no longer capable of providing serious contributions to the team. Chris Mihm is a capable player but Slava Medvedenko is terrible, Luke Walton is too small and Brian Cook can do one thing: shoot.

Their first round pick, Andrew Bynum, is years away from contributing to the team. He, unlike Kwame Brown, does not have anything resembling a polished offensive game, has no real shot… he’s basically tall and thick and he can hit free throws. He’s a good start but he’ll take most of his rookie contract before he starts to contribute. So in short, Kwame is going to have a pretty good chance of being the Lakers’ starting center.

Before we get into how he’ll handle playing the game itself, we’ve got to consider the environment he’ll be in. Kobe Bryant is no leader; he’s arrogant, brash and he is a selfish player. He’s very talented and he’s starting to loosen up now that he runs the Lakers himself but he’s not going to treat Kwame gently because he’s got the same competitive fire in him that Jordan did.

On the flip side of that is Phil Jackson. Though not traditionally known as a rookie guy, Jackson has shown in recent years that he’s capable of being patient with his rookies and willing to play them in key games (see Kareem Rush sinking the T-Wolves a couple of years ago). He’s also renowned as a motivator and a guy who can develop great team chemistry. He could potentially get Kwame focused as he did Shaq and bring out Kwame’s full potential.

So now onto the basketball side of things. Kwame shows up and he’s instantly a candidate for second or third option. Lamar Odom isn’t a shooter and he isn’t a dedicated post scorer, so he could easily gravitate to the third option under Jackson. It’s also likely that he’ll spend more time handling the ball though and if that is the case you can expect him to be content with fewer shots. Kwame is a true low post threat but, like Tim Duncan and similar to Amare Stoudemire, he’s got quite a face-up game as well, as I mentioned. His versatility on offense could help the Lakers quite a bit if they use him enough. He draws fouls pretty well, was drawing double-teams when he posted 11 and 7 in his third year and he’ll be hitting cutters and open shooters with passes all night long.

It looks like it could be a really good situation for Kwame, as long as he can hold up his end of the deal with some speed. If he can post 15 and 8 for the Lakers in his first year, which is quite possible, then he’ll probably take off from there and be just fine. If he can’t, then he’s going to prove all the people who are calling him a bust right and won’t ever be anything except a marginally more talented version of DeSagana Diop, a second- or third-string player.

Posted by diderotn:

Kwame will be in LA

The main sticking point in the Laker trade is negotiation of the length of Brown's contract. The Lakers offered only two guaranteed years so they could stay on track for their long-range goal of getting under the salary cap by the summer of 2007, when Amare Stoudemire and Yao Ming could become unrestricted free agents.

Brown's representatives wanted a guaranteed third year, a potential deal-breaker, while the Lakers had offered only a team option for the third year.

Posted by diderotn:

Look, I don't know if you have noticed it or not, but Zeke is trying to get us under the cap. It is a marathon fans, rest easy.

Posted by Mac:

Posted by diderotn:

Kwame will be in LA

http://www.latimes.com/sports/printedition/la-sp-lakers13jul13,1,7986611,print.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-sports&ctrack=1&cset=true

The main sticking point in the Laker trade is negotiation of the length of Brown's contract. The Lakers offered only two guaranteed years so they could stay on track for their long-range goal of getting under the salary cap by the summer of 2007, when Amare Stoudemire and Yao Ming could become unrestricted free agents.

Brown's representatives wanted a guaranteed third year, a potential deal-breaker, while the Lakers had offered only a team option for the third year.

It bothers me that there are premier teams trying to get under the cap for the franchise players other than NY.

Anyway, you can't quote one article without acknowledge another. All speculation anyway.

Posted by diderotn:

Look, I don't know if you have noticed it or not, but Zeke is trying to get us under the cap. It is a marathon fans, rest easy. Once Houston/Penny and TT's contracts are gone, something will be worked out to rid us of Rose and JYD's contracts. We need a big man, but we will not overpay to get him...