CJ McCollum just put together one of the five best games of his NBA career. Maybe top three! Maybe top two! McCollum hit 10 out of 13 3-point attempts in the Wizards' blowout win against the Hawks on Tuesday, finishing with 46 points, which is somehow his third game of at least 45 points in the calendar year.
McCollum has been good for the Wizards this year, averaging a little over 18 points per game and shooting well over 40 percent from deep. That's all good! The Wizards, meanwhile, are 2-15 after Tuesday's win. That is less good. Bad, in fact. Finding a statistic in which the Wizards aren't bottom-five in the league is tough.
So the question arises, as it always does with veterans performing well on bad teams: Is there any reason to keep him around?
CJ McCollum isn't serving much purpose on the Wizards
Maybe that's harsh — he's scoring efficiently on a team that doesn't have many guys who can score efficiently. That counts for something. But with their record now sitting at 2-15 and their net rating the worst in the league... Does it really matter? Would things look or feel different if CJ McCollum weren't in the lineup? In other words, can it literally get any worse?
That's not a knock on CJ, either. Like I said, he's playing good basketball. But the Wizards roster at large is so far from competing that it might behoove them to move CJ for a future pick or two.
All told, I like how the Wizards have operated their rebuild. I like most of their draft picks, think they're smartly balancing adding draft capital and some veterans like McCollum and Khris Middleton, and they're letting the youngsters develop at their own pace. Unfortunately, that pace is not conducive to winning right now. Quite the opposite.
It's always good to see former Blazers succeed, especially guys who had such a huge impact on Portland for so many years as CJ did. It would be nicer to see him succeeding on a team that wasn't potentially on its way to the worst record in NBA history, though.
I don't know how much worse things can get for the Wizards right now. Well, I suppose things can always get worse, as evidenced by the state of the world around us, but McCollum is an expiring deal now and would help some offense-needy contenders (hello, Cleveland?) If the Wizards are going to lose most games by 15 anyway... This might be their best path forward.