It sorta came out of nowhere, but the ‘Zards have a CORE forming in Washington. Obviously the first part of the CORE is Bradley Beal, because he’s one of the bucketiest players in the whole league. He might be getting paid a lot, but the things with a CORE is that it needs at least one All-Star type player otherwise it’s SOFTCORE.
John Wall is not part of the CORE. He’s been injured forever, and there’s no guarantee he’ll be his old self (which wasn’t even THAT great, there’s a reason I called him a bust so many times), and it’s time for the ‘Zards to move on. He can be CORE ADJACENT if he wants, I’ll allow that.
Davis Bertans, an unexpected acquisition (‘Zards fans better get down on their knees and start thanking Marcus Morris for being a total two-faced backstabber snake) in the offseason, is also a part of the CORE. HARDCORE. He’s like a 6-10 Stephen Curry with a head that’s way too big for his body. One thing a CORE needs more than anything is shooting. Otherwise you end up with something way too dense, something you’d find in the middle of the Earth.
Which leads us to the third and final part of the ‘Zards CORE: Rui Hachimura! Bertans offers the outside shooting, Beal offers the everything, and Hachimura complements that with midrange shooting. He doesn’t have to get in Bertan’s way at all, because he doesn’t even want to shoot threes. Midrange jimbos might be outmoded in the modern NBA, but I still maintain that CORE needs them, if only for entertainment’s sake.
There may be other CORE members in Washington (Moritz Wagner, anyone? No?), but those three are the important ones, the ones who will lead the ‘Zards back to the glory days of making the playoffs for the sole purpose of beating the Raptors.