Posted on Yahoo:

Fighting to stay afloat without Gilbert Arenas, the Washington Wizards acquired guards Javaris Crittenton and Mike James in a three-way trade on Wednesday, league executives said.

Washington sent guard Antonio Daniels to the New Orleans Hornets for James, and returned a conditional first-round pick to Memphis for Crittenton that the Wizards had picked up in the 2007 Juan Carlos Navarro trade. Memphis also sent a 2015 second-round pick to New Orleans.

Washington is still waiting on the surgery on Arenas’ left knee,and are still unsure of his timetable for return. Wizards officials had targeted Crittenton in the 2007 draft, but missed on him when Memphis selected him 19th. The Wizards released guard Dee Brown to make room on the roster.

The Hornets have struggled to find depth behind All-Star Chris Paul and the veteran Daniels gives them a big, physical guard that they’ve lacked on the floor.

Memphis cuts salaries and pick back, Hornets get a role player to fill out the 12 minutes CP3 isn’t playing and gets rid of a team cancer, Wizards basically traded a 2nd round pick(Navarro) for a first round young point guard, and as bad as Mike James may be, he certainly can’t shoot worse than Deshawn Stevenson. – A Wizards Fan.

Hollinger’s scouting report:

2007-08 season: He’s not a good shooter, and he’s not really a point guard, and he’s 33 … yet Daniels keeps finding ways to produce, and his ability to fill in when Gilbert Arenas went down helped salvage the Wizards’ season.

Once again, his knack for drawing the fouls was the key. Daniels ranked third among point guards in free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt, and even in an off year he hit 77.6 percent from the line. That helped him to a respectable TS% despite making only 17 3-pointers all season.

Daniels also did a halfway decent job running the point, ranking 17th in pure point ratio and exhibiting his usual ability to avoid turnovers despite getting most of his points off penetration. The one drawback was that he took a serious back seat in the offense — only five point guards had a lower usage rate, so Daniels pretty much had to be efficient with the possessions he used to be of much use.

Scouting report: Daniels is one of the league’s smarter players, as reflected in his ability to get to the line without turning the ball over. He’s a natural combo guard who’s better playing off the ball and taking advantage of holes in the defense to slice to the rim; he’s not as comfortable breaking defenses down from up top. When he drives, he likes to tuck the ball away like a running back at the goal line to keep it away from prying hands.

Defensively, he takes charges — leading the team with 23 offensive fouls drawn — but otherwise wasn’t particularly notable except, again, for his lack of mistakes. Daniels averaged just 1.47 fouls per 40 minutes, the third-lowest rate in the league. He’s big enough to play most 2s and quick enough to play most 1s, but at the extremes of height and quickness he’s exposed as a tweener.

The key will be his injuries. He’s recently had knee, wrist, and as mentioned, lower back issues. I’m hoping that since the Hornets need only 10-20 minutes from him, he’ll be able to stay relatively healthy the rest of the year.