Opinion: Washington Wizards front office apparently doesn’t understand that bad teams lose games
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, the Washington Wizards fired head coach Wes Unseld Jr.
Oh, my bad. President of the Wizards, Michael Winger, said that they decided to move Unseld out of a coaching position because of how noncompetitive the team was. But they promise they really, really, really valued what he did for the Wizards.
“He’ll take some some time and decide the extent of the role that he would like with us,” Winger said.
Please give me a moment while I roll my eyes so hard that it hurts.
Here’s my take on the situation — the Wizards are really bad and they want to act like they’re doing something to fix it.
They owe Unseld the rest of his deal, so they’ll offer him some sort of quiet advisory role that he doesn’t have to take in order to get paid. If they wanted him to be the coach of the Wizards, he still would be. If this was a promotion, it would have been framed as such.
Instead, they fired the coach of a bad roster in between back-to-back games, prior to the trade deadline.
I can’t help but ask, did the Wizards front office not know this team was bad?
Winger said the team was going to be patient this year because they expected to be back to playing “hypercompetitive basketball.” When that didn’t happen, they decided they needed to change directions. But did they really believe that this was the roster that would be hypercompetitive?
They really sat around a table and thought that a starting unit of Jordan Poole, Kyle Kuzma, Deni Avdija, Daniel Gafford and Tyus Jones was going to be a winning team?
By my estimation, there are two guys — at best — on this Wizards roster that would be starting on a competitive team — Kuzma and Jones.
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Word around Washington is that there was a lack of accountability with Unseld, that he wasn’t sending the right message to the developing players by allowing Poole to average 29 minutes a night with no effort defensively and questionable decisions on offense.
Fine. Maybe he should have benched guys more. But maybe you shouldn’t have traded for Jordan Poole ...
And, if the Wizards were playing say, Bilal Coulibaly that much more, do they think they would have been “hypercompetitive?”
You want to know why the Wizards lost, 123-108, to the Utah Jazz on Thursday night? Because the players aren’t good enough.
You want to know why the Wizards, who have a bottom three record, have recorded losses to the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons this year? Because they’re just as bad, if not worse.
The argument could be made that maybe Unseld would have held more guys accountable and created more of a culture if he had a roster that was actually capable of being competitive or had enough players worth developing.
Now let’s talk about the timing.
“The calculus really didn’t even include back-to-backs or what game number we were at or anything like that,” Winger said. “There was no sense of urgency right now. Nothing really occurred.”
What?!
I’m sorry, but if you’re going to make a coaching change, you really should be thinking about the timing. You should absolutely be thinking about whether the team has a game that day, how far away the trade deadline and All-Star break is, and how the timing is going to be perceived and how it will impact the players.
Additionally, if there was no urgency, then why are you doing it??
This is a new front office that gave Unseld an incredibly deficient roster and expected more than it should have.
Imagine if the Utah Jazz gave Will Hardy his current roster and then expected them to be a top team in the Western Conference. That’s unrealistic. Now imagine if they had those expectations for this roster and then fired Hardy today. That would be insane and it wouldn’t make any sense.
So, good job Wizards. You went from being incredibly bad to also looking like you are confused about who you are and what you’re capable of. Good luck.
