FanPost

Have the Wizards discovered "The Secret?"


Up until a couple weeks ago, my optimism for the Wizards was fairly bleak. We just finished a season that was one of the best this fan base has seen in a couple decades. Our young cornerstone PG made the proverbial 'leap' into the exclusive echelon of "franchise players." Our younger star himself showed the entire NBA glimpses of the monumental (no pun intended) potential he possesses growing into his own. Despite all of these glaring positives, I could not shake myself from thinking about some of the deterrents that would almost surely handcuff this team in one fashion or another going forward.

One was the prominent and well articulated discontent surrounding our owner and GM. Another was the sobering realization that in order to maintain and replicate the previous season's success, we were going to have to overspend on our two most important FA's, that would almost assuredly not bring us any closer to winning our first championship since 1978. In today's NBA, it seems almost impossible to compete for a championship unless you have a trio of all-NBA caliber players manning the roster. On top of that, assembling and maintaining that roster seems as difficult as ever with the salary cap and max deal structure.

That pessimism has recently begun to swing the opposite direction, however. Aside from the renewed and relatively possible chance to be the team that pry's Kevin Durant away from the Thunder in 2016, I am feeling much more optimistic about the roster we have going into 2014-2015. This renewed stroke of faith is somewhat rooted in my self-proclaimed belief that this Wizards team is beginning to figure out "the secret of basketball."

If anyone reading this has read Bill Simmons' "The Book of Basketball," you probably understand what I'm talking about. If not, the secret is something Isiah Thomas talked about during Detroit's prime years in the late '80's. According to Isiah, the secret to basketball "is that it's not about basketball," which seems to make zero sense. In a press conference, he said "The art of winning is complicated by statistics, which for us becomes money. Well, you gotta fight that, find a way around." We have all witnessed this complication have it's profound effects on the NBA, most recently when Oklahoma City traded their third best player, and the piece that made them arguably the best team in the NBA, because James Harden's statistically derived expected salary was too much for OKC to dish out, considering the monster contracts owed to Durant and Russell Westbrook. To this day, I still cannot fathom how those three could not get together and settle on respective contracts that would make them happy and still leave sufficient flexibility to fill out the rest of the team, but this is the point.

NBA Champions don't win solely because they are loaded with talent. They win because they ignore everything besides the only statistic that matters, which is winning percentage. They ignore individual statistics and value chemistry and winning over any and everything else. How often have you heard anyone on the San Antonio Spurs in the past 15 years talk about individual statistics during the playoffs. Conversely, why did the early '00's Lakers teams only win three championships with Kobe and Shaq in their primes? Because they both let their respective ego's destroy what could have been the GREATEST dynasty in the history of the league. Yes they won three championships, something we would all sell our car, house, and family for (haha!), but the only thing harder than winning a championship is maintaining that continuity over a prolonged period of time, and the Lakers failed.

Simmons is obsessed with every facet of the NBA; past, present, and future, yet he is astonished by the fact that "90 percent of NBA decision makers ignore the secret," or don't even know about it. If you look at advanced statistics in today's NBA, they focus on evaluating players against each other, rather than capturing the effect they have on their respective teams. People are perplexed when teams with far inferior talent compete, and beat teams with far superior talent. This is why we will always love the David and Goliath narrative. According to Simmon's here's what we know for sure:

1) You build potential champions around one great player. He doesn't have to be a super-duper star or someone who can score at will, just someone who leads by example, kills himself on a daily basis, raises the competitive nature of his teammates, and lifts them to a better place.

- Is it just me or does it sound like Simmons wrote this description thinking about John Wall?

2) You surround that superstar with one or two elite sidekicks who understand their place in the team's hierarchy, don't obsess over stats, and fill in every blank they can.

- I would say with a lot of confidence that Marcin Gortat fills this criteria. Although he commanded a big contract this summer, he fills in a lot of blanks for this team and certainly understands his place. It is my hope that Bradley Beal becomes the second one. This is not to say that I hope he never reaches superstar potential, rather I pray the humble hungriness he has displayed his first two years are permanent character traits that remain constant and conducive far after he becomes an NBA media darling (which he will, how can you resist playing that silky buttery shot on loop for NBA Christmas Day promo's).

3) From that framework, you complete your nucleus with top-notch role players and/or character guys who know their place, don't make mistakes, and won't threaten that unselfish culture, as well as a coaching staff dedicated to keeping those team-ahead-of individual values in place.

- Again, I will be the first one to admit that it wasn't even a year ago when I was calling for Randy Wittman's head; however, reading this third stipulation knowing we have Wittman at the realm can only make you feel confident. We can criticize his technical and fundamental coaching abilities all we want, but at least we know what we are getting in him, which is a guy who will not tolerate anything less than high character/team basketball players.

4) You need to stay healthy in the playoffs and maybe catch one or two breaks.

- Damn you Brazilian Jesus.

In all seriousness, I know these four stipulations to winning a championships sound incredibly obvious, but stepping back and examining the Wizards against this perspective is something I've found pretty valuable and inspiring. When it's all said and done, it's not about statistics, but about making all of your teammates better and putting that collective family in front of yourselves. Maybe I have a case of blissful ignorance in believing that the Wizards fill the first three of these criteria to a T, but if you need any reminding, go back and watch game five of the Pacers series last year. Better yet, go back and watch the post-game interviews of that game. Listen to Gortat and Wall talk about each other as if they literally are brothers from the same mother. Listen for how many times "I" and "myself" are used compared to "we" and the team. Read Trevor Ariza's comments about how incredible the team atmosphere for this team was, even if he knew there was a legitimate chance of not returning. Whether we get Kevin Durant or not, my optimism for this team is at an all time high. After reading Simmon's chapter on "the secret" I have never been more happy to have a floor general like Wall who, to me, is one of the hungriest players in the NBA. I have never been as happy to have a coach who may lack in X's and O's, but creates a family first environment and projects an incredibly team-centric approach to the game. I have never been more happy to call myself a Wizards fan.

Before I go I wanted to leave with a quote by Bill Russell, who is undoubtedly the greatest winner in the history of North American professional sports:

"Star players have an enormous responsibility beyond their statistics-the responsibility to pick their team up and carry it. You have to do this to win championships-and to be ready to do it when you'd rather be a thousand other places. You have to say and do the things that make your opponents play worse and your teammates play better. I always thought that the most important measure of how good a game I'd played was how much better I'd made my teammates play."

Again, call it blissful ignorance if you will, but when I close my eyes and say that quote to myself, I hear Johnny Wall.

Thanks for taking the time to let me pepper your brain with all this nonsense. Go Wiz!

This represents the view of the user who wrote the FanPost, and not the entire Bullets Forever community. We're a place of many opinions, not just one.