Team name: Washington Wizards
Last year’s record: 41-41
Key losses: Nene, Jared Dudley, Ramon Sessions, Drew Gooden, Randy Wittman
Key additions: Ian Mahinmi, Tomas Satoransky, Andrew Nicholson, Trey Burke, Scott Brooks
What significant moves were made during the offseason?
Washington started making moves an hour after the regular season ended, and haven’t stopped changing things since.
The Wizards dismissed Randy Wittman immediately after a disappointing 41-41 season where the team struggled to adapt to a faster system, and long-standing issues with the team’s offense, defense, player development finally came to a head. The team then rushed a truckload of money to Scott Brooks’ house, locking him up to a fully-guaranteed five year, $35 million deal, betting that his track record with developing players and getting them to play well on both ends will revitalize a team that sorely needs it.
More on the Wizards' Summer Strategy
More on the Wizards' Summer Strategy
In free agency, the Wizards tried and failed to add an All-Star to their starting lineup. When Kevin Durant and Al Horford passed on Washington, the Wizards focused on revamping their bench. After spending the past two seasons signing veterans to short-term deals, they flipped the script and signed younger players to long-term deals this summer. They handed out four year contracts to Ian Mahinmi and Andrew Nicholson, brought over 2012 draft pick Tomas Satoransky on three year deal, did not sign a veteran wing player to block Kelly Oubre’s development, and they traded a 2021 second round pick to acquire Trey Burke.
(For the sake of completeness, we should also mention the team signed Jason Smith and Marcus Thornton, but only parenthetically because they don’t fit the narrative.)
The team also fired their head trainer, added a new alternate uniform, locked up Bradley Beal to a five year, $128 million contract, and have several players on unguaranteed deals fighting for the last spots on the final roster. The starting lineup is the same as last year, but just about everything else about this team is different.
What are the team’s biggest strengths?
The team's biggest strength lies with their best player: John Wall. He's one of the best passers in the league, gets to the lane faster than almost anyone, and has the length and quickness to keep up with any point guard in the NBA. Say what you want about where he ranks among the NBA's elite, you'll be hard pressed to find another point guard in the East who has won a playoff series without another All-Star on the roster. That should give you an idea of just how good he is.
As a unit, the Wizards should be a strong unit on the defensive end. Scott Brooks brings a strong defensive pedigree with him from Oklahoma City. The Thunder finished top-10 in Defensive Rating in four of Scott Brooks' six full seasons as head coach, and only finished below 15th in his final, injury-plagued season with the team.
But let's be clear, Brooks is inheriting a unit that has shown they're very good on the defensive end. The Wizards were a top-ten team defensively in 2013-14 and 2014-15, before cratering last season when they tried to play too small. But even after their abysmal start to the season, they quietly got back to their roots in the closing months. Washington had the fifth-best Defensive Rating after the team acquired Markieff Morris during the All-Star break.
The starting lineup that carried the team to those stellar marks on the defensive end is back this season. Better yet, they'll have some extra defensive firepower this season with Ian Mahinmi and Kelly Oubre taking on important roles off the bench. As long as the Wizards can stay healthy, they should be an elite defensive team again this season.
What are the team’s biggest weaknesses?
There are two areas of concern that I have for the Wizards entering this season. The first is injuries. Last season, Bradley Beal, Kris Humphries, Gary Neal and Alan Anderson, missed 27, 23, 42, and 69 games respectively. As a result, the Wizards over a dozen different starting lineups and couldn’t get into a rhythm during the season.
What’s more concerning is the injury bug has already struck during the preseason. Bradley Beal who Wizards’ fans have grown accustomed to seeing on the bench in street clothes, missed time during training camp with a concussion. Several other players (including Ian Mahinmi, Markieff Morris, and Marcus Thornton) have missed time with minor issues. Injuries are part of the game but until the Wizards’ key players can remain healthy and stay on the court, the elephant in the room will remain.
More on the John Wall Effect
More on the John Wall Effect
Another potential weakness for the Wizards this season could be their three-point shooting. The Wizards let their knockdown shooter, Jared Dudley, walk in free agency. Dudley shot 42 percent from three-point range last season including an impressive 46.6 percent prior to the All-Star break. The Wizards didn’t sign or draft a noted three-point shooter in the offseason so they’ll need a collective effort from guys like Bradley Beal, Otto Porter, and John Wall to improve their shooting from distance and make up for the void left by Dudley.
This season will put the "John Wall Effect" to the ultimate test, as Beal is the only player on this roster with a proven pedigree as an outside shooter. If he, Porter, and Wall don’t collectively improve their three-point shooting, the Wizards will likely rank in the bottom half of the league in three-point shooting percentage.
What are the goals for this team?
This question is a little bit complicated. Over each of the past two seasons, the goal was straightforward: Make it to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Wizards have made it to the second round twice in the John Wall era (and may have been one broken hand away from the conference finals in 2014-2015), so winning that second round series was the next logical step for a team that felt like it was on the rise.
More on the Wizards' new outlook
More on the Wizards' new outlook
But after missing the playoffs last year, things have changed. Fans, players, and coaches alike are talking about the playoffs with a cautious optimism. But I don’t think it’s quite right to say that the goal is “make the playoffs.” If the Wizards have a catastrophe-free season, just squeaking in as the 8th seed doesn’t do the job. The Wizards need to show that this core of players (who are all locked up for the next few years, without any cap room to spare) are more than a fringe playoff team. They’ll need to return to their 2013-14/2014-15 level of comfortably making the playoffs and at the very least making noise in the first round, otherwise the season can’t be considered a full success.
Beyond that, I think they would probably also like to see John Wall and Bradley Beal firmly establish themselves as the best backcourt outside of the Bay Area. That means that they’ll both need to have better on-court chemistry then they have in the past, and Beal will need to stay healthy.
What’s the deal with John Wall?
John Wall had about as eventful a summer as an NBA player can have. It all started a few weeks after the regular season ended when Wall underwent surgery on both knees in early May.
Wall had loose particles removed from his right knee, and had a far more serious procedure done on his left where they removed calcium deposits from his patella tendon. Had this procedure been done in season, he would have missed a significant amount of time but, luckily, he had plenty of time to rehab and should be at full strength in time for the season.
About a month after Wall’s knee procedures, he was honored with the 2015-16 “Season-long NBA Cares Community Assist Award”. Per the NBA’s press release, the award is given annually to the player who “best reflects the passion that the [NBA] and its players share for giving back to their communities.”
After that, Wall managed to stay under the radar for a couple months before it was reported in August that he and Bradley Beal “have a tendency to dislike each other on the court.”
Put simply, after that comment, all hell broke loose.
John Wall’s quote, followed by Beal stating that he and Wall are “both alphas,” led to speculation that Wall and Beal would have trouble playing together going forward. After all, Wall had expressed displeasure in the past with unproven players making as much or more than he does. So you can understand why the fact that Bradley Beal will make over $20 million more than him over the next three years could create tension.
All this being said, Wall and Beal seem to have worked out their issues and their reported on-court beef shouldn’t be a problem during the season. John Wall is an established NBA star, Bradley Beal is an up and comer who, if healthy, has the potential to join Wall in an All-Star game someday. The fact that they’re competitive with each other is neither surprising nor problematic, but the idea that they genuinely dislike playing with each other seems to be an issue they are ready to move on from.
Despite a roller coaster ride of a summer, Wall seems to be trending in the right direction as he played for the first time this preseason in the Wizards’ two-point loss to the Knicks on Monday. Wall totaled eight points and four assists in 16 minutes of action and should be fully healthy and ready for the Wizards’ season opener on October 27th.
Is everything fine?
Well, it’s definitely the buzzword around the team this season. Scott Brooks is a fine hiring, the offseason was fine, John Wall and Bradley Beal are getting along fine, Marcin Gortat and Ian Mahinmi are handling their shared duties at center fine, Wall is recovering from surgery just fine. Everything is going fine.
The thing is, fine isn’t going to cut it this season. If the team is just as good as they were last year after all of this summer’s changes, that’s a disaster. It’s just hard to see how anyone can justify keeping together a core that’s over the cap and misses the playoffs two years in a row, unless the season is plagued by injuries, but even then, one would have to question why the team continues to invest in a team that can’t stay healthy. They have to be better than fine this year.
The good news for the Wizards is, they still have the main pieces from their two playoff runs. And this time around, Wall and Beal will be more experienced, they’ll have better coaching, and a younger, more athletic bench to lighten their load.
Yes, there are plenty of ways this season could go wrong: They face a daunting stretch of games after the All-Star break, they’re a poorly timed injury away from having depth issues, there still might be unresolved issues between Wall and Beal that bubble to the surface during the season, and there’s no veteran help for Otto Porter and Kelly Oubre. These are all problems that can sink a team’s playoff hopes. But let’s not forget they’ve faced issues like these before, and up until last season, they were able to remain competitive in Eastern Conference in spite of those challenges.
With that in mind, I think it’s more likely than not that the Wizards are better than fine this season. They might not be great this season, but they good enough to show they’re still worth keeping together.
Final prediction: 48-34