FanPost

Who Are the Wizards Now?

Although it may not have the overwhelming amount of games as a league like the MLB does, the NBA runs a long and ever-moving season. Even this year, which sees one of the league’s weirdest seasons yet as the NBA copes with all of the impacts from COVID, teams still have to play 72 games across just five months. The basketball season, for better or worse, is nonstop. But, as Ferris Bueller famously said, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you just might miss it (of course he said that about life, and this is basketball, but what’s the difference?). So, following the advent of the season’s second half schedules being released, and in a fleeting pause between a long away trip and a home stand, let’s do just that and stop for just a second to look at this Wizards team: who are they, where are they, and, most importantly, where do they go from here?

Who are the Washington Wizards this season? It’s a deceptively simple question any year, but perhaps more than ever this year. Russell Westbrook is just now getting his legs under him after the John Wall trade, Bradley Beal is still discovering how high his ceiling as a scorer is, and a collection of young players is working to figure out and effectively fill their roles. It’s hard to tell where we are as a collective when there is a lot of vagueness on the individual player level. At best, this can be one of the best offensive teams in the Eastern Conference. When everyone is clicking, Westbrook can still hit the turbo button to get past players, drive, and kick for more open looks; Bertans (once back from his minor injury) can drop a three from essentially anywhere from the logo up; and Beal is a walking bucket whenever he’s on the court. We’ve seen some of this throughout the season: Beal is the league leading scorer, Russ is second in the league in assists (both per ESPN.com), and Bertans is hitting over 55% of threes on just over 7 takes per game. But at worst - and yes, although it may not feel like it during this winning stretch, it was not long ago that they were truly and brutally at worst - the Wizards offense can be ugly. Beal has scored over 30 and the Wizards have still lost nine times this season, Russ has the 29th worst turnover rate in the league, and Bertans has shot below 30% from three in ten games already (including three games with zero makes, even while still putting up about the same amount of attempts).

And that’s all on the offensive end of the floor - on defense, the difference between the good and bad version of this team can be even more drastic. Over the last 10 games, the Wizards have the 10th best defensive ranking in the league, the 11th best defensive field goal percentage, and the 3rd best steals total (Neto certainly helped that total last night against the Nuggets, with a career high 5 steals). However, when you consider the season as a whole, the defensive rating plummets to the fourth worst. There are a few potential causes for this, ranging from the optimistic to the pessimistic. For the former, one could argue that maybe this Wizards team is finally figuring out their rotations, talking more, and just generally avoiding careless mistakes. Especially at the beginning of the season, for example, the Wizards would tend to panic and crash inside whenever the ball got anywhere close to the rim, leaving the perimeter open for easy looks (in January, opponents hit almost 40% of threes against the Wizards, good for fourth highest in the league). Now, however, the guys seem to talk more, and individuals like Rui Hachimura are picking up the slack and defending across multiple positions with consistency. On the other hand, though, one could say that maybe this is just a product of streaky play and luck, and things will inevitably get back to the middling state they started at.

Whichever way you look at it, it is a fact that the Eastern Conference is tight, and the Wizards now stand one game closer to playoff home court advantage (3 games back) than last place (4 games back). Who the Wizards are may still be coming together, but where they are right now is pretty certain: caught between two ends of the basketball spectrum, with consequences as drastic as they are different. I understand that is a dramatic statement, and I can feel your eyeroll from here - I know we’re still less than halfway through an abridged season, and yes, they’re playing well right now! - but the impacts of the Wizards path forward can be explained with one question: where will Bradley Beal be one year from today?

Since signing his massive extension in October 2019, Beal has made it plenty clear that, as much as he wants to stay in DC, his future with the team is dependent on our success. That’s a more than fair demand in today’s NBA, when it is a little unusual for a player as good as Beal to be so patient with an organization to get it together and find a winning path. But whether or not the Wizards will make good on that grace period is yet to be seen. The John Wall for Russell Westbrook trade was clearly a sign that this organization will do a lot to try to make Beal happy (and he certainly does seem happier now than at the beginning of the season) and build a future around him, but it’s not unreasonable to think that if they can’t make the playoffs this year, Beal may finally reach the end of his patience.

If the Wizards fail to keep Beal’s interest, then the future of the franchise gets even cloudier. This year’s draft class looks to be a good one, and landing a high pick, combined with the trade return the Wizards could get for the league’s best scorer, could be a significant start towards a bright future. However, pulling off a successful restart is not easy, and actually successfully hitting on a draft pick - and then keeping them long enough to see their potential convert to success - is even harder. Just look at the list of the top draft picks every year for the last decade. Since the start of the millennium, only two of the teams who have had the top draft pick (the Cavs and the Raptors) have gone on to win a championship (and the Raptors won that championship over a decade later when that number one pick was no longer on the team). Sure, there are some absolutely incredible names in the history of top picks, but there is no guarantee of future wins, even with the luck of getting the best pick in the draft.

So now we reach the big question: where do the Wizards go from here? The team is undoubtedly on a hot streak, and I hate sounding pessimistic (although, let’s be real, such is the life of a Wizards fan much of the time), but things will only get tougher during a second half of the season loaded with extra games to make up for lost time due to COVID protocols in January. With the trade deadline about a month away, should the Wizards make a push and become a buyer, maybe to fit in a couple more rotational pieces to help on defense or take some of the shooting load off of a streaky Bertans? That possibility sure seems increasingly likely with every win. Or should we accept that this is only fleeting joy, and see the Wizards as a fun but flawed team with a limited ceiling, and prepare to hit the restart button with a big Beal trade? It was only a couple weeks ago that Bullets Forever Fanposts were filling up with ideas for how to maximize such a move, as painful as it may be. To be honest, I don’t know myself - I don’t think anyone really, truly knows yet - but the next few weeks could prove pivotal as we find out just how for real the boys in DC are.

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.