The Washington Wizards have had a rough season so far. After a solid playoff performance last season and some decent additions in free agency, it was widely viewed that the Wizards would be among the top teams in the Eastern Conference this season. Through more than half of the year, however, the Wizards are 20-24 placing them in the 11th spot of the Eastern conference standings.
The disappointing season hit an ultimate peak on Thursday as Washington lost to the Denver Nuggets (on the second night of a back to back) at home. That loss was evidently bad enough to cause the dreaded players-only meeting according to the Washington Post.
Shooting guard Bradley Beal spoke about the meeting, saying the team now knows what it needs to do in order to get on the right track:
“It always takes a team meeting or two to figure it out, but we’re at the point now where we know what we need to do. We’re still in a great position to make the playoffs with 40 or however many games we have left. We have a great opportunity to make a run so it’s up to us to be able to put it together and get out here and get some wins.”
Jared Dudley, one of the key additions for the Wizards in free agency, outlined some of the issues for the team, perhaps an insight into the meeting itself:
“For us, let’s be honest … except for this game none of the games have been close. It’s not a positive. But we have to be positive. We’re close to the halfway point but we got to get some wins and we got get some good flow and we got to get back to our style. This team can’t score 80 points. This team is in the 100s. We have to be able to defend the three and stop turning the ball over.”
A few things come to mind based on this story. Firstly, why did it take a playoff team this long to understand what they need to do to be a playoff team? The Wizards attempted to adopt a fast-paced and small-ball approach this season and that has not really worked out. But did it really need to take 44 games to understand how to fix it?
Secondly, and this is tied in to the previous point, this might be a huge indictment of head coach Randy Wittman. Wittman has received a ton of criticism, much of it well-deserved, for the Wizards’ ills. The fact that the players had to conduct a meeting by themselves in order to figure out how to play together may be hugely telling of Wittman’s coaching ability.
Washington fancies itself as a contender in the Kevin Durant sweepstakes to take place this summer. However, unless they can show some clear direction without him, there is next to no possible chance that they will be able to make a run at the hometown hero.
