The 2022-23 Wizards have blown seven 15-point leads, #1 in the NBA

[9 and 20]

I don't see enough talk of two all-time greats, Gar Heard and Leonard Hamilton.

[payitforward]

...you listen to WUJ speak, you know he's bright dude. I never got that in interviews with other Wiz coaches. I think he's maximizing a woefully thin roster that's built to give up huge leads and was only projected to win 34-35 according to Vegas and they are likely to beat that.

On the money, Dat!

No, this is not a good team.
No coach can increase the talent on this team.

[AFM]

...you listen to WUJ speak, you know he's bright dude. I never got that in interviews with other Wiz coaches. I think he's maximizing a woefully thin roster that's built to give up huge leads and was only projected to win 34-35 according to Vegas and they are likely to beat that.

On the money, Dat!

No, this is not a good team.
No coach can increase the talent on this team.

Agreed.
I have no idea if Wes is a good coach or not. He's probably not top tier, but how many more wins would we have with Pop or Spoelstra coaching? 2 or 3?

[FAH1223]

...you listen to WUJ speak, you know he's bright dude. I never got that in interviews with other Wiz coaches. I think he's maximizing a woefully thin roster that's built to give up huge leads and was only projected to win 34-35 according to Vegas and they are likely to beat that.

On the money, Dat!

No, this is not a good team.
No coach can increase the talent on this team.

Wes approves

[closg00]

...you listen to WUJ speak, you know he's bright dude. I never got that in interviews with other Wiz coaches. I think he's maximizing a woefully thin roster that's built to give up huge leads and was only projected to win 34-35 according to Vegas and they are likely to beat that.

On the money, Dat!

No, this is not a good team.
No coach can increase the talent on this team.

Not having a good team is also not a magic wand that absolves the coach from their own mistakes and poor judgment when a callout is earned.

[nate33]

If you go a step further to look at players performance during those 8 games you see the following:

-Kuzma (7 games) +/- of +10
-Deni (8 games) +/- of +4
-Rui (1 game) +/- of -3
-Beal (5 games) +/- of -4
-Porzingis (8 games) +/- of -6
-Gibson (4 games) +/- of -6
-Wright (5 games) +/- of -7
-Gill (3 games) +/- of -9
-Morris (7 games) +/- of -15
-Goodwin (5 games) +/- of -15
-Barton (2 games) +/- of -17
-Nunn (4 games) +/- of -18
-Gafford (7 games) +/- of -46
-Kispert (8 games) +/- of -61 (he was a negative in every game)

So only 2 players with plus +/- during the stretch with Kuzma and Deni. Kuzma was a negative +/- in 4 of his 7 games and Deni in 2 of his 8.

Kispert has been horrendous (not surprising with his defense) and Gafford has been real bad. The bench has been notably bad when looking at the box scores. KP and Beal despite their offense, have also been been slightly below par. This is not about offense folks.

I know you put some work into this, but it really is a useless exercise. Of course, in bad games, the team performed badly. You could do that same analysis for any team. Cherry-pick 8 losses and you will see a lot of bad statistics. You could just as easily pick 8 of the Wizards wins and you will see awesome numbers and conclude that Wes is a genius coach.

[nate33]

I don’t really get that sense from Wes Unseld Jr though. I actually like him as a leader. He’s nothing special as a coach, but I think he *could* build a good culture if Beal was shipped the hell out of here.

This is my sense too. I think Wes is a decent coach, but he has been put into an impossible situation because Beal outranks him in the hierarchy. It's going to be Beal's team, not Wes' team. So it's going to be a team that reflects Beal's personality. Beal is a hard working pro and a good guy, and we do see that from the team. These guys work on their game and don't get into any trouble off the court. But Beal is also a disinterested defender, or to put it charitably, he has gotten into the habit of conserving energy on defense to save it for offense. Likewise, our team doesn't seem to value defensive energy. And finally, Beal has excessive confidence in his own ability to score in isolation, which leads to ball-stopping, and likewise, the team often falls into bouts of ball-stopping.

[nate33]

I strongly disagree. Wes is arguably the best coach this franchise has had since Dick Motta. The roster is simply not good enough. If Deni is 4th among rotation players in usage at 16%, that's a clear indication of a lack of shot creators. I keep saying Kuz is forced into heavy usage because no one beyond the medium 3 can create shots unless your playing Kendrick Nunn who's terrible.

Still, there have certainly been some coaching losses, how-many games into the season did it take for Wes to finally play Gafford and Porzingis together?......

Playing two drop coverage Cs together in the same lineup is complete fools gold. Notice we don't finish the game with that lineup. Teams can exploit the P&R for open middies all game long and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Its certaintly not a lineup you go into the post season banking on success.

My instinct is to agree with this assessment, but it really is interesting that the Porzingis/Gafford pairing is the best player pair combination on the team with a +10.6 net rating (per 100 possessions). And they've played together for 400 minutes now and the sample size is becoming meaningful.

Maybe it's true that the pairing will only work against bad teams and not top tier playoff teams, but the first step of getting good is to at least figure out how to beat bad teams.

[nate33]

He hasn’t been a better coach than Scott Brooks. And this team also at one time had Flip Saunders, RIP, who won a title in Detroit. And Doug Collins, who ran a tight ship, got his team to play D, and kept the intensity high.

Brooks was pretty mediocre is most of his seasons, but his last season here was quite good.

In hindsight, I think Randy Wittman has been our best coach in the last 20 years.

[closg00]

Still, there have certainly been some coaching losses, how-many games into the season did it take for Wes to finally play Gafford and Porzingis together?......

Playing two drop coverage Cs together in the same lineup is complete fools gold. Notice we don't finish the game with that lineup. Teams can exploit the P&R for open middies all game long and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Its certaintly not a lineup you go into the post season banking on success.

My instinct is to agree with this assessment, but it really is interesting that the Porzingis/Gafford pairing is the best player pair combination on the team with a +10.6 net rating (per 100 possessions). And they've played together for 400 minutes now and the sample size is becoming meaningful.

Maybe it's true that the pairing will only work against bad teams and not top tier playoff teams, but the first step of getting good is to at least figure out how to beat bad teams.

Straw man, Porzingis plays between the 4/5 and he has stated previously that he prefers playing the 4. It took Wes 1/2 (?)the season to stumble-upon what would become his best player combination when arm-chair observers were pointing it out long-ago, I agree that Randy was one of the better coaches, but he ended up being one of Ernie's fall guys.

[Dat2U]

I can't take yall seriously when were calling Witt or Brooks good coaches. Witt was a 'try hard' & 'grinder' who struggled mightly with the Xs & Os. We say his teams played D but those teams also had two elite defenders in Nene & a young Wall.

Brooks was about intelluctually dull a coach as I've ever heard speak. His idea of coaching was letting his stars having full autonomy to do what they wanted. His fetish for pint sized backups at PG and SF was also annoying and costly.

[nate33]

I can't take yall seriously when were calling Witt or Brooks good coaches. Witt was a 'try hard' & 'grinder' who struggled mightly with the Xs & Os. We say his teams played D but those teams also had two elite defenders in Nene & a young Wall.

Brooks was about intelluctually dull a coach as I've ever heard speak. His idea of coaching was letting his stars having full autonomy to do what they wanted. His fetish for pint sized backups at PG and SF was also annoying and costly.

That Westbrook team was TERRIBLE talentwise, Dat2U. Rui freaking Hachimura was 3rd in minutes played. Bertans was 4th. And Neto was 5th. Rookie Avdija and two-way player Garrison Mathews each played over 1000 minutes (ranking 7th and 8th in minutes played respectively). Also, Beal missed almost 20% of the season. The fact that they played at a 39-win pace (it was a 72-game season) was nothing short of incredible.

I give Wittman credit for being the only coach that got the team to defend in 25 years. They finished 5th, 8th, 5th and 14th in DRtg in his 4 seasons. The team has literally never been above average defensively in any other single season since 1998. Wittman also got us to the 2nd round twice in a row. Yeah, he was unimaginative on offense, but his focus on fundamentals is what led the team to deeper runs in the playoffs.

[tleikheen]

KP never said he liked playing the 4 especially in Dallas and fans there didnt like Powell at the Center and KP in the corner. But playing the 4 now WUJ has allowed him alot more freedom finding his sweet spots and rarely do u see KP in the corner .
KP can play the 4 and the 5 whereas Gaff is strictly limited to playing the 5 so it works out . They only lack a PG .

[closg00]

KP never said he liked playing the 4 especially in Dallas and fans there didnt like Powell at the Center and KP in the corner. But playing the 4 now WUJ has allowed him alot more freedom finding his sweet spots and rarely do u see KP in the corner .
KP can play the 4 and the 5 whereas Gaff is strictly limited to playing the 5 so it works out . They only lack a PG .

This what I am was remembering

"I think it's better for us, me at the four," Porzingis said, according to the Daily News' Stefan Bondy. "Especially if I'm playing against a non-shooting four, I can do a lot. When I'm playing against the five, I'm fighting with the big a lot of times and I'm wasting a lot of energy. Obviously, offensively I have an advantage at center, but I'm just more comfortable playing at the four."

https://www.thescore.com/nba/news/1390671

[leswizards]

...you listen to WUJ speak, you know he's bright dude. I never got that in interviews with other Wiz coaches. I think he's maximizing a woefully thin roster that's built to give up huge leads and was only projected to win 34-35 according to Vegas and they are likely to beat that.

Of course he is a bright guy. He went to Johns Hopkins. But there are many bright people who went to Johns Hopkins who have no business coaching an nba team, and unfortunately, wuj is one of them.

The Vegas thing doesn’t prove anything either. For all you know, bettors might have been thinking, the Wizards are a very talented team, but as long as wuj is the coach they will probably only win 30 some games.