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I'm starting up my offseason preview and wanted to get some info and feedback from you guys before I got going.

So, I come to you folks.

How do you see your depth chart breaking down?
What are the major story lines to your team this year?
How do you think you will finish record wise in the league? (what place? 1-30)
Tell me a little about your coaching situation.

Thanks in advance.

Can you come back and provide a link when you're done? I'm interested in seeing what other teams look like but I'm also disturbingly lazy.

Depth Chart:
pg: Wall / Miller
sg: Beal / Glen Rice Jr / Webster-Temple
sf: Pierce (to start the season)/ Porter/ Webster
pf: Nene / Humphries / Pierce-Gooden
c: Gortat / Nene / Seraphin

Storylines:
- Will Wall* and Beal continue to progress into all-star caliber talent.
- Rice and Porter showed well in summer league. Will that transfer to regular season minutes/success?
- How will the vet signings of Pierce and Humphries work out on the court both production-wise and chemistry-wise?
- Can we win the division?
- Will Nene break down? Gortat? Our injury-prone starting backcourt?
- Can the super-old keep it up? (Miler, Pierce, Gooden)
- How does every single move, trade, win, and press release bring Durant back to DC?

Record: This is going to vary a good bit. I say 52 wins and the SE title but I'm not a very good prognosticator.

Coaching: Wittman was supposed to be a stopgap and pretty much all of the guys on the board wanted Sloan, Karl, Stan Van Gundy, and/or Joerger at one time or another. JVG was also thrown out there. But, Witt is ok. Some criticize his in-game management and overall roster management but you can't argue that he's a tough old-school coach who did install a tough, defensive identity for this team and the Wizards have been a team lacking an identity for a LONG while now. The reason that we're not a defensive juggernaut is more personnel related than schematic.

Also, not to air too much dirty laundry out, it's been cited that Wittman and Cassell are of the idea that an open 2-pointer is a "good" shot, which flies in the face of stat-heads. *This is where the Wall asterisk comes in. Wall is a great player and importantly a 2-way player. However his shooting woes are no secret and wiz fans are most frustrated when it looks like he has something to prove by taking way more pullup 2 pointers than he should, especially in ISO, close-out situations. Beal isn't much better because while a pure shooter, his handles are weak-ish and he can't get to the rim and force the issue very well. Basically 2 guys with ELITE but severely incomplete ISO scoring skill-sets.

Ok I'm rambling. I'll let someone else do a better job of what I miserably attempted. I just wanted to get in a post and ask for a copy of your rundown when complete.

pancakes3 wrote:Can you come back and provide a link when you're done? I'm interested in seeing what other teams look like but I'm also disturbingly lazy.

Depth Chart:
pg: Wall / Miller
sg: Beal / Glen Rice Jr / Webster-Temple
sf: Pierce (to start the season)/ Porter/ Webster
pf: Nene / Humphries / Pierce-Gooden
c: Gortat / Nene / Seraphin

Storylines:
- Will Wall* and Beal continue to progress into all-star caliber talent.
- Rice and Porter showed well in summer league. Will that transfer to regular season minutes/success?
- How will the vet signings of Pierce and Humphries work out on the court both production-wise and chemistry-wise?
- Can we win the division?
- Will Nene break down? Gortat? Our injury-prone starting backcourt?
- Can the super-old keep it up? (Miler, Pierce, Gooden)
- How does every single move, trade, win, and press release bring Durant back to DC?

Record: This is going to vary a good bit. I say 52 wins and the SE title but I'm not a very good prognosticator.

Coaching: Wittman was supposed to be a stopgap and pretty much all of the guys on the board wanted Sloan, Karl, Stan Van Gundy, and/or Joerger at one time or another. JVG was also thrown out there. But, Witt is ok. Some criticize his in-game management and overall roster management but you can't argue that he's a tough old-school coach who did install a tough, defensive identity for this team and the Wizards have been a team lacking an identity for a LONG while now. The reason that we're not a defensive juggernaut is more personnel related than schematic.

Also, not to air too much dirty laundry out, it's been cited that Wittman and Cassell are of the idea that an open 2-pointer is a "good" shot, which flies in the face of stat-heads. *This is where the Wall asterisk comes in. Wall is a great player and importantly a 2-way player. However his shooting woes are no secret and wiz fans are most frustrated when it looks like he has something to prove by taking way more pullup 2 pointers than he should, especially in ISO, close-out situations. Beal isn't much better because while a pure shooter, his handles are weak-ish and he can't get to the rim and force the issue very well. Basically 2 guys with ELITE but severely incomplete ISO scoring skill-sets.

Ok I'm rambling. I'll let someone else do a better job of what I miserably attempted. I just wanted to get in a post and ask for a copy of your rundown when complete.

You forgot to list Blair.

jazzfan1971 wrote:How do you see your depth chart breaking down?

PG -- Wall -- Miller
SG -- Beal -- Temple -- Rice (Webster will take this role back when/if healthy)
SF -- Pierce -- Porter
PF -- Nenê -- Humphries -- Blair
C -- Gortat -- Nenê -- Blair

What are the major story lines to your team this year?

Can Wall, Beal and Porter improve enough before the older players decline for the Wizards to actually contend for anything meaningful before they have to rebuild/restock?

How do you think you will finish record wise in the league? (what place? 1-30)

My guess -- 41-47 wins. 45 feels about right for this group. That should be good for a 5th or 6th seed in the East. Maybe they can make it to the 2nd round again.

Tell me a little about your coaching situation.

Wittman is basically standard issue coach. The players seem to like him, and they give a good effort most of the time. He seems to embrace analytics, but at the same time they shoot (poorly) lots of 2pt jumpers. The Wizards have been pretty good defensively with him as head coach. He just got an extension for making the playoffs, so he's probably safe for at least this season and part of the next.

I think its best you read a few threads.

Stay away from the over negative people. They have been getting it wrong for a few years now. They hate EG more then they like the team.

East is tougher, that's for sure.

But if you know the game, look at the roster.

You biggest questions will be what about Otto, Glen and Kevin S.

Well Otto is going to surprise the non Wizards fan. He was a great college player, was injured last year and looked awesome playing an NBA role in summer league. Glen will be used to start the year and then Webster returns. Glen is a good defender. Strong young man. Drives really well, get to the line a ton. And can hit from outside when hot.

Webster can nail the open shot from 3 and was a top shooter in the league getting open look from Wall there. Drives sometimes but not his main thing. Average defender. Injured last year with nagging back issues which he had before.

Kevin S. He won't play much.

So look at the roster and you decide. Its a deep team. Vets, rising stars, and solid utility players.

Expect a top 3 team in the East. Team will again have great chemistry. And the coach is defense first and team offense. But Wall can still coast to coast, create and his shoot is getting better. Very SAS style. And now with depth, even more so.

Optimistic to pessimistic
viewtopic.php?p=40776181#p40776181

and one more:
viewtopic.php?p=39828818#p39828818

pancakes3 wrote:Can you come back and provide a link when you're done? I'm interested in seeing what other teams look like but I'm also disturbingly lazy.

Depth Chart:
pg: Wall / Miller
sg: Beal / Glen Rice Jr / Webster-Temple
sf: Pierce (to start the season)/ Porter/ Webster
pf: Nene / Humphries / Pierce-Gooden
c: Gortat / Nene / Seraphin

Storylines:
- Will Wall* and Beal continue to progress into all-star caliber talent.
- Rice and Porter showed well in summer league. Will that transfer to regular season minutes/success?
- How will the vet signings of Pierce and Humphries work out on the court both production-wise and chemistry-wise?
- Can we win the division?
- Will Nene break down? Gortat? Our injury-prone starting backcourt?
- Can the super-old keep it up? (Miler, Pierce, Gooden)
- How does every single move, trade, win, and press release bring Durant back to DC?

Record: This is going to vary a good bit. I say 52 wins and the SE title but I'm not a very good prognosticator.

Coaching: Wittman was supposed to be a stopgap and pretty much all of the guys on the board wanted Sloan, Karl, Stan Van Gundy, and/or Joerger at one time or another. JVG was also thrown out there. But, Witt is ok. Some criticize his in-game management and overall roster management but you can't argue that he's a tough old-school coach who did install a tough, defensive identity for this team and the Wizards have been a team lacking an identity for a LONG while now. The reason that we're not a defensive juggernaut is more personnel related than schematic.

Also, not to air too much dirty laundry out, it's been cited that Wittman and Cassell are of the idea that an open 2-pointer is a "good" shot, which flies in the face of stat-heads. *This is where the Wall asterisk comes in. Wall is a great player and importantly a 2-way player. However his shooting woes are no secret and wiz fans are most frustrated when it looks like he has something to prove by taking way more pullup 2 pointers than he should, especially in ISO, close-out situations. Beal isn't much better because while a pure shooter, his handles are weak-ish and he can't get to the rim and force the issue very well. Basically 2 guys with ELITE but severely incomplete ISO scoring skill-sets.

Ok I'm rambling. I'll let someone else do a better job of what I miserably attempted. I just wanted to get in a post and ask for a copy of your rundown when complete.

Good summary 'cakes.

A few things to add:

1. It seems like an open secret that the Wiz are all in for Durant in 2016. Their moves this off-season seem to be largely lateral, which is ok given that we have a superstar, from DC, in our cross hairs. We now have better depth, but the loss of Ariza takes away two of our greatest strengths -- the ability to lock down teams (particularly those with elite SFs) in crunch time and the ability to score in threes in bunches.

2. Ernie Grunfeld has been one of the worst GMs in the league and, by record, Wittman has been one of the worst coaches. But, they made a nice run in walk years for themselves last year which saved their jobs (though they sacrificed assets in the process and failed to develop others).

Nonetheless, being able to basically stand pat while maintaining cap flexibility for a run at Durant equates to a really good off season thus far... so, even the biggest detractors among us (me included) need to give them props.

3. I think most people believe that our scoring will improve this year and our defense will regress.

4. We were, erroneously, called a young team during last year's playoffs. We weren't. However, if Porter and Rice develop (and they showed signs during summer league), you could reasonably state that, along with our AARP crowd, we have a decent, young core. Otherwise, we have Wall and Beal and that's it.

Last year the Wiz were a top defensive team. In order to preserve long term cap flexibility (hoping to bring home local homie Durant when his contract comes due) we refused to pay to keep top perimeter defender Trevor Ariza. This team will not defend as effectively and are in danger of slipping in post season play, if not regular season results.

We replaced (on the cheap) the agile athletic Ariza with an aging but still effective Paul Pierce, but in addition to the significant downgrade in defense, there are chemistry question marks. John Wall's best strength is his speed; his weakness: half court execution. He can get out and run better than any player, finishing or finding anyone willing to run with him. But in halfcourt, beyond kicking it to the corner three on a drive, he's got little else. Ariza feasted on that kickout option, to the tune of a career high 3FG%, and a league leading number of corner 3's for the team. No other tandem was close to how many corner threes Ariza and Wall executed. Bradley Beal is the only option now, which means teams will look to feast on that cross court pass, knowing where it is going to go, only on one side.

And aside from that, the loss of stops at the other end will tend to limit the number of transition opportunities for the team to get out and run, which steals from Wall's strength. So we trade away from Wall's best talents, to allow a few more shot-creation options for the slower less agile less lengthy Paul Pierce, who proved best in a stretch 4 role last year, instead of at the SF. Pierce fits well with a 2nd unit, less so with our youth movement.

As for that bench: Our regular season record should improve with a full year of Andre Miller and quality vets replacing the remarkably inept and ineffective youth on the bench (In: MIller, Drew Gooden, DJ Blair, and Kris Humphries; Out: Chris Singleton, Jan Vesely, Eric Maynor, all of whom did Jack and Squat for us). We lost undersized hustlemuscle in Trevor Booker, who was actually end to end as fast as John Wall --but in the aggregate the bench has a significant upgrade, albeit all with slower frontcourt players, and mostly at PF, maybe shortish PF/C's. Maybe Kris Humphries can hang with the team speed of Wall and the youths, since he'll run end to end on every play, but otherwise we got slower, if more skilled.

But bench shuffle aside, our hopes rest mostly on development of that young core:

Wall needs to improve in the halfcourt, get a better jumper, develop strength and confidence to attack the rim and remain healthy. He was tentative this past year, but it lead to extraordinary health -- following an injury year he managed to play every single game, without real nicks and dings. Partly because he was tentative on the attack and settled for pull-up jumpers. Offseason photos suggest he has added muscle. If he can parlay that into success in attacking the rim and finishing despite opposition, and continued good health, well then his speed becomes a useful weapon in the halfcourt as well. Continued progress on his ever improving jumper is also key.

Bradley Beal: is it possible that this year is his breakout? Even better than last? The 3rd year is usually the telling one for a player, and Beal seemed to break loose in the last half season and playoffs. Consistency is the hardest part of excellence, but if he improves over the 2nd half of last year he's in for a hellofa career.

Otto Porter Jr: with Ariza gone and Webster recovering from yet another back surgery, playtime has opened up for 3rd pick in the lotto Otto Porter to prove he belongs. His length youth speed and unassuming mature unselfish game (as seen in Gtown and in summer league, if not last year) would seem to be an ideal fit next to Beal and Wall. Prototypical size and length for the SF slot, he's a canny defender and decent strength even if he lacks muscle and weight (culprit: his Keon Clark-esque legs, he may never get much more heft). Best hope for the franchise is If he can plausibly seize the starting position at 3 from the elderly Paul Pierce. Problem is our coach in his drop-dead year tended to rely on his geriatric veterans. Playing Nene too many minutes. Relying on Webster even when he proved toothless. Question is with his contract now settled (two years, team option on the 3rd) will he emphasize youth development? (The team just hired Kevin Durant's highschool coach, who is noted by NCAA HOFer coach Gary Williams as a skills development guru). Will Wittman allow/encourage Otto to play through his mistakes and learn on the job?

Glen Rice Jr: The other member of the Junior mafia. If D-League and Summer league all star status means anything (well, maybe...) then Glen is poised to breakout eventually. Good news/bad news time: we have zero other options at true 2-guard when Bradley Beal is off the court. Beal probably played too many minutes last year, especially when coming off injury, because the team refused to look on the bench at Rice. Good thing though, Rice's weakness (focus, attitude and ballhandling) are a strength of bench captain Andre Miller, and Rice's strengths-- hustle, defense, three point shooting and attacking mindset-- play into Miller's aptitude. The Professor will make the kid look good when teams load up to prevent Pierce from getting loose against the 2nd line. That only works if Otto Porter is able to take that starter position at 3, and the team can afford to play the AARP platoon as a unit (plus Rice).

Maybe, maybe the young C/F Kevin Seraphin will figure out how to play better defense and rebound? (Signs point to "no", especially since earning PT is an uphill battle with SEVEN players battling for PT at the two forecourt spots --Nene, Gortat, Humphries, DJ Blair, Drew Gooden, Stretch-4 option Paul Pierce, Seraphin) But otherwise we have no future hopes of a young Big to complement our core. (Unless Boogie Cousins's constantly lit fuse detonates him off the Kings roster and he forces a trade to play with his Best buddy John Wall --though that would eat up that max money earmarked for Durant). I like the Durant concept, but ultimately this team will probably only go as far as a successor to Nene will take them. And that player is surely not yet on the team.

Either way, I expect the Big Man arsenal we got may prove to be dangling trade bait, since all are on workable short term contracts and can be paired with trade exceptions to siphon away a prospect or a draft pick from someone, horning in on a 3 team trade in some way. (Though I forgot: GM Ernie Grunfeld dislikes and distrusts draft picks. Unless you've got undevelopable upside, or are a Euro, then he LOVES you. Sore point here).

Still, the fanbase is re-energized by the playoff appearance last year after an 8 year drought, and we seem to have picked up some fans in other arenas as well due to scrappy attitude in postseason play. A weakened East suggests we'll end up with a better record than last year, but our downtick in defense suggests we may not be able to pencil ourselves in to exceed our postseason record of last year. Should be fun to watch anyway, good character guys all around.

jazzfan1971 wrote:How do you see your depth chart breaking down?

Expected minutes per game totals in parentheses,

PG: John Wall (35), Andre Miller (13)
SG: Brad Beal (35), Glenn Rice Jr (13), Garrett Temple
SF: Paul Pierce (26), Otto Porter (22), Martell Webster (Injured, out for the first couple months)
PF: Nene (26), Kris Humphries (20), Drew Gooden (minutes will come when Nene gets injured/rests)
C: Marcin Gortat (32), DeJuan Blair (18), Kevin Seraphin

What are the major story lines to your team this year?

Major story lines IMO are:

1.) The continued development of Wall and Beal. Does Beal make the leap to being an AS caliber player? Does Wall take another step up into the tier of the best PGs in the league?

2.) What have we got with Otto Porter? He essentially redshirted his rookie year. He's going to play this season. Is he any good?

3.) Can the Wizards take care of business at home, and in close games? This is the next important hurdle for them. They've learned how to win on the road and are arguably the best road team in the conference. But they don't play as well at home. I'm not sure, but I think they may have played more OT games than anyone last season and had an awful OT record . They need to find a way to get it done in close games and get it done at home to be a top tier team.

4.) Can they make a deeper run in the postseason? Last year, they very clearly broke down in the Indiana series. Wall, Beal, Gortat, etc. had never played big minutes that late into a season before and they wore down. The next step for them is to learn to handle to the grind of the postseason.

5.) An interesting sub plot is going to be how the coaches handle all of the new found depth they got this offseason. This is the deepest roster the Wizards have had in decades, and runs over 10 deep in true quality. The coaches will have the luxury of resting starters and limiting minutes to preserve the team for the postseason. How will they handle the line ups?

How do you think you will finish record wise in the league? (what place? 1-30)

Biggest takeaway from last season aside from the surprising postseason run was that the Wizards have been competitive in almost every single game since John Wall came back from his stress fracture in 2012/2013.

This year, the next step is to win 50+ games. My prediction was 54, and somewhere in that 52-54 range seems realistic. I think we have the best and deepest roster in the East and we're the best road team in the conference. And we are confident after winning a playoff series against Chicago. Again, the trick is learning how to win close games and become a fearsome home team. D.C. is ready to embrace the Wizards. It's a basketball-loving town and now that we've got a good team to root for, I think the crowds will be really good and the team will thrive more at home. And I think the addition of Paul Pierce is really going to help the Wizards win the close games.

I don't know where we'll finish league wide, there are a lot of teams in the West better than us. But we should be one of the top three teams in the East this year. Probably a second or third seed.

Tell me a little about your coaching situation.

I think Randy Wittman has the worst career winning percentage of any current coach that's made it past a season or two. He used to be pretty bad, and we probably lost a handful of games last season due to coaching mistakes. But it seems like he's very much growing into the job. And most importantly, the team buys into him 100%. He did a good job in the playoffs. My take is that he's a fairly average coach and that so long as he has the locker room together and on his side, he'll be alright. A top quality coach would have this team overachieving instead of underachieving and winning more in the regular season though.

His job is one of the safest in the East. He just got an extension, the Wizards are good now, we have good veteran leadership that makes for a stable and cohesive locker room, and Ted Leonsis is an extremely conservative owner and will not make a change unless all hell breaks lose.

The assistant staff seems pretty good. Sam Cassell is terrific with young players and he's been instrumental in teaching Wall. The Clippers want to trade for him, so there is some demand for him. Don Newman is our other top assistant, he comes from the Spurs coaching tree and he is highly respected too. Ryan Saunders is Flip Saunders's son, he stayed with us after his dad got fired. He's got a reputation for being very smart and strong on the analytics stuff. But I could see him leaving us if he wanted to go work for his dad again in Minnesota. Don Zierden is our final assistant and he's another Flip Saunders guy from back in Minnesota. You don't really hear much about him, I don't know anything else about him.

Bottom line, the staff is very stable and solid and the locker room is full of vets and high character types that have really good chemistry together. Wall, Beal, and Gortat are fantastic locker room guys that everyone seems to love playing with. Pierce brings some pretty profound swagger to our bunch. And Grantland writer Andrew Sharp once put it very well when he described Nene as the Brazilian Confucius and spiritual center of the team. This is a good mix of coaches and players and they're one of the safer bets in the Eastern Conference to do well.

Oh, I forgot to mention: another minor story line will be the play of Glen Rice Jr. He won the Vegas Summer League MVP and looks like he's ready for a pretty solid role with the Wizards now. He looks like a classic microwave bench scorer. We're not really sure just how big a role he'll earn, and we'll be looking to see if he emerges for us this season.

Just to chime in again, the biggest issue weighing on my mind is how we distribute the minutes. It's one thing to say you want players X, Y, and Z to play A, B, and C minutes per game. It's another to go out there and do it in real time, game situations as you make in-game adjustments. Then you have to toss in how the rotations fit, if you really want to go with a 10-man rotation, how that rotation is going to break down, game-flow-wise, etc.

I guess this could be summed up as... "team chemistry". Team chemistry is weighing heavily on my mind right now. It's a logistical nightmare, but a good nightmare. Like Monsters Inc.

Thinking about it, another major story line is the improving Wizards brand. Our brand has been toxic for years, we were one of the laughingstocks of the league. But it's improving, and thus Ernie Grunfeld's brand is improving too. Prior to this offseason, I don't think you'd find many of our fans who approved of him at all. But he's made some good moves recently and ended up building a pretty good team and so the fan base is easing up on him bit by bit.

Good examples of the improvement in our brand are the Gortat and Pierce signings. Gortat was arguably the top center in the FA market and he could have chosen to play for some of the highest quality organizations in the league like San Antonio, Dallas, or Miami. Instead he took the extra year with us and stayed in DC. I think his heart was here all along and he's really found a home here. Time was, a player like Gortat would have absolutely left to go play for better organizations.

And Pierce choosing to sign with us is a really positive development. He's a first ballot HoFer looking to finish his career with quality teams that give him a chance to compete in the postseason and he saw us as the right fit. Wizards fans were surprised and thrilled that someone like Pierce wants to play for us.

Improving to become a free agent destination will be really important for us moving forward. It's something that Wizards fans haven't really dared to hope for until now. Our biggest dream is Kevin Durant. We're hoping to keep improving our brand such that Durant might pull a LeBron and come back to play in his hometown in the unlikely event that he gets dissatisfied with OKC. Every season that we improve, the chances of that creep upwards.

Ryan Saunders left to go work in Minn IIRC.

hands11 wrote:have been getting it wrong for a few years now.

You certainly would know about that now wouldn't you?

Dat2U wrote:

hands11 wrote:have been getting it wrong for a few years now.

You certainly would know about that now wouldn't you?

Czech mate.

dobrojim wrote:Ryan Saunders left to go work in Minn IIRC.

You're right. My bad. The move made sense for him.

Don't know what I was thinking, because hiring Adkins actually became a national story. I blame the schools.

Ruzious wrote:

Dat2U wrote:

hands11 wrote:have been getting it wrong for a few years now.

You certainly would know about that now wouldn't you?

Czech mate.

Glad someone called Hands on that. I'm avoiding conflict w/ him so let it go.

If Hands calls "Snake Eyes" then rolls the dice, he has a 1 in 36 chance of being right. Later he will remember being right about half the time.

payitforward wrote:

Ruzious wrote:

Dat2U wrote:
You certainly would know about that now wouldn't you?

Czech mate.

Glad someone called Hands on that. I'm avoiding conflict w/ him so let it go.

If Hands calls "Snake Eyes" then rolls the dice, he has a 1 in 36 chance of being right. Later he will remember being right about half the time.

hands will predict like two more wins than I do, and then call me a hater. He's just a glass half full kind of guy.