penbeast0 wrote:Willman has been an above average, if not great, NBA coach here. He has done the most important thing a coach does which is to get the team to buy in to playing team defense and not break down into individual stat padding. Grunfeld has been a considerably below average NBA GM in his tenure here. He has failed in the most importatn thing a GM does which is to maximize his draft choices and cap space to bring in talent to fit his system; he got Wall/Beal/Porter with top 3 choices but below that has been consistently poor and has squandered decent draft position (Randy Foye, Vesely, etc.) many times while doing a reasonably poor job at cap management (until this year where I give him props for NOT giving many contracts beyond this year to mediocre talent).
The person that needs to go isn't Wittman, it's Grunfeld. While the new GM will most likely bring in their own coaching choice and it may be better than Randy, I don't think Wittman has done a poor job with the talent he has had, at least until this year which has been admittedly underwhelming.
I don't see how Wittman could be considered an "above average" (or great) coach for the Wizards. In my view, he's toward the bottom of the "just guys" group. I agree with the pluses you noted; but that's counter-balanced with the antiquated offense he ran, the bad habits in shot selection he encouraged from young players, and misguided emphasis on "pace" in the attempt to imitate what the Warriors do (which is another problem because, of course, the Wizards don't have that kind of personnel).
Wittman isn't a problem exactly, but he's not a solution either. Grunfeld and the front office is The Problem. Realistically, replacing Grunfeld also means replacing Wittman since the new GM will almost certainly want to pick the coach.
