WASHINGTON — The Washington Wizards have lost nine of their first 11 games, and on Wednesday night suffered another blowout loss that, apart from the brilliance of the opponent’s superstar, was ugly to watch.
For many NBA franchises, that would be sufficient grounds to fire a coach who has compiled a 72-103 cumulative record.
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It’s not sufficient grounds for the Wizards to fire their coach.
Despite a pair of recent fourth-quarter collapses and a defense that ranks among the NBA’s worst, all indications are new Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger and new Wizards general manager Will Dawkins are prepared to give coach Wes Unseld Jr. significant leeway this season.
Winning games is not the primary goal this season and almost certainly will not be the primary goal next season, either. This is the franchise’s reality, just months into what likely will be a long, difficult rebuild. Winning is immaterial as long as the team’s players improve — especially young players such as 19-year-old rookie wing Bilal Coulibaly and 22-year-old forward Deni Avdija.
As Winger said in late September, before the team opened training camp: “If we lose four in a row, but we’re competing our behinds off, we’re holding ourselves accountable on the floor and we are getting marginally better in practice and those games, we’re going to live with that.”
The Wizards are in the middle of their second four-game losing streak of the season, and the mantra from the new front office has not changed, in part because Coulibaly and Avdija have improved.
Coulibaly, the league’s third-youngest player on opening night, has made significant strides since the Wizards traded up to snag him seventh overall in June’s draft. Unseld already has assigned Coulibaly to defend opponents’ best perimeter scorer; on Wednesday, for instance, Coulibaly guarded the Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Dončić for stretches during Dallas’ 130-117 victory, giving Coulibaly a valuable learning experience in a season that already has been filled with them. On offense, Coulibaly has looked increasingly comfortable, showing improved ballhandling and — in the biggest surprise of Washington’s season — has made 47 percent of his 3-point tries on 3.1 attempts per game.
GO DEEPER
Bilal Coulibaly learning, growing and impressing his Wizards teammates as a rookie
Avdija entered his fourth NBA season as someone who had not lived up to his pre-draft billing as a potential difference-maker on offense. As part of Avdija’s new development plan, Unseld has been tasked with uplifting Avdija’s self-confidence as a ballhandler, rim attacker and long-range shooter. The gains have been substantial. Avdija has looked fearless on drives to the hoop. He’s also turned his most glaring weakness — poor 3-point shooting — into an unexpected strength, making 41 percent of his 3s on 3.1 attempts per game.
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Winger and Dawkins have asked Unseld to help Jordan Poole and Kyle Kuzma acclimate to being the Wizards’ top options on offense. One of the benefits of having Poole and Kuzma succeed individually would be to take pressure off Coulibaly, Avdija and 24-year-old Corey Kispert. An unspoken plus to Poole and Kuzma elevating their individual games would be to raise their trade values for potential deals – if not for this season, then in the seasons to come.
Poole has struggled on the court and appeared to lose his temper during a timeout Sunday afternoon against the Brooklyn Nets. But Winger and Dawkins did not expect Poole’s transition from playing in the substantial shadows of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson to a featured role in Washington to be fast or simple. The front-office executives seem patient to let Poole gain his bearings, even if it takes awhile. The truth is they have no other choice but to be patient given Poole’s large contract and underwhelming play.
More concerning is that the Wizards’ defense has looked amateurish at times, including Wednesday, with the Mavericks scoring 41 points in the first quarter amid a flurry of Wizards coverage mistakes. Through Wednesday, they rank 27th leaguewide in defensive efficiency, allowing 117.4 points per 100 possessions, ahead of only the Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs and Charlotte Hornets.
But despite those failings, Winger and Dawkins no doubt would insist the Wizards’ defense, like everything else, should be evaluated within the context of growth. In Washington’s four games from Nov. 8 through Monday, the defense was far more effective. During that six-day stretch, Washington posted the NBA’s eighth-best defensive rating. That’s a very short span, to be sure, and it should be noted the Wizards lost three of those four games. Still, those games signaled progress.
The harsh but inescapable truth is that Washington’s young, newly assembled roster features has significant flaws defensively. Poole, who played next to nil defense during his time with Golden State, and point guard Tyus Jones form one of the league’s smallest starting backcourts. Their height and length disadvantages place stress on teammates who share the court with them because they struggle to contain the ball at the point of attack, forcing the Wizards into rotations. During Wednesday’s horrendous first quarter, for instance, the Mavericks took every opportunity to screen so Poole had to switch onto Dončić, a tactic that helped Dončić feast.
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Kuzma, who is now expending more energy on offense than he did as a Los Angeles Lakers role player alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis, is not as effective a defender as he was during his final Lakers years.
Within this overall context, starting center Daniel Gafford has to shoulder a Bill Russell-like burden as a rim protector, putting him at risk for foul trouble and sometimes out of position to collect defensive rebounds. Although he blocks shots well, he, too, is one of the Wizards’ players with something to prove. If you ask talent evaluators around the league, many of them would tell you they’re not convinced Gafford could be a starting center on a contending team.
The roster Winger and Dawkins have assembled does not include a defensive-oriented backup center. Danilo Gallinari, a natural forward who is 35 years old and is only one year removed from reconstructive knee surgery, is playing out of position as Washington’s second-string center. Gallinari is immobile — so much so that he’s hard-pressed to compensate for his teammates’ defensive mistakes.
And now Delon Wright, the team’s most disruptive perimeter defender, is sidelined for at least the next month because of a sprained left knee.
If all of those roster-construction deficiencies sound like convenient excuses for Unseld and his assistant coaches, well, they are excuses.
They also are accurate excuses.
No one would deny that, to play effective defense, a group of players must make a legitimate effort on that end. But in sharp contrast to youth leagues and high-school ball, effort is not the only ingredient to a successful NBA defense. Positional size, athleticism, experience in the NBA and the trust that stems from experience playing together matter too.
To put it another way: Even if all Wizards players put in superb efforts, the defense still would be limited in how well it could perform on most nights.
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The benefit to this is that having such a subpar defense will make it difficult for the Wizards to finish this season with even a mediocre record, and avoiding a mediocre record ought to be a priority. One goal for the early stages of Washington’s rebuild is for the franchise to enhance its odds each year for the NBA Draft Lottery.
But while having problematic personnel on defense should help the Wizards’ lottery chances, it will make it more difficult for Winger and Dawkins to evaluate Unseld as a tactician.
Just how much of the team’s poor performance on defense is a result of the personnel’s inherent flaws, and how much is because Unseld isn’t getting the most out of his players? To what degree should Unseld be held accountable for not coaxing more effort from Poole and more results from Kuzma?
These are essential questions for Winger and Dawkins to resolve as they determine whether Unseld is their ideal long-term fit.
Unseld received significant flak from Wizards fans after his team blew a 92-87 lead with 4:08 remaining in the fourth quarter in Brooklyn and then, the next night, collapsed after they led by 22 points midway through the third quarter in Toronto.
Winger and Dawkins, on the other hand, likely had a different takeaway. They almost certainly were pleased that Unseld played Coulibaly and Avdija the entire fourth quarter against Brooklyn and played Coulibaly the entire fourth quarter against Toronto. Late in the Toronto game, Avdija also handled the ball during pressure-packed moments.
Still, the loss to the Raptors was particularly galling. The Wizards took a 106-90 lead with 7:25 remaining in the fourth quarter. After that, the Wizards were outscored 21-1 and missed all 10 of their shot attempts.
Unseld opted not to play Gafford in the fourth quarter, choosing instead to have another capable ballhandler on the floor to navigate the athletic Raptors’ pressure defense. That decision may have cost Washington.
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But Unseld cannot be faulted for some of the offense’s struggles late in the game. Ahead 107-101, Kuzma cut toward the hoop for what should have been an easy score, but Avdija threw an off-target pass that disrupted Kuzma’s balance and made it difficult for Kuzma to dunk or even convert his layup attempt. A short while later, Poole missed a driving, contested layup. Leading 107-103 with 1:40 remaining, Jones misfired on a wide-open 3-pointer from the left wing that likely would have iced the game for the Wizards if it had gone in. (Note, also, that Poole, to his credit, created Jones’ shot attempt by drawing a double-team and then passing to Jones.)
So, even if Unseld had made a mistake not playing Gafford late in the game, Unseld is not responsible for his players’ physical errors: Avdija’s off-target pass, Poole’s missed layup and Jones’ off-target, wide-open 3. The process to generate those attempts was excellent, even though the execution was awful.
As Winger said before training camp, he and Dawkins are prepared to live with the losses as long as the players — and especially the young players — improve. If the players stagnate or regress, if the effort is poor and if the team continues to lose, then the calculus could change.
What is not certain is Unseld’s status for next season. Even though the front office exercised the Wizards’ team option on Unseld for 2024-25, that’s not a guarantee Unseld will be retained after this season. It’s merely a guarantee Unseld will be paid next season.
This season will serve as an evaluation year for all the staff members whom Winger and Dawkins inherited, and Winger and Dawkins are doing the grading. Their criteria for a successful season omits winning as a primary consideration. So far, Unseld has accomplished much of what has been sought from him.
(Top photo of Wes Unseld Jr.: Bill Streicher / USA Today)
