WASHINGTON — On Thursday, the Washington Wizards fired head coach Wes Unseld Jr.
Oh, bad. Wizards president Michael Winger said he decided to remove Unseld from his coaching position due to the team's lack of competitiveness. But they promise they really, really, really value what he's done for the Wizards.
“He will take some time to decide what role he wants us to play,” Winger said.
Please wait a moment as I roll my eyes painfully.
Here's my take on this situation: The Wizards are a really bad team and want to act like they're doing something to fix it.
Since they are obligated to pay Unseld the remainder of his contract, they plan to offer him a sort of quiet advisory role that Unseld won't have to take on in order to receive compensation. If they wanted him to coach the Wizards, he would still do it. If this was a promotion, it would have been framed that way.
Instead, they fired a bad roster coach in between back-to-back games before the trade deadline.
I can't help but wonder if the Wizards front office didn't know this team was bad.
Winger said the team will be patient this year as he expects to get back to “competitive basketball.” When that didn't happen, they decided they needed to change direction. But did they really believe this was a highly competitive roster?
Did they actually sit around the table and think that a starting unit of Jordan Poole, Kyle Kuzma, Deni Avdija, Daniel Gafford and Tyus Jones would be a winning team?
My guess is that at most, Kuzma and Jones are the only two players on this Wizards roster who would start on a competitive team.
Around Washington, there was a lack of accountability from Coach Unseld, who allowed Poole to average 29 minutes without putting in any effort defensively or making questionable decisions offensively, leading to a player who was still developing. There are rumors that he may not have been sending the right message to the public.
Are you okay. Maybe he should have benched more players. But maybe he shouldn't have traded for Jordan Poole…
And if the Wizards had played like Bilal Koulibaly, do you think they would have been “too competitive”?
Want to know why the Wizards lost 123-108 to the Utah Jazz on Thursday night? Because they lacked quality players.
Want to know why the Wizards, who have a bottom-three record this year, have losses to the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons? Because they're just as bad, if not worse. .
If Unseld actually had a competitive roster or had enough players worth developing, perhaps Unseld would have held more players accountable and created more of a culture. An argument could be made that it is deaf.
Now let's talk about timing.
“The calculations didn't even really include consecutive games or how many games it was or anything like that,” the winger said. “There was no sense of urgency right now. Nothing really happened.”
what? !
I'm sorry, but if you are going to change coaches, you should think carefully about the timing. You should definitely consider whether the team has a game that day, how far away it is between the trade deadline and the All-Star break, how that timing is perceived and how it affects the player.
Furthermore, if there is no urgency, why do it??
This is a new front office that gave Unseld an incredibly underserved roster and gave them more expectations than they should have.
Imagine if the Utah Jazz gave Will Hardy his current roster and expected him to become a top team in the Western Conference. It's unreal. Now, imagine if they had those expectations for this roster and fired Hardy today. That's insane and makes no sense.
So, good luck Wizards. You went from being an incredibly bad character to seeming confused about who you were and what you were capable of. Good luck.