2018 NBA Season Preview Series: Washington Wizards

Now as a general rule, for the sake of this blog series I am staying away from any other city’s team because I’m of the thinking that I wouldn’t love someone else blogging the Celts. However, Nate gave me his blessing to throw the Wizards in the poll and leave it up to the stoolies. Well, the stoolies have spoken and it’s time to talk about one of the most polarizing teams in the entire Eastern Conference. As always, before we can talk about what may lie ahead, we first have to look back at their 2017 season.

2017-18 Season Highlights

I know they may not want to hear it, but when I think of the Washington Wizards, I think underachievement. This isn’t a team that never has high expectations because they have no talent, in fact it’s basically the opposite. I could make the argument that the Wizards top end talent is some of the best collection of players in the conference. And yet, they never seem to get over the hump. Maybe it’s because as a collective group they lack any sort of self awareness, but over the last few years it seems like the Wizards love to chirp, love to wear all black to games to suggest a funeral for their opponent, and even when they get eliminated talk about how Team X definitely didn’t want to see them in a playoff series. It’s all a little confusing. The facts are, this franchise has not won 50+ games since…..1978. In fact, they’ve won over 46 games just once since that time. For those not great at math, that’s nearly 40 years. If you want to limit things to the Beal/Wall Era that’s fine, they’ve averaged 42 wins over that span. Last year, they won 43 games and lost in the first round, but they get a bit of a pass here considering John Wall played just 41 games. Not really a fair evaluation of where they stand, and I could argue that their 2016-17 season in which they won 49 games is a lot closer to what I would expect to see from this year’s team. As it stands today, here’s the roster that WSH is working with at the moment

A total of $134,862,848, that’s good for the 4th most expensive roster in the NBA. Not exactly the best return on your investment all things considered. You look at the top 5 most expensive teams, OKC/GS/TOR/WSH/HOU and frankly the Wizards are probably the worse of the bunch. Here’s the problem, if you are a Wizards fan, you have to accept that this is the group you have moving forward. Nobody is going to want to take that Otto Porter Jr contract or the Ian Mahimi contract off their hands, and heading into this season I can’t say the Wizards addressed any of their glaring issues.

If I had to pick their most glaring problems, it has to be the fact that they have no bench, and clearly rely wayyyyy too much on John Wall/Beal. Looking at this roster, you’d say what, their best bench player is Kelly Oubre? Maybe Tomas Satoransky? Fine players sure, but with how deep some of the other elite teams in the East are, it’s not really enough. We know this to be true because of how they looked without Wall. How many more times are Wizard fans going to have to see Wall entering the fourth quarter already having played like 30+ minutes and have absolutely NO legs when it matters most? I don’t know how you solve that problem with absolutely no cap space, but nobody forced them to match that Otto Porter Jr offer. Nobody forced them to give Mahinmi that money. Add in the fact that their average age is already 27.1, this is sort of their window to compete, and so far they haven’t really been able to.

But look, I don’t want this to seem all doom and gloom, because there are reasons to be excited as a Wizards fan. For starters, it looks like Bradley Beal has put his injury history behind him. A player that missed considerable time in four of his first five seasons is currently on a run where he played in 77 games in 2016-17 and all 82 games last year. As someone that enjoys watching Beal play, I found this to be pretty awesome. You forget he’s just 24 and hasn’t even really hit his prime yet, so you combine that with perfect health, and you have yourself a top 3-5 SG in the East. It’s no surprise that with the good health has brought an improvement in production, and his 22.6/4.4/4.5 on 46/37% splits with 2.4 3PM is no joke. He’s really developed as a playmaker, more than doubling his assist averages compared to the early stages of his career. If he’s going to continue this trend, he’s going to be a force.

It also should be mentioned, the Wizards were able to address their sneaky bad backup PG situation. While Satoransky did a good job filling in for Wall, after him there really wasn’t anything to be that excited about. Tim Frazier/Ramon Sessions/Ty Lawson is not going to cut it. Say what you want about Austin Rivers, but he’s an upgrade over all of those guys. He’s a decent enough combo guard in that he can play both PG and off ball, so he does provide a little bit of insurance in the event either Wall or Beal go down. Also you may have noticed the Wizards have a new center. To me, this is the biggest story of their entire season as the clock has officially started on how long it will take for Dwight to ruin this locker room. The Wizards aren’t exactly the most stable of teams ya know? On paper though, it’s a clear upgrade at the position. Dwight is a better rebounder, defender, shot blocker, and scorer than Gortat was, so from a basketball standpoint you like the move if you’re a Wizards fan. Maybe this is the team that will finally change him!

The problem has never been his basketball production, but rather everything that comes with it. If we can assume, and it’s a big assumption, that Dwight isn’t a complete dickhead, he’s going to make a big time impact on this team. It’ll take some adjusting from everyone involved as the Wizards ran post ups just 5.2% of their possession which was good for 23rd in the league. Seeing as how you can either run P&R or post up with Dwight, their options are a bit limited. For reference, they hit the roll man about 6.6% of the time in P&R, which was about average.

One thing I’m interested to see is how this offense looks with Wall back at 100%. You see he’s one of the hardest players to guard when he’s right, and while the Wizard’s didn’t really run isolation with him out, they were 10th in 2016-17 in terms of iso frequency. If I’m Brooks, I try and find ways for him to score without having to do it all himself. There’s enough tape out there to know that 30% usage rate is simply too much. He wears down too quickly. Instead, why not maximize a strategy that showed real promise last year? Did you know, when they run guys off screens they have one of the best offenses in the league? They were 7th in points per possession here, with the 3rd best scoring frequency. They ran this set 7.9% of the time, which was good for 3rd in the league. Maybe Brooks realized that less isolation and more moving without the ball given the type of shooters they have is the better play. Guys like Beal/Porter/Oubre are best utilized when they aren’t just standing and watching Wall iso or take every shot. Imagine how open guys are going to be running off Dwight screens? It would not shock me if this was a major part of their offense moving forward.

It should go without saying that if the Wizards actually want to be as good as they talk, they are going to have to improve on the defensive end. A Drtg that had them 15th in the league, it didn’t really matter how good their offense was considering they couldn’t stop a nosebleed. If you have an Ortg and Drtg that live in the 14-16th range, it should be no surprise that you are an average team. I don’t really pay attention to the offensive part because of no Wall, but to me that isn’t an excuse for their defensive issues as Wall had a 108 rating last season. I think the hope is that Dwight is that anchor in the middle, and guys like Wall and Beal and Porter all show improvement. You can’t be considered a contender with barely having a postive point differential. That’s just not how any of this works. It’s no surprise the elite teams in the East can ALL play defense. BOS/PHI/TOR are among the best defensive units in the entire league, and that’s the backbone of their success. Until WSH can prove they can get there, they are going to be on the outside looking in when thinking of true contenders to come out of the East.

I’m not going to go to crazy, because if they stay healthy, this is a team that should have homecourt in the first round at least. I would say it’ll be a battle between the MIL/IND/WSH of the world for that 3-5 spot, but like I said their top end talent is good enough to be a top 3-4 team if they just stop being assholes. Remember once you get into a playoff series it’s not so much about your #depth as it is your top end talent, which is why they are such an interesting case. They may have to rely on their stars more during the regular season than others, and that’s where a lot of their postseason struggles come from. They’re simply too tired. Hopefully guys like Rivers/Oubre/Satoransky/Meeks/Green (lol) all take somewhat of a leap, because if not, it’s going to be more of the same old all bark no bite season in Washington.

Official Greenie Predictions: 48 wins