Scotty Brooks Has Agreed To Be The Next Wizards Head Coach For 5 Years, 35 Million

Well, this is big. I have 4 quick points why I don’t like it, and then I give an optimistic view of it.

1) Ernie Grunfeld, the GM, is one of the worst GMs in the league. A very bad GM. He should have been fired with Wittman. But Ted Leonsis is in love with him for some reason, so he wasn’t fired—and not only was he not fired, he was allowed to pick the new coach.

2) How did he go about picking the coach. Well, he hired many different candidates, assistants on good teams, talked to a lot of people around the league….oh wait, no, the opposite. He said “ME WANT SCOTT BROOKS” and that was that. He wanted the coach who couldn’t win the NBA finals despite having a team with KD and Westbrook.

3) While Durant and Brooks aren’t on bad terms, there’s no reasonable way to assume that because Brooks coached him in OKC that he will follow Brooks to DC. There’s never been anything from Durant that leads anyone to believe he’s loyal to Scotty Brooks.

4) Scott Brooks isn’t a good coach! Probably the most important quality of a coach is to be a good one. I say that in jest but seriously, I’ve never seen first hand nor read (from basketball writers) one favorable account of Brooks’ coaching. He’s actually rather Wittman-esque- not very original, makes bad substitutions and switches, and kind of just…dull. That’s probably why Grunfeld likes him so much. Big name who can take a team to the playoffs so Grunfeld can save his job, but nothing too flashy either.

Most of all, I’m disappointed the Wizards didn’t take more time to interview for a new head coach. Really disappointed they haven’t hired a director of basketball operations person who has power above Ernie to run this type of search. The Wizards moved laterally. They didn’t even try. They said “let’s get a big name and give him a big deal and hopefully our fans who just recognize the name from OKC will be happy”.

Now on the optimistic side, it’s entirely possible that from taking off a year from coaching he improved. Coaches, like players, can get better. I’m more upset by the way they went about hiring him than the hire itself, which is the main points of the blog. Ernie is a disgrace of a GM and should have never been in charge of making this choice in the first place.

So while I don’t love it by any means, I have no choice but to give him a chance. It’s frustrating as a fan after years of Wittman-ball to see a similar move get made, but again, I’ll be patient and see if he has gotten wiser as a coach. Onwards we go.