A strong run to the playoffs in 2015, featuring some clutch Paul Pierce and improvement from the John Wall and Bradley Beal combination, had the Washington Wizards flying high. There were some obvious deficiencies that surfaced throughout the year, including the coaching of Randy Wittman, but the relative strength of position in the Eastern Conference made them favorites to return to the playoffs and jockey for position as the closest also-ran to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Not everything goes as planned. That is, after all, why they play the games instead of just giving the Warriors the NBA title again. The Wizards have had a 2016 season qualifies as a “Worst Case Scenario of Randy Wittman Returns” season.
After losing to the 18-29 Denver Nuggets on Thursday night on their home court, the Wizards record stands at 20-24. The team has lost three straight and are three games back of the eighth-seeded Indiana Pacers. This recent stretch of play has been uglier than the jerseys the Wizards sported during their loss to the Nuggets.
The Wizards certainly expected more out of this season. The team that finished 46-36 last season and swept the Raptors in the first round of the playoffs has looked about as good as a late fourth quarter John Wall airball reaction.
The main departure for the Wizards was Paul Pierce. Pierce is well beyond his days at a 35 minute-per-game starter in the league, but he still offered Washington a valuable contribution in clutch situations, as a role player with a good outside shot and a veteran with championship pedigree and hall of fame resume.
The team has struggled to replace the presence of Pierce this year amid injuries, definitely suffering from a lack of roster depth that every championship contender currently possesses. Jared Dudley was brought in during the offseason via trade with the Milwaukee Bucks to help shore up some of the shooting the team lacked and he has produced. In 2015, Dudley was primarily an off-the-bench option for the Bucks, but injuries in Washington have pushed him into the starting lineup for 26 of the 42 games he has played this season. For the Bucks, Dudley only started 22 times in a full season of 72 appearances.
Dudley has been a great contributor in some ways, averaging 10.8 points per 36 minutes for the Wiz this year. He is shooting 46.6 percent from three with an eFG% of 59.6 – both are career-best numbers. Unfortunately, the numbers that Dudley is producing were meant to compliment Wall and Beal, spurring on the second unit.
Instead of Dudley acting as a primary scoring threat, particularly from three-point range, for the Washington second unit, balancing out the time that Beal and Wall rest, he has moved more into a starting role because of the injury blow with Beal.
Beal has missed almost half of the season and that has absolutely impacted the Wizards, but it shouldn’t distract from focusing on issues that the team has that can and should be corrected. The on/off numbers for Beal may be an anomaly, but just the same the team has actually been better with him off the court. Even with his 20.2 points per 36, the Wizards offensive rating is -3.4 when he is on the court and the defense doesn’t change with Beal on and off the court, a steady, bad 106.5 defensive rating.
Beal isn’t alone in this, according to Basketball Reference the Wizards were 5th last year with a defensive rating of 103.0, which shoots up to 106.9 this year, good for 18th this year – just below the middle of the pack, much like their record.
And the pace, oh the pace that Wittman promised. Coming into the 2016 season, there was a lot to be said about Wittman and his “old-school” coaching style. With his job on the line, Wittman needed to make a change. Also, if he actually wanted this team to be better, it might behoove him to show some form of adaptation to an ever-evolving league.
In a column by Jorge Castillo for the Washington Post on October 27, 2015:
“Just because we might score more points per game, we can’t go to the bottom 10 defensively,” Wittman said. “We won’t be as good. So that’s what my whole on focus on this. I still think defense wins. Golden State played the style of spreading the floor and shooting a lot of threes. But they were great on defense. That’s why they won.”
As already documented, the Wizards defense is markedly worse this year. The offense has had an uptick in points per game, but their pace hasn’t come along. The Castillo piece remarks that Wittman was “pushing the pace to breakneck speed” during their preseason slate. And he was right. Looking at the month-to-month pace of Washington this season is troubling – 100.7 in October, 98.1 in November, 96.5 in December, all the way down to 95.4 in January. One caveat to those numbers: the major Beal injury knocked him out for 16 consecutive games starting in mid-December, keeping him out until mid-January. Maybe missing a key piece like Beal contributed to the slowdown, but if Wittman wants to draw parallels to the Warriors he is missing the key thing – interchangeable players. If Beal is unavailable, the career-high accuracy of Jared Dudley should be employed to maximum effect, not sparingly.
The Wizards have a lot of work to do, particularly if they plan to lure impending free agent Kevin Durant to D.C. during the upcoming offseason. They will need to make a decision on Wittman, likely he needs to go. The organization will also need to play up the talent of John Wall. The star guard is currently ranked third in the NBA for assists per game (9.8) and has been elected to his second consecutive All-Star Game. Like almost every team in the East, being 20-24 is far from elimination from the playoffs at this point so there is still something to play for. And isn’t that why they play the games?
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