Washington Wizards | Pace and Space

The Washington Wizards Worst Season: 2009

October 18, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Washington Wizards have been consistently pretty bad since their glory days in the 1970s. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Wizards were bad even by their own low standards. Twice in the aughts, the Wiz went 19-63. Their first lost season came in 2001, the nadir so bad that it prompted Michael Jordan to give up on being an executive for a couple of years and instead try a comeback. But 2009 is a special kind of dreadful. Indeed, the record tells only a small part of the story. The rest of the story is told …

Analysis

At 28-34, Washington Wizards Still Overachieving

March 5, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

How bad are the 2022 Washington Wizards? A team that started 10-3 is 18-31 since then, including a Friday night loss to the Atlanta Hawks that was a must-win for Washington if they hoped to remain in shouting distance of the bottom end of the play-in game race in the East. Their Net Rating of minus-2.8 on the season is seventh-worst in the league, and on paper they’re actually worse than the New York Knicks (25-38) and Indiana Pacers (22-43) below them. That’s right. The Wizards, at one point in November the Eastern Conference’s top seed, is even at 28-34 …

Analysis

Headed For A Fall: The 2022 NBA Overachievers

January 15, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

Through games of January 14, the 2022 NBA season is effectively at its halfway point. Only three teams—Chicago, Denver, and Toronto—have not yet played their 41st game, while Memphis and Sacramento have played 45 contests, most in the league. Some teams have grossly underachieved so far, perhaps none more so than the 15-28 Indiana Pacers, whose Net Rating stands at just minus-0.9 even after Boston and Phoenix slaughtered them this week. But perhaps more interesting is the list of teams at the other end of the scale, teams whose records on the court are better than their records on the …

Analysis

Montrezl Harrell is the 2022 NBA MVP So Far

November 20, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

The Washington Wizards are a rather inexplicable 10-5 to start the 2022 season, fourth in the East. And leading the team in WS/48 and VORP by a country mile? Montrezl Harrell, the 2020 Sixth Man of the Year, a guy who may not look like a superstar in a traditional sense out on the floor but who racks up counting and advanced stats seemingly effortlessly whenever he’s in the game. Harrell is sitting on .323 WS/48 in 15 games and 430 minutes this season. He’s posting a 7.0 Box Plus/Minus and 1.0 VORP, that last projecting over 82 games to …

Analysis

The Washington Wizards’ Best Season: 1978

October 19, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

The Washington Wizards haven’t had much success since they dropped the name “Bullets” after the 1997 season. In point of fact, the Bullets/Wizards haven’t been any good since Wes Unseld—now the coach of the 2022 Wiz—retired in 1981. But during Unseld’s 13-year career, the Bullets were one of the NBA’s best teams throughout the 1970s, making four NBA Finals in nine years between 1971 and ’79. Trouble was, three of those Finals appearances resulted in losing to teams that peaked at the right time—two of those opponents, the 1971 Bucks and 1979 SuperSonics, had their best seasons in franchise history. …

Analysis

Russell Westbrook Keeps Breaking Advanced Stats

April 14, 2021 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

Remember 2017? When Russell Westbrook snookered everyone into thinking he was historically great by averaging a triple-double over the course of a season for the first time since Oscar Robertson did it 55 years before? And remember when those of us in the media lost our minds and gave him the MVP award? Well, he’s spent the past four years making us all look like idiots, and in 2021, he is once again averaging a triple-double—this will be the fourth time in his career he’s managed the feat if he keeps it up—and making the kind of people who still …

Editorial

Achtung Panzer! #7: The Tanking Washington Wizards

December 28, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The Washington Wizards, losers of 11 of 14 and 9-21 on the season overall, look set to claim another lottery pick in the 2020 draft to go along with Rui Hachimura, the ninth pick in 2019. The Wizards are still a capped-out, injury-riddled nightmare, hence the 9-21 record, as Bradley Beal, once expected to be part of a Big Three with John Wall and Otto Porter, is now just a 26-year-old star without the supporting cast to help him claim his place on the national stage. Speaking of Beal, his stats have fallen off a cliff without quality teammates. His …

2020 Preview

Are the 2019-20 Washington Wizards Good?

September 26, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The Washington Wizards finally parted ways with executive and head idiot Ernie Grunfeld last season, and that by itself is enough to preface this entire piece with optimism that the Wizards will be better both on and off the floor as a franchise, so let’s go ahead and lead with that, Wizards fans. Brighter times are ahead. But man, that product on the floor last year was putrid. 32 wins, a salary cap nightmare draining any hope for the future, John Wall‘s albatross of a contract destined to soak up cash while Wall watches games in street clothes…yikes. Wall played …

Analysis

NBA Best And Worst Contracts Part III: Southeast Division

August 21, 2019August 22, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

In the previous two editions of this series, we took a look at the best and worst contracts in the Atlantic and Central Divisions, and we finish our look at the Eastern Conference today with the Dumpster fire that is the Southeast Division—a division Orlando won with a 42-40 record and sent no other teams to the playoffs. Which, in turn, points to the wisdom of the NBA making its playoff standards division agnostic. In the old days, the 4 seed Magic would’ve hosted the 5 seed Celtics in Game 1 of the first round, a Celtics team that won …

Editorial

Should the Indiana Pacers Trade Victor Oladipo for Bradley Beal?

April 23, 2019 - by Fox Doucette

The Indiana Pacers badly need to shake things up this offseason. They’ve got millions in cap space, millions more under the luxury tax, plenty of expiring contracts, and one superstar whose injury sealed their fate fully three months before the Boston Celtics finally made it official and swept the Pacers out of the playoffs. Now, the Pacers could go the sensible route. They could ride with Victor Oladipo, re-sign Thaddeus Young (the glue that holds the team together) and Bojan Bogdanovic, fire Nate McMillan and bring in a legitimate head coach who can actually run a modern NBA offense, and …