It's time for what seems to be my annual blog post about Randy Wittman, in which I fly in the face of popular convention and the wishes of pretty much every diehard, casual and bandwagon Washington Wizards fan and make the case that our coach is not doing all that bad a job.
Consider Randy Wittman. Right now he has the Washington Wizards up 2-0 in their first round playoff series with the Toronto Raptors, having just completed a sweep of the first two games in Canada after losing all three games played vs. the Raps in the regular season. Speaking of the regular season, this year the Wizards posted their best single season record since the 1978-1979 season, the year after they won the NBA title and the last time they appeared in the NBA finals. Yet most Wizards fans and some national media folks are labeling Randy one of the worst coaches in the NBA and calling for his head. My question is why?
OK, so Randy's regular season record is really not that good at all. After six full seasons and three partial seasons in Cleveland, Minnesota and Washington, Randy has amassed a not so impressive 237-365 regular season record. Have you looked at some of the rosters he's had to work with in his past coaching stints? He had out of shape Shawn Kemp in Cleveland to deal with and before his first full season in Minnesota the Timberwolves traded Kevin Garnett for Al Jefferson and told Randy to make lemonade with a team whose second leading scorer that year was Rashad McCants.
It didn't start any better in Washington when he was offered the job. In D.C. he was stuck with JaVale McGee, Nick Young and an out of shape Andray Blatche as three fifths of the starting unit. But this time he checked with the team about ground rules for playing guys who he didn't believe deserved time on the court before he took the job which allowed him to bring the kind of accountability he wanted to the team and ended in his first season with him sending Blatche home for good because he was just plain out of shape and refused to try. The result for the Wizards the past two years has been two winning seasons and two playoff appearances for a roster that is totally bought into Randy's way.
I don't really think that Randy's regular season record is why ESPN ranked him 26th out of 30 coaches in the NBA this year or why that network's Bill Simmons offered the opinion on Tony Kornheiser's radio show that Wittman should be "Fired right now. This minute, he should be fired. He's a terrible coach. He just is." These words from Simmons came immediately after talking about how much he enjoyed working with former NBA coach Doug Collins, a guy who is the poster child for not having his team's support in the trenches after flaming out in Chicago, Detroit, Washington and Philadelphia. I assume Simmons holds Collins in higher esteem as a coach that he does Randy. I'm not sure he should. Coaching isn't all about Xs and Os. Ask Collins about that.
So if it's not Randy's regular season record that's rubbing fans and ESPN the wrong way, what is it? Is it that player development has been a real problem in Washington? Or that the offense bogs down for minutes at a time in games, especially when the team holds a lead? Or is it that Randy's a little awkward and doesn't necessarily inspire confidence in the team's fans and the media? Should we pick one of those?
Let's face it, Randy is awkward. Sometimes he looks and acts like an out of touch dad struggling to deal with the kind of stuff his kids are into. He has bad knees and walks strangely; wears glasses in press conferences but not during the games; denies the value of analytics when others who are seemingly hipper and more in touch are hailing them as the wave of the future; and sometimes does stuff like spinning his clipboard around six or eight times during a critical time out while Bradley Beal looks on like "dude, what the hell are you doing?" And those faces! I'm making a #wittmanface now as I'm writing this (look it up on Twitter).
I don't think it's the awkwardness. I also don't think it's the player development, although in my opinion there's reason to be concerned with what's going on there at Verizon Center. Both Bradley Beal and Otto Porter have not made the jump I would expect of a number three overall draft pick, no matter how weak you might argue the class is. I'm not going to discuss player development with regards to Jan Vesely or Chris Singleton. I'm chalking those up to poor drafting. It's not like just the Wizards are alone in not wanting those two in the NBA. The other 29 franchises seem to agree too.
So that leaves me with offensive stagnation or something else. The offense sputtering (kind word there) sometimes is a big problem. It's especially frustrating when we blow a big lead because we decide to kill as much clock as possible. Killing clock for the Wizards generally involves John Wall dribbling for about 15 seconds or so and then trying to create something. The Wizards offense doesn't work that way. It relies on player movement and passing primarily because we don't have any isolation players, including Wall. Randy's talked about this in press conferences and we regularly see him screaming at players to move the ball and speed the game up at the ends of games.
I think the real objection Wizards fans and observers, including our friends at ESPN, have to Randy Wittman coaching the Wizards is that they are convinced there's someone out there who could turn this five-seed team into the best team in the Eastern Conference. They are looking for this team's Steve Kerr or Phil Jackson, someone to replace the coach who's taken the team from terrible to OK and can lead the team to glory. Division titles, conference titles, whatever. My opinion on this is that we better be careful what we wish for. Instead of hiring the next Steve Kerr, we might end up hiring the next Flip Saunders or Byron Scott or Brian Shaw or George Karl.
I'm not picking on Karl here, but in his last nine playoff appearances, he made it out of the first round once. Randy did that in his first try. Karl by the way was ranked 16th on ESPN's recent coaches ranking, ten spots ahead of Randy. Randy was one spot behind his former boss Saunders, the guy who led the Minnesota Timberwolves to just 16 wins this year and whose performance at the helm of the Wizards was way below the Wittman standard. Tom Thibodeau, who Randy outcoached in last year's first round playoff series, is ranked fifth; Dwane Casey, the Raptors' coach, is 13th. Hmm...
So like it or not Wizards fans, unless the Wizards fail in this first round series or they get swept in round two, I think we'll see Randy Wittman back at the helm next year. If it bothers you to have the guy who's coached the Wizards to a top 10 defensive efficiency rating in the NBA three years in a row (fifth this year by the way), has a winning postseason record and is at this point an NBA historical best 7-1 as a coach in road playoff games, then that's too bad; you are just going to have to deal with it. I'm OK with it at least for another year or so. I also think Randy's deserved it. We'll see how it goes the rest of the way in the playoffs.
Maybe a little postscript is in order, considering there are probably some Wizards fans out there foaming at the mouth at what I've written. I'm a patient guy when it comes to sports teams. I have to be: I'm a Wizards fan and season ticket holder who misses maybe two games a year and I'm a New York Jets fan. But don't for a minute think that I'm content with my beloved Wizards merely exceeding their performance of the last three and a half decades. Let me be really clear when I say that the Wizards performance since 1979 and even in the last 15 years has been a little pathetic to very pathetic.
The Wizards are the only franchise other than the Charlotte Hornets (the current version, not the ones that are now the New Orleans Pelicans) that has failed to record 49 wins in a season in the last 15 years. Heck, the Wizards haven't even gotten to 47 in a season in the past 36. They are also one of only three franchises to not win a division title in the last 36 years, joining the Memphis Grizzlies and the aforementioned Hornets in that group. 36 years and zero division titles!!! Wow!!! At least the Grizzlies and Hornets have sort of an excuse that they haven't been around that long.
OK, so Randy's regular season record is really not that good at all. After six full seasons and three partial seasons in Cleveland, Minnesota and Washington, Randy has amassed a not so impressive 237-365 regular season record. Have you looked at some of the rosters he's had to work with in his past coaching stints? He had out of shape Shawn Kemp in Cleveland to deal with and before his first full season in Minnesota the Timberwolves traded Kevin Garnett for Al Jefferson and told Randy to make lemonade with a team whose second leading scorer that year was Rashad McCants.
It didn't start any better in Washington when he was offered the job. In D.C. he was stuck with JaVale McGee, Nick Young and an out of shape Andray Blatche as three fifths of the starting unit. But this time he checked with the team about ground rules for playing guys who he didn't believe deserved time on the court before he took the job which allowed him to bring the kind of accountability he wanted to the team and ended in his first season with him sending Blatche home for good because he was just plain out of shape and refused to try. The result for the Wizards the past two years has been two winning seasons and two playoff appearances for a roster that is totally bought into Randy's way.
I don't really think that Randy's regular season record is why ESPN ranked him 26th out of 30 coaches in the NBA this year or why that network's Bill Simmons offered the opinion on Tony Kornheiser's radio show that Wittman should be "Fired right now. This minute, he should be fired. He's a terrible coach. He just is." These words from Simmons came immediately after talking about how much he enjoyed working with former NBA coach Doug Collins, a guy who is the poster child for not having his team's support in the trenches after flaming out in Chicago, Detroit, Washington and Philadelphia. I assume Simmons holds Collins in higher esteem as a coach that he does Randy. I'm not sure he should. Coaching isn't all about Xs and Os. Ask Collins about that.
So if it's not Randy's regular season record that's rubbing fans and ESPN the wrong way, what is it? Is it that player development has been a real problem in Washington? Or that the offense bogs down for minutes at a time in games, especially when the team holds a lead? Or is it that Randy's a little awkward and doesn't necessarily inspire confidence in the team's fans and the media? Should we pick one of those?
Let's face it, Randy is awkward. Sometimes he looks and acts like an out of touch dad struggling to deal with the kind of stuff his kids are into. He has bad knees and walks strangely; wears glasses in press conferences but not during the games; denies the value of analytics when others who are seemingly hipper and more in touch are hailing them as the wave of the future; and sometimes does stuff like spinning his clipboard around six or eight times during a critical time out while Bradley Beal looks on like "dude, what the hell are you doing?" And those faces! I'm making a #wittmanface now as I'm writing this (look it up on Twitter).
I don't think it's the awkwardness. I also don't think it's the player development, although in my opinion there's reason to be concerned with what's going on there at Verizon Center. Both Bradley Beal and Otto Porter have not made the jump I would expect of a number three overall draft pick, no matter how weak you might argue the class is. I'm not going to discuss player development with regards to Jan Vesely or Chris Singleton. I'm chalking those up to poor drafting. It's not like just the Wizards are alone in not wanting those two in the NBA. The other 29 franchises seem to agree too.
So that leaves me with offensive stagnation or something else. The offense sputtering (kind word there) sometimes is a big problem. It's especially frustrating when we blow a big lead because we decide to kill as much clock as possible. Killing clock for the Wizards generally involves John Wall dribbling for about 15 seconds or so and then trying to create something. The Wizards offense doesn't work that way. It relies on player movement and passing primarily because we don't have any isolation players, including Wall. Randy's talked about this in press conferences and we regularly see him screaming at players to move the ball and speed the game up at the ends of games.
I think the real objection Wizards fans and observers, including our friends at ESPN, have to Randy Wittman coaching the Wizards is that they are convinced there's someone out there who could turn this five-seed team into the best team in the Eastern Conference. They are looking for this team's Steve Kerr or Phil Jackson, someone to replace the coach who's taken the team from terrible to OK and can lead the team to glory. Division titles, conference titles, whatever. My opinion on this is that we better be careful what we wish for. Instead of hiring the next Steve Kerr, we might end up hiring the next Flip Saunders or Byron Scott or Brian Shaw or George Karl.
I'm not picking on Karl here, but in his last nine playoff appearances, he made it out of the first round once. Randy did that in his first try. Karl by the way was ranked 16th on ESPN's recent coaches ranking, ten spots ahead of Randy. Randy was one spot behind his former boss Saunders, the guy who led the Minnesota Timberwolves to just 16 wins this year and whose performance at the helm of the Wizards was way below the Wittman standard. Tom Thibodeau, who Randy outcoached in last year's first round playoff series, is ranked fifth; Dwane Casey, the Raptors' coach, is 13th. Hmm...
So like it or not Wizards fans, unless the Wizards fail in this first round series or they get swept in round two, I think we'll see Randy Wittman back at the helm next year. If it bothers you to have the guy who's coached the Wizards to a top 10 defensive efficiency rating in the NBA three years in a row (fifth this year by the way), has a winning postseason record and is at this point an NBA historical best 7-1 as a coach in road playoff games, then that's too bad; you are just going to have to deal with it. I'm OK with it at least for another year or so. I also think Randy's deserved it. We'll see how it goes the rest of the way in the playoffs.
Maybe a little postscript is in order, considering there are probably some Wizards fans out there foaming at the mouth at what I've written. I'm a patient guy when it comes to sports teams. I have to be: I'm a Wizards fan and season ticket holder who misses maybe two games a year and I'm a New York Jets fan. But don't for a minute think that I'm content with my beloved Wizards merely exceeding their performance of the last three and a half decades. Let me be really clear when I say that the Wizards performance since 1979 and even in the last 15 years has been a little pathetic to very pathetic.
The Wizards are the only franchise other than the Charlotte Hornets (the current version, not the ones that are now the New Orleans Pelicans) that has failed to record 49 wins in a season in the last 15 years. Heck, the Wizards haven't even gotten to 47 in a season in the past 36. They are also one of only three franchises to not win a division title in the last 36 years, joining the Memphis Grizzlies and the aforementioned Hornets in that group. 36 years and zero division titles!!! Wow!!! At least the Grizzlies and Hornets have sort of an excuse that they haven't been around that long.
So while I'm OK giving Randy another year, I want to see progress every year. The bar set by past Wizards coaches including Flip Saunders, Leonard Hamilton and Doug Collins is pretty easy to clear and Randy's doing that with flying colors. But the ultimate measuring stick is the rest of the NBA. How about a division title? Or an Eastern Conference Finals appearance? I believe Ted Leonsis and the rest of the Wizards ownership group has the same sort of standard as I'm using. We better see something soon. Go Wizards! Go Wittman!
