WASHINGTON — In an offseason that will be filled with critical decisions for Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger and Washington Wizards general manager Will Dawkins, perhaps none of those choices will be more important than hiring the right head coach.
Team sources told The Athletic that Wizards officials plan to spend the next week or so mapping out and refining their search process before they begin to reach out to rival teams to ask for permission to speak to individual candidates.
One of the candidates is expected to be Brian Keefe, who became the team’s interim coach after Winger and Dawkins removed Wes Unseld Jr. as head coach on Jan. 25. Although the Wizards compiled an 8-31 record under Keefe, team officials and players have praised Keefe for holding players accountable, making the team more competitive and improving the defense.
Wizards officials have kept mum publicly on the strengths they’ll look for in a head coach, but team sources say that two of the key qualities will be the ability to relate to players and having a player-development focus.
It’s probably no coincidence that players, when asked by reporters Monday about the traits they want in their next coach, all cited high-level interpersonal skills as the key characteristic.
“Being a coach is just so much more than just X’s and O’s and being in and around the game for forever,” forward Kyle Kuzma said. “It’s about the human aspect of it. It’s about caring for somebody, knowing they care for you. Because if I know you don’t really care for me, then why am I listening to you? Or why do I want you in my life as a person, right?
“And I think that having a certain emotional intelligence to realize those type of things in any relationship is important, and especially for a head coach, because to be a head coach, like I said, it’s more than X’s and O’s. It’s more about managing egos because we all have them, especially to be at this level, and also know how to ‘make fair’ with people because every decision you have as a team is (about) sacrifice. But do you think the sacrifice is fair as a player? Are you OK with it? And a lot of that stems from having a head coach that can realize those things.”
The new coach will face difficult challenges. There’s little doubt that, facing a talent deficit and looking to build through the draft, the Wizards will hover at or near the bottom of the NBA standings for the immediate future. How, then, should a coach help keep everyone on the roster believing in an overarching, unselfish team concept while also coaxing individual improvement?
Corey Kispert referenced that issue Monday when he was asked about the qualities the team will need from its next coach.
“We need a connector,” Kispert answered. “We need somebody who runs to or, I guess, isn’t afraid of conflict, runs to difficult things and is a master communicator and connector. The NBA is all about managing 15 egos and making sure everybody feels connected and incorporated for the betterment of the team, and it’s a really difficult thing to be able to do that while also building a great, high-quality team and raising the level of our play.
“So just as much as we need somebody who’s brilliant on a whiteboard and can draw up X’s and O’s and read the flow of the game, we need somebody to be able to connect and relate and communicate to us as players. That’s pretty much the bottom line.”
There’s little doubt that the 2023-24 Wizards featured plenty of individual-growth success stories, namely from fourth-year forward Deni Avdija to Kispert to rookie Bilal Coulibaly. But one of the reasons team officials removed Unseld was that players’ individual growth was not translating into team growth. The team lacked a toughness. It ranked 29th in defensive efficiency and last in defensive-rebounding percentage. Decisive early-game deficits and blowout losses were all too common.
Winger and Dawkins never expected or wanted the team to be that bad, especially with the top of the 2024 draft class predicted to be one of the worst in years. At the minimum, they wanted the team to show some fight.
Players praised interim coach Brian Keefe for instilling more competitiveness and accountability in the team. (John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)
Even the players thought they didn’t show enough fight during the first half of the season.
Avdija said the next coach needs to bring “competitiveness” and be “able to hold people accountable when he needs to and (get us to) play together, play as a team.”
Tyus Jones, who will be an unrestricted free agent but said he hopes to remain with the Wizards, said the next coach needs to bring “transparency, work ethic and just the right approach to everything. Obviously, you want to win, but understanding the process of that (is key).”
During Keefe’s interim-coaching tenure, Washington ranked 25th in defensive efficiency and 27th in defensive-rebounding percentage. Comparing the Wizards’ leaguewide rankings under Unseld and under Keefe is akin to comparing apples to oranges. Center Daniel Gafford arguably was the team’s most consistent player before he was traded on Feb. 8 to Dallas, and several of the Wizards’ key players — Kuzma, Jones, Coulibaly and center Marvin Bagley III among them — missed games late in the season.
“I think he really galvanized the entire group,” Kuzma said of Keefe. “We were in a rough spot for many reasons, whatever. But we had to kind of look inward at a certain point in the season and just figure out: How do we get ourselves out of the mood that we had as a team? The mood we came in every day to the arena, we weren’t very competitive as a group that first half of the season. There were a lot of games where the game was over at halftime, the game was over (by) the first six minutes into the second half. And we started to compete (with Brian). And that’s the biggest thing, right?”
Keefe, in conjunction with the front office, moved Jordan Poole to a sixth-man role after the All-Star break to put the ball in Poole’s hands more often and to shift Coulibaly into the starting lineup.
Poole didn’t like the decision, but his play improved. In his final 26 games, all of them after the All-Star break, Poole averaged 20.9 points and 5.8 assists per game and made 36 percent of his 3-point tries.
“I can really only just really speak on the stuff that B.K. has brought since he’s been here and I think he’s been really good for our young team: the detail-orientedness that he brings, the structure that he brings,” Poole said Monday. “He loves the game, and that’s something that goes a really long way, especially at the highest level. And he’s willing and very genuine and authentic about putting our team (and) putting guys in positions to be successful and play to their strengths and really unlocking them because he cares about them as individuals. He’s done a really good job.
“In terms of the coaching situation, I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s not up to me. But I have more than enough confidence that we’ll make the right decision going forward.”
(Top photo of Will Dawkins and Michael Winger: Kenny Giarla / NBAE via Getty Images)
