The NBA scout caught me by surprise when I asked him what he expected from the Washington Wizards, who open the season Wednesday night in Indianapolis against the Indiana Pacers.
“I think they can be competitive and interesting to watch,” he said.
That stunned me a bit. It’s not the typical preseason assessment of this beleaguered basketball franchise.
Then he really got my attention.
“I like the kid Coulibaly,” he said. “He’s got the skills to be something special. And his presence — we interviewed him before the draft and he took over the room.”
OK, now I’m curious. I haven’t been curious about a Wizards team for quite some time. Now I am, because of Bilal Coulibaly, the 19-year-old kid from France picked seventh in the draft by the Indiana Pacers and then dealt to Washington in the Bradley Beal trade — the young 6-foot-8 forward who has played bigger than that in the preseason looks we’ve gotten of him.
He’s got 11 steals in four games, and one of the leaders of this team, Kyle Kuzma, was impressed. “He can play defense at this level now,” Kuzma told NBC Sports Washington. “He can play basketball at this level now. I just love his mentality.”
There is a sense — perhaps more like desperate hope — that this franchise may finally be starting down the long road to success. After last year’s 35-47 lack of effort, Wizards owner Transparent Ted Leonsis swept out the last remains of the Ernie Grunfeld administration, firing his former lieutenant, Tommy Sheppard, who had taken over as general manager in 2019, and imported a new brain trust — Michael Winger, the former Los Angeles Clippers general manager as president of basketball operations and former Oklahoma City vice president of basketball operations Will Dawkins as the Wizards new general manager.
They immediately traded albatross Beal and his $251 million contract to Phoenix for Chris Paul and a basket full of first and second-round draft picks, then traded Paul to the Golden State Warriors for Jordan Poole, the shooting guard who averaged 20.4 points per game with Golden State but fell out of favor there.
Last week Poole put up 41 points in a preseason win over the New York Knicks. Some people believe he could wind up leading the league in scoring in Washington. Whether that’s something to look forward to remains to be seen.
Then again, looking forward to being competitive remains something to be seen.
Many believed that when the new regime traded Beal, it was a long-awaited move to the bottom of the league to finally reap the rewards of the high-draft picks that come with that fall — a step Transparent Ted had refused to take in the past, instead opting to wallow in the mediocrity of hoping to sneak into the NBA playoffs and cash in on a few home playoff games.
But the trade for Poole changed that view. That move, along with giving Kuzma a four-year, $102 million contract and adding some of the other veterans to this roster, opens the door to a potential rise out of the land of high draft picks. The Wizards instead may be just good enough to continue going nowhere.
Rebuild? I’ll bet Transparent Ted has a fine system for anybody in the organization who uses that word.
“I avoid saying (rebuild) because it sort of has this noncompetitive ring to it,” Winger said at the preseason press conference. “I avoided using it … when you have the types of competitors we have on our team, it doesn’t feel like your traditional tear-it-down-to-the-studs rebuild.”
Of course, it could fall apart this season quickly. “It depends on whether or not Wes Unseld can get Poole and Kuzma to play as a team and not self-destruct selfishly,” the scout told me.
I’m not sure young Wes is up to the task. He hasn’t been yet in his first two seasons here, and forward Cory Kispert sounded some alarms when he spoke of issues that hung over last year’s team all season “I think it started early on. The reason why we couldn’t fix these problems was because they’re deep rooted in what we’ve been doing for the year,” he said, according to Hoop District. “It’s not just a quick and easy fix, it’s hard to change these things sometimes.”
“Tough conversations and accountability and being uncomfortable in conversations is a hard thing to do over and over and over again,” Kispert said. “It’s a much easier thing to just let things slide.”
Those are serious coaching issues.
It’s obvious the new administration has concerns about Unseld — the son of franchise legend and Hall of Famer Wes Unseld — and has tried to surround him with help. They revamped his staff, adding Brian Keefe and David Vanterpool as assistant coaches, giving the Wizards six assistant coaches on Unseld’s staff. Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau has four assistant coaches on his staff.
Yet they picked up the fourth-year option on Unseld’s contract, meaning he is on board on paper through next season.
Why? As one source told me, “Ted is very loyal to the Unseld family.”
Some things never change. But I’m curious if a 19-year-old kid from France can change that.
You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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