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Washington Wizards 2015 Season Summary: Ensuring Future Success

By Ben Mehic

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Over the next week or so, we’ll be asking our writers questions that will summarize the Washington Wizards‘ 2014-2015 season. Part 1: Assessing Wittman & his future with the team. Part 2: Free Agent That Fills Need.

What should the Washington Wizards do to ensure future success?

Nithin (@nkuchibhotla): The Wizards future is dicier than you might expect for a team with a star under-25 backcourt and an emerging complementary piece on the wing, also of the youth movement.

For starters, outside of the aforementioned John Wall, Bradley Beal, and Otto Porter, there is very little talent on the team that can be expected to get better (the one exception may be Kevin Seraphin but by all accounts he’ll be donning a different uniform next year).

Secondly, there is a major stylistic identity crisis the team is going through.

After years of rejecting analytical-friendly basketball, Washington found great success in the postseason playing small, shooting a lot of 3s, and quickening the pace of the game.

Given that this is the key to consistent improvement, how does Washington ensure their place in the East’s upper echelon and eventually transform into a championship contender?

Clearly there is a need to find players with more diversified skill sets.

The Wizards had only a few reliable shooters, and even fewer ball handlers.  Teams like Golden State or Atlanta are successful because at any one point, 4-5 of their players on the court are threats to shoot, pass, or dribble.

The Wizards suffered from a lack of innovative offense, partially due to schematic choices, but also because of the roster makeup.

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More specifically, the Washington Wizards can’t be complacent on their current progress.

Likewise, they should not be too overly dependent on landing Kevin Durant as the only means of improving.

This summer, they must smartly use both of their exceptions, determine what to do with unfriendly contracts like Nene and Martell Webster, and manage the salary cap in a way that allows them to get better without mortgaging future acquisition potential (namely, let Beal earn his max deal over a full season rather than locking him in now).

From a management perspective, I’m still of the opinion that Washington should replace Grunfeld and Wittman this offseason with more progressive minds, but I’m not sure Leonsis feels the same way.

Success can be had with them as well, but the margin of error tightens up so it’ll be important to bat a high percentage on the decisions that lie ahead.

David (@DJStatman77): Although the Washington Wizards have never commented, (that would be tampering) it seems evident that they’ve spent the last couple years gearing up for the 2016 offseason, and a potential run at Kevin Durant.

Fans have long seen #KD2DC as a classic get-rich-quick scheme, and seeing Durant back in his hometown would undoubtedly be awesome, but I think it’s time to cast aside the fantasy and focus on the present. The Wizards have something here.

They have an alpha dog superstar, John Wall. They have a high-scoring sidekick, Bradley Beal. They’ve got one of the best centers in the league, a player equipped to excel in any kind of style, Marcin Gortat. They’ve got a rising star ready to drive everyone crazy for the next decade, Otto Porter. They have the core to really be a true contender, which isn’t really a high threshold to cross in the modern-day Eastern Conference.

They’ve even managed to stumble across a small-ball style of play that really suits them, and led them to their first playoff sweep in decades, despite not really having the personnel for it.

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The blueprint is there for the Wizards to succeed.

What they need to do now is clear up cap space however they can (dump Nene, for starters) and invest in the free agent market for players that will fit into this new direction.

The Wizards still need a few pieces – a stretch 4, a backup guard who can put some points on the board in a hurry, a young and athletic big man – and solutions are going to be available immediately on the open market and in the draft.

The Eastern Conference has never been weaker, and the Wizards can’t afford to waste a year of Wall and Beal’s primes waiting for someone who may or may not come home.

The opportunity is there, and it’s time to go for the gusto.

Oz (@obtoojiveforyou): Future success as it relates to the Washington Wizards isn’t as easy to define as it sounds.

With the impending free agency of Kevin Durant still one year away, the definition of success can be debated. Is it standing pat as they wait one more year for their big move or do they put their chips on the table now?

Michael Lee wrote an interesting column for the Washington Post where he examined this dichotomy and suggested that now is the time for the Wizards to make their move. The basic premise was the Wizards can’t get stuck hitting that second round glass ceiling.

The suggestion also was that the guard nucleus in place here has the talent and character to make a run if you build around them and play a style conducive to their style of play. We saw a taste of that this postseason and it sounds like Randy Wittman will be moving the team more towards that direction in the future.

So that’s the dilemma; build on what you have or wait for the chance at Kevin Durant? My opinion; you go for it.

The Wizards were an injury away from being in the conference finals this year.

The guards gave us a glimpse to their potential in the right system and Otto Porter showed signs and at 21 still has plenty of room to grow.

What that move is, is tough to say.

How much value does Nene’s expiring have?

What teams will be looking to dump salary?

There are a lot of factors that will drive what the Washington Wizards can actually accomplish.

My argument is that you never know when windows close (see Gilbert Arenas). Bringing on long-term salary doesn’t necessarily eliminate you from the Durant sweepstakes either. A sign & trade is always a possibility or the Wizards could also dump salary elsewhere next somewhere.

It would likely require attaching a future pick to a contract but if that’s the cost to compete now and still chase Durant in ’16, go for it!

John (@John_Cannady): After two straight seasons of making the Eastern Conference Semifinals, it’s easy to forget that the Washington Wizards had a seven year absence from making the playoffs.

During that stretch, the Wizards had everything from risky acquisitions (Randy Foye and Mike Miller) to questionable draft choices (Chris Singleton and gulp……Jan Vesely plus more).

Now, with the young core John Wall, Bradley Beal and Otto Porter, it seems that the franchise will be (health willing) playoff bound for the years to come, but in the NBA, you never want to be a team that runs in place.

The Wizards front office seems to be placing a lot of its future in the whole ‘KD2DC’ movement when the former MVP, DC native Kevin Durant, becomes a free agent in the summer of 2016.

While pairing a generational superstar such as Durant with the current core of star the Wizards possess, it would of course make the Wizards an instant contender for the NBA title. But as Michael Lee from the Washington Post mentioned, the Wizards should take advantage of their current situation to see what they have now and work with that to build for the future.

As I just mentioned, Ernie Grunfeld and team have a horrible track record when it comes to the NBA draft. John Wall and Bradley Beal were such gifts (Wall was the number 1 overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft and Beal was the number 3 overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft) that they would have succeeded with the Wiz of Awes staff as the coaches.

However, with “up and coming” franchises such as the Wizards, the front office should make acing the draft their top priority.

Megastar free agents such as Durant historically have never left their current team to join a team that maybe has the tools to win and go far. They (the free agents) want to go somewhere that with their addition will be talked about as a contender. With that point made, the Wizards can move in several different directions with the 2015 NBA Draft.

The Wizards currently hold the 19th pick and most ‘experts’ have them going for a big that can come in (presumably off the bench) and provide quality minutes seeing that Kevin Seraphin has most likely played his last game as a Wizard.

Most of the narrative about the Wizards and the loss against the Atlanta Hawks was about how poorly Nene played in the post season and how they need to adopt a more ‘small ball’ type of play which would leave him the odd man out.

The Wizards should consider trading Nene and getting back either draft picks or that ‘stretch 4’ (or maybe both) that everyone in the Wizards camp has alluded to recently. Contending teams such as the Oklahoma City Thunder, the San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors have built their squads up by having successful drafts and smart trades rather than gambling on a splashy free agent signing

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