Washington Wizards: 4 Questions that will define the 2020-21 season
By Alex Saenz
How exactly does this team succeed on the defensive end?
115.9 points allowed per 100 possessions. 66.5 percent field goal percentage allowed at the rim. 4-5 when scoring at least 130 points. The second-worst defense of all-time to only the 2018-19 Cleveland Cavaliers. No matter how you look at it, the Wizards were a terrible defensive team last season.
It turns out that getting stops is hard when you’re playing four on five, and Isaiah Thomas completely sabotaged them out there last season. Here’s how the defense stacked up with/without him in the 64 games pre-bubble:
- With (40 games): 118.7 Defensive Rating
- Without (24 games): 113.3 Defensive Rating
When Thomas was inactive/traded, the Wizards went from historically bad to merely bottom-third in the league. This is an encouraging sign, but the team has to take major steps forward if they want to be taken seriously.
The biggest improvements need to come from the big-man position: rim-protection, rebounding, and overall post/interior defense. Sheppard himself has acknowledged this. While Ian Mahinmi and Moritz Wagner (when he wasn’t flopping for charges) gave them adequate play, starter Thomas Bryant was an absolute train-wreck. The good news is that he made some strides in the bubble, as Zach Lowe and others have written. Bryant’s not going to have nearly as much room to play through his mistakes this year. I’m still skeptical that he’s ready to be (or that he’ll ever be) a legit defensive anchor.
Robin Lopez was brought in to be just that. We can quibble with the value ($7.3 MM) or the offensive fit, but you know what you’re getting out of the 12-year veteran. Despite the low rebounding numbers, he’s going to box-out like a madman. He’s going to wall off the paint. (How he manages outside the Milwaukee ecosystem is a different story). He’s also going to impose his will on every mascot in sight.
Lopez will surely shore up Washington’s defense, but he’s not going to be the savior. Last year’s team was plagued by moments of off-ball confusion and indifference. Cleaning up these mistakes will be paramount for the 2021 squad. In the words of Bill Belichick, “You can’t win until you keep from losing.” The Wizards have also been mostly switching one-through-four in the preseason; these need to be cleaner and more purposeful rather than last-second reactions.
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That said, the personnel on defense isn’t great. The constant blow-bys and terrible closeouts from 2020 are likely to persist, even with Westbrook. Russell Westbrook is supposedly a “culture-setter,” but he’s never held himself accountable on that end; Brooks in his Oklahoma City days was a Russ-enabler. We’ll see if Beal’s defensive regression last season was just a one-year blip. Any front-court combination with two of Bertans, Hachimura, and Bryant is going to bleed points. Assistant coach Mike Longabardi hasn’t exactly lived up to his reputation as a “defensive guru.”
If the Wizards figure out a way to be outside the bottom-ten in defense, they have a shot of being in the mix for the sixth seed (and thus avoiding the play-in). I would be shocked if this were to happen, which is why I view them as closer to the ninth or tenth seed in the East (think 32-35 wins in a 72-game season). For an organization that’s capped out for the foreseeable future, lacking in high-upside prospects, and without any extra draft capital, that’s pretty depressing. Bradley Beal is an eternal optimist who has been quoted as wanting “to die in a Wizards jersey,” but he too is going to realize this at some point, right?