The Washington Wizards haven't had the start to the season anyone would have hoped for entering the year.
Washington has been through a variety of ups and downs and we're just over the quarterly mark on the regular season.
Throughout the team's trying start, arguably the most disappointing development of them all has been the underwhelming play of Cam Whitmore to start his Wizards tenure.
Whitmore, who joined his hometown team this offseason in a trade with the Houston Rockets was expected to be a player with the potential to use a fresh start to his advantage and prove why he was projected as a lottery pick entering the league.
However, the change of scenery for the Maryland native has yet to prove beneficial up to this point and after being benched over the Wizards recent stretch, the Villanova product found his name being drug through the mud.
Cam Whitmore's benching may finally have been cleared up
Following head coach Brian Keefe's decision to bench Whitmore, plenty of questions were raised especially after it was announced that the forward had struggled to meet the team's standards which eventually led to his fall in the rotation.
With Keefe's comments, reports began to surface claiming the standards that weren't met by Whitmore, which would eventuallty be refuted by Keefe.
After a few days of reports suggesting there's more to the story than the head coach was letting out, Keefe finally shed some light on his decision to move Whitmore out of the lineup in a recent interview on The Sports Junkies Radio.
“We [Wizards[ wanted to try something new," Keefe said. "He [Whitmore} didn't do anything wrong himself. We wanted to get others involved.”
While this doesn't shed too much light on the situation, it does offer optimism that perhaps the decision to alter the rotation simply came from the Wizards coaching staff hoping to find some sort of spark throughout the team's recent struggles.
Maybe the team hoped that benching Whitmore would add the chip on his shoulder that has seemed to be missing throughout the year.
Regardless of the reason behind the move, if it was as simple as the Wizards looking for a spark, the harsh reporting surrounding Whitmore's benching has been taken far out of context and become a bit of a distraction at this point.
Moving forward, fans should be hopeful that Whitmore can bounce back and use the benching as motivation to prove he belongs in the lineup.