Ted Leonsis made the decision to go the rebuild route with the Wizards, and as they enter the final weekend of the regular season, they are 15-65 and guaranteed to be no better than the second-worst record in the NBA with a mathematical shot at 15-67 being the worst (the Pistons are 13-66).
No one was sure how this season would go, but did Ted think it would be THIS painful?
“We're at 80 percent season ticket renewals with Wizards and 90 with the Caps, so that’s good, but yeah, I've done it before. It's a big, big decision to basically say, we don't want to have 30 to 40 wins a year, which is where we were, and the main issue there is you draft in the middle – and if you do that for a long, long time, you're kind of stuck in the middle,” Leonsis said. “I did that totally with the Capitals, seems like a lifetime ago where we traded all of our best players, and that was very painful, but we got high draft picks and that's how we got Ovechkin and Backstrom and the like. We rebuilt that team and were one of the top three or four teams for 15 years in the NHL, we won a Stanley Cup and third-most playoff appearances, so it was really painful to rebuild, but it paid off.”
Leonsis pointed to “The Process” in Philly and how now, the Sixers are annual contenders and attendance is near the top of the NBA.
“The formula can work, but getting there is really, really painful. I knew what I was getting into, and I knew the criticism that we would get,” Ted said. “I'll say that our fans, though, have been happy that the players are playing hard and really trying, even when we don’t have a lot of our players. We’re playing the right way, but we just don't have enough to get there. We have a lot of work still to do, and hopefully we will get a high pick this year. We could win the lottery or drop down a few slots, but we'll get a higher pick that we've been getting.”
It starts there, but it will take more than just a pick or two.
“We want to just incrementally improve; basketball is a stars’ league and we have to hope that we can draft well, and then when we're good enough, we'll have managed the cap and we can bring in the free agent or we can have enough young assets that we can make trades to bring somebody back in,” Leonsis said. “Let's not forget that Oklahoma City's best player wasn't drafted, he came over in a trade with the Clippers. It's gonna be a hard process, but we're gonna be very transparent in it. I think fans understand what we're going through but they're enjoying the ride, and we'll see if it works. There's no guarantees, some teams rebuild and don't make the playoffs for a long, long time, and I hope that's not us.”
And as for the Caps, well, they have a new coach, and even after losing a few players at the trade deadline, they control their playoff destiny into the final few games of the season, and the future already looks bright.
“Coach Carbery is the youngest coach in the league and I'm really proud of him. He's very, very positive, he's connected with the players, and this was an unexpected year,” Leonsis said. “When Nik pulled up and was really struggling, that was a difficult moment for us, at the trade deadline we moved Kuznetsov, and Oshie's been in and out of the lineup a lot, but here we are with four games left. Trust me, everyone wants to make the playoffs, and what this shows me is our organizational excellence; we shouldn't undersell our AHL affiliate and the work we've done in Hershey, wining the Calder Cup last year, and we still have the best practice and training facility in Virginia, very creative work there being on the rooftop of a parking lot where we had the expansion opportunities to do lots of interesting things there for the team. That organizational line of excellence in our training and play-calling and everything, when the young kids come into the lineup, they're not focused on anything but executing and filling in that position. So I give a lot of credit to the whole organization, and Spencer's just been a joy to behold for us. If we make the playoffs, we should be in the consideration for coach of the year.”