JP Finlay even said on Thursday that when David Aldridge tells him something about DC basketball, he believes it – so who better for Grant and Danny to ask about the Wizards’ decision to move Wes Unseld Jr. to the front office?
Aldridge joined the guys Thursday afternoon, and, well, DA seemed to clear up what the metric that G&D were trying to figure out as the reason for making the move now had to be.
“I can't say I was surprised, but the timing is a little weird, just because you could have done this in two weeks at All-Star and maybe had a little bit more runway to bring an interim coach along, to have a few practices before the start of the second half,” Aldridge said. “But they’re 7-36, so that doesn't really matter. But they thought they would be a little better, and that's what this is about. The development part of it has been decent, some of their guys have gotten better, but they're 7-36, so that matters a lot less. There just doesn't seem to have been, from a team standpoint, the type of cohesion that you'd like to see to go forward, and I think that's really what this was about. If you were making this decision at the end of a long season, no one would be surprised, but the only surprise is that it happened in the middle of the season, and at a strange part of the middle of the season. But the actual decision doesn't really surprise me much at all.”
Danny questioned how much 7-36 really matters, and yeah, the record is what it is, but also, it’s not what it should be, in theory.
“It’s not the wins and losses, I don't think they really care about that, it's how they are playing night in and night out, and what are they doing in certain situations?” Aldridge said. “Nobody expects them to beat the Celtics, but you should beat Detroit and San Antonio at home, and the way they lost to San Antonio was especially egregious, blowing a 12-point lead with six minutes to go against a really bad team. There’s these things that kind of pop up game in and game out; yeah, they're bad, but that shouldn't happen, like they shouldn't give up 130 points 12 times in the first 35 games. There just was not a sign that okay, if we keep doing this for the next 10 or 15 games, things are gonna get noticeably better in this category, whatever that category is. We all know they can score, but you have to win games by stopping the other team, and I think they thought they’d be more competitive.”
So why turn to Brian Keefe specifically, or make the move now less so?
“I don't think they think he's going to be better, I just think they wanted to make a change. I don’t think what happened here is unique to the Washington Wizards; they were not going anywhere and it's easier to fire one coach than 15 players,” Aldridge said. “Sometimes you need a new voice, just you need somebody else saying something else. It’s not unique to basketball; the Commanders didn’t think they were going to be better when thy fired Jack Del Rio, they just could not keep doing what they were doing and getting the same results with the same guy emphasizing the same things that were not working. They just need a different voice, a different person to try and get more out of this team.”
But will they be better?
“I guess we'll see, we'll find out, but I don't anticipate some incredible surge going forward with this particular group of players,” Aldridge said. “I just think this group of players is kind of fatally flawed, and they have to get different players in here if they want different results going forward.”
Take a listen to Aldridge's entire segment above, which also goes into what the trade deadline could look like now, why the Wizards have played at the pace they do, and more!