The move was made, and we know NBA TV’s Chris Miles thinks the Wizards re-assigning Wes Unseld Jr. to the front office is a good move – but how do BMitch & Finlay feel about assistant Brian Keefe taking over for the rest of the year as a search gets underway.
“You hope this works, but Brian, you know me, I'm a numbers driven guy in professional sports. I think Eric Bieniemy, if he ever gets to run his own show, might do a hell of a job, but the numbers weren't good enough for me to validate it,” JP said. “Wes Unseld, in a little short of four seasons running the Wiz, won 37 percent of his games. That ain't getting it done, but it gets tricky now because this is what you wanted.”
“He didn't have help either. They came in and basically destroyed the team and said go coach that,” BMitch replied. “I look at the stuff around it, and if you didn't do all the bad stuff alone without help, like either the person above you or the people that's supposed to be giving you talent and they give you garbage, I can’t not see that.”
The Wizards were ‘supposed’ to be bad this year as opposed to previous years where they ended up in the lottery, so there’s that, but now, the Wiz’ lead assistant – who was in Brooklyn the last two years and has 17 years of experience, takes control until a new coach is found in the offseason…or not?
“I don’t know a lot here, but Wes’ name is basketball royalty in this city, and I can’t help but notice that the whole new rebuild regime took over at the end of last season,” JP said. “They fired Tommy Sheppard, bring in Winger and the whole new operation – when David Aldridge tells me it's a good move, I believe it, and DA says they hired the right guys. This thing's gonna take time, but they're gonna do it right – and when I read his bio and it says he began his NBA career as a video coordinator with the Spurs, I think of Erik Spoelstra, who got in as a video coordinator for the Heat and worked his ass off. I don’t know anybody else that has done it, but maybe they found something.”