On a personal level, Wizards GM Tommy Sheppard didn't want to fire Scott Brooks, "one of the finest, kindest human beings" he's ever met. But professionally, following their first-round playoff exit, Sheppard knew he had to do what's best for the long-term future of the Wizards.
"It tears your heart out," Sheppard told The Sports Junkies on Thursday. "I went to New Mexico State in college and watched Scotty come in and tear up the Aggies when he was at [UC Irvine] and was an Anteater. I helped bring him to Denver as an assistant coach. We hired Scotty there — I was a big part of that piece there, and actually left three weeks later to come to Washington, D.C. But we kept up over the years, and then when the opportunity arrived five years ago, I was assistant GM, and Scotty was the top-of-our-list person that we hired to be the head coach of the Washington Wizards."
"I've got a dirty secret for you guys in this business," he said. "During the season we spend more time with our players and coaches than we do with our own families. So Scotty's basically an extension of my family, so I was with him pretty much every day, one way or another, for five years. So of course it's very difficult."
"But my job is to do the best thing for the Washington Wizards, and make informed decisions, and really make calculations of how to move forward and how can we go out and achieve sustainable success," he said. "And it was just a very tough decision we had to make, especially on the heels of getting back to the playoffs after we went through hell and back. But what's done is done."
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"We look forward to a fantastic future," he added. "We've got some great stories to tell here. I think we have some excellent players, excellent resources, great city. We've got The Sports Junkies. I mean, what the hell else can you want?"
As for Brooks' replacement, Sheppard doesn't feel compelled to rush into a decision, not even with six other head coaching vacancies around the NBA. He points to the two All-NBA players in the Wizards' backcourt, Russell Westbrook and Bradley Beal, and Washington's promising young core as more than enough reason to entice candidates.
"I think ideally you identify the candidates and we've got to look at the available people that are out there in this world," Sheppard said. "It can't be confined to NBA coaches and former NBA players. You have a great deal of people in college, you have international people, you have people no one's even thinking about."
"We've been forward-thinking here for a long time," he said. "We had Kristi Toliver was the first active WNBA player that was an NBA assistant coach. That was with us. I look at our GM for the Capital City Go-Go, Amber Nichols. We're very progressive in our thought process. We want to be very inclusive and we're gonna be very diverse in the search."
"That doesn't entail we're gonna hire somebody by next Friday," he added. "You want to take your time. And I'm not trying to be arrogant for the Wizards, but D.C., this city, what we have here, I think we're worth waiting for.
"If you're interviewing for a couple jobs, and I know people get hasty and everything gets ramped up, but if you really truly want to be the coach of the Washington Wizards, I think you're willing to go on this journey with us and that's just the fact."