Yahoo Sports 
The Washington Wizards? Gone till November
So, the Washington Wizards may have saved coach Randy Wittman’s job. It’s OK, for those both in the District and out, to wonder if this is the best thing.
[Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
Nobody should be after a Wittman firing. Though he has his embarrassing missteps this is still a guy with a gig and it’s not exactly cool to call for it. It’s easy to presume the man was coaching for his lunch during this postseason, and in the Wizards’ mangling of the Toronto Raptors and inspired fight (mostly worked without John Wall) against the top-seeded Atlanta Hawks may have earned him a stay.
In spite of the 82-game test run he put his team through before discovering that small sizes work best in small or large sample sizes. In spite of acting rather prattish in the face of growing (or, “very much in place trending back decades”) evidence that pull-up long two-pointers might not be the preferred option for your very talented scoring guards.
Yahoo Sports' Grandstanding podcast: Talking NBA playoffs with Kelly Dwyer
Grandstanding: A Yahoo Sports podcast
Subscribe via iTunes or via RSS feed
The overriding issue through all of this is the Washington front office. Its owner, Ted Leonsis, understandably seems more concerned with his hockey team and less aggrieved by the work of both Wittman and general manager Ernie Grunfeld. Grunfeld, who hired Wittman and signed him to an extension last summer, probably isn’t keen on approaching his boss to attempt to explain away firing his coach with a year left on his deal (2016-17 is a team option) in light of Grunfeld’s own up and down (to be kind) tenure as Wiz GM.
(By the way, what’s the deal with the weird NBA aversion to cutting coaches that are still owed money, as if coaching salaries act as a sort of Sword of Damocles that is set to damn a franchise’s future? Not only do they not count against the salary cap, but Randy Wittman made nearly half of what Wizard – yes, still a Wizard – Martell Webster made this season.)
It would have taken a rather terrible showing – a one-sided loss to a reeling Raptors team – for Wittman to be shown the door. Far too much has been set up for 2016 to act as the Washington tipping point, and this is a theme you may have read about in these pages before.
Yes, Kevin Durant is a free agent that summer and, yes, the NBA’s salary cap is set to skyrocket to terms that will eventually supersede the $100 million mark. For whatever reason (let’s not give past and present but mostly “past” NBA GMs too much credit) the league seems to have a preponderance of contracts that expire in the summer of 2016. The Wizards are yet another sqaud that has a cast of deals that will wash away that summer, leaving the team’s young core in place as it sets to rebuild around Wall, potentially Durant, and anyone else who would want to take the team’s money.
Or anyone else’s money, as heaps of teams would have major cap space even if the current salary cap year-to-year increases were in place for 2016-17; with all of them lining up for Durant. The Wizards? Webster, Nene, Paul Pierce, Ramon Sessions and DeJuan Blair will all come off the books that summer, as the team readies itself for November of 2016’s tip.
We shouldn’t be here to discuss that offseason, however. We’re here to tell you that the Wizards of next season will likely look awfully similar.
The time to get into Wittman’s playing time decisions as he further commits to smaller lineups that his players clearly want is once autumn rolls around. What’s known right now is that most of this same crew will return in 2015-16. That’s not entirely a terrible thing; this is a Memphis Lite-type roster worth working with and taking advantage of, with recent draft picks John Wall, Beal and Otto Porter sure to improve. Only Kevin Seraphin stands as a possible free agent defection, the sort of consolation prize some other team might want to throw money at, and the Wizards (who worked for the qualifying offer in 2014-15) might decide to let him walk in fears of clouding up its 2016 run at Durant.
They will make a run at Durant, as will others, but before that the team will be one of several postseason also-rans that have just about no contractual choice but to attempt to build upon its 2015 first or second round magic via internal development. There’s absolutely no chance of cap space with three Wizards making eight figures a year, Wittman isn’t going anywhere, it will be hard to construct trades with this top-heavy roster (Nene’s $13 million expiring contract would have fetched something nice in 2004, but we’re smarter now), Drew Gooden will probably come back to a spot he’s earned, and the only bit of intrigue surrounds whether or not Paul Pierce would return.
It was quite understandable that Paul Pierce would talk about retirement following his team’s final game. He’s been doing this since 1999, entering the NBA has a rather graybeard junior from Kansas. He hasn’t been part of a championship contender since 2012 (if then, even), and he’s coming off yet another long October-to-May run that ended in the most crushing of ways. Athletes rarely retire following a few months away from a lost season, they almost always call it quits right after things end, and; well, Paul Pierce talked about walking away just after the season ended, and he refused exit interviews with the press on Tuesday.
He’d also walk away from a team that could pay him over $5.5 million in his player option next season, an easy lead-in to the hoped-for Durant replacement. He could spend a goodly chunk of 2015-16 working as an undersized power forward with his minutes minded while acting as a mentor to Otto Porter. It truly is the perfect setup, save for the part of having to chase LeBron, Carmelo and Paul George up and down the court for however many minutes at age 38.
Other than that, Washington, this is your team. Until the summer of 2016, at least. That’s when we’ll see just who is calling the shots – from the sideline to the front office – as your owner readies himself for the biggest move of his basketball career.
- - - - - - -
is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
