#sowizards by Kevin Broom

We're back! The first episode of the #SoWizards Podcast in nearly a year is a fun one -- an in-depth conversation with coach Brian McCormick about player development strategies and techniques, and how those might be applied by the Washington Wizards and other NBA teams with young players.

In this episode of the #SoWizards Podcast, I’m joined by Troy Haliburton to discuss all things Wizards — everything from the season opener to player development and the team’s long-term competitive strategy.

The Washington Wizards have launched into a busy and somewhat perplexing offseason. Joining me to help make sense of the team's roster moves and long-term plan is my former cohost and longtime friend, Ben Becker.

The Washington Wizards made one deal at the trade deadline, sending starting center Daniel Gafford to the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for a first round pick and center Richaun Holmes.

The Washington Wizards replaced Wes Unseld Jr. as head coach, moving Unseld into a front office advisory role, and promoting lead assistant Brian Keefe to be interim head coach. When the team makes a big move, there's no one better to discuss it with than old friend and podcast partner Ben Becker.

Just past the midway point, the Wizards are bumbling through what's likely to be the worst season in franchise history. To discuss the biggest issues the team faces as they attempt to rebuild, I invited on veteran Wizards observer and reporter, Troy Haliburton.

With the Washington Wizards set to face the Indiana Pacers Wednesday night, it seemed like a great time to catch up with current Pacers journalist and Bullets Forever alum Tony East. In this episode, we talked about what makes Tyrese Haliburton special, Haliburton's hamstring injury, and what the Pacers do well and not so well before diving into the Wizards.

In this episode, I'm joined by Bullets Forever's Osman Baig to discuss the state of the Wizards. As I wrote in my big picture check-up on January 3, they're still bad.

Why has the Wizards defense been so bad this season? I put the question to Coach Nick from BBALLBREAKDOWN, and the answer leapt off the screen: they're helping from one pass away. That's the team's scheme this season, and it's the root cause of giving up open threes, and the mad scramble that gives opposing teams easy scores and domination on the offensive glass.

Brian McCormick has coached at an array of levels in leagues around the world and has written books about basketball fundamentals, skills development, how to become a great shooter, running practices, and building an effective offensive system.

The Wizards are off to a 1-5 start, which is to be expected from a team that lacked talent in recent years and traded away its two best players.

For this episode, Kevin cracked open the mailbag and answered some questions, including:

In this episode, Kevin takes a deeper dive into a couple somewhat related articles he published recently on Bullets Forever, including Is Tyus Jones a major upgrade at guard? and Will the Wizards' offense be any good this season?

After a discussion of the relative merits of Dallas and Houston, we got down to talking hoops. We kicked around our impressions of the Wizards' summer league performance, whether Corey Kispert can be more than a specialist, and our divergent thoughts on how the team will perform relative to the Vegas over/under of 24.5 wins.

In this episode, Ron and Kevin analyze the Wizards draft, including trading up a pick to select 18-year old French wing Bilal Coulibaly, and moving back in round two to land Serbian big man Tristan Vukcevic.

In a move that was only a minimum of three years overdue, the Washington Wizards traded guard Bradley Beal. Because of the preposterous no-trade clause team president Tommy Sheppard gave to the team's "franchise player," Beal had the power to dictate his destination AND the compensation package the Wizards would receive.

With the numbers crunching in Ye Olde Draft Analyzer (YODA for short) nearly complete, Kevin and fellow draft nerd Matt Modderno got together to discuss the prospects giving them the most heartburn during the evaluation and ranking process. The two come at the draft from different perspectives — Kevin through the lens of stats and combine measurements with adjustments for age and level of competition, and Matt through watching loads of college games every season.

When Ron and Kevin last talked, the Washington Wizards had just parted ways with previous team president Tommy Sheppard. Now the Wizards have found Sheppard's replacement — Michael Winger, a 43-year old NBA executive who gained experience with three successful franchises over the past couple decades.

Ted Leonsis and the Washington Wizards surprised outsiders by firing team president Tommy Sheppard after missing the playoffs in consecutive seasons and failing to produce even a .500 record in his four years at the helm. In this episode, Kevin and Ron break down the Sheppard era, including best and worst moves, and the biggest reasons the team failed under Sheppard's leadership.

In this reason, Kevin and Ron delve into some of the reasons the 2022-23 Washington Wizards failed to achieve their goal of reaching postseason play. They also end up in a discussion of efficiency in basketball and whether Bradley Beal and Delon Wright need to change their diets as they move past 30.

The Washington Wizards are 12th in the Eastern Conference and will likely miss any form of postseason play. Nearing the end of a "win now" season, Washington is on track to have the sixth best odds of landing the top pick in the NBA's draft lottery. They're a game-and-a-half from passing the Orlando Magic for fifth best odds.

Washington Wizards president Tommy Sheppard gave interviews that were filled with nonsense, non sequiturs and incoherence. Kudos to Craig Hoffman for asking serious questions, by the way. In this episode, Kevin and Ron delve into five of the most absurd comments, and go on an array of tangents that come when people talk hoops, including the value of floaters, whether Kyle Kuzma has actually improved, what Deni Avdija is doing well the past eight games and what he needs to do to keep it going.

The Washington Wizards made the kind of trade that’s become familiar, sending former first round pick Rui Hachimura to the Los Angeles Lakers for Kendrick Nunn and three second-round picks — two of which convey in 2028 and 2029. In this episode, Kevin and Ron analyze the trade for all involved, discuss what it means for the Wizards, and take a look at the schedule ahead.

In this episode, OKC Dream Team podcaster and long-time Oklahoma City Thunder expert Jon Hamm joins Kevin and Ron to talk team building, how teams communicate with their fans, the importance of ownership and the relative progress of OKC and the Washington Wizards in their respective rebuilds/reloads.

The Wizards are on a seven-game losing streak, they've lost 10 of their last 11, and the schedule ahead is challenging. In this episode, Bleav In Wizards podcast host Matt Modderno joins us to discuss the relative merits of current Wizards players, whether the losing binge is actually a good thing for the franchise — and whether it should continue — and how to divvy up responsibility for the team's futility between owner Ted Leonsis, team president Tommy Sheppard and head coach Wes Unseld Jr.

Kevin Folli is the man behind Wizards Film Room on Twitter (follow him @KevinFolliNBA) where he provides insights, analysis and data with illustrative video.

Ken Budd writes for an array of outlets, including Washington Post Magazine and The Atlantic. Writing for The Atlantic, Budd delved into why such thing as Wizards fans exist — complete with interviews of psychologists explaining why otherwise intelligent, accomplished people can't stop rooting for perennial losers. We took some trips to fond memories of the past and pondered whether we're all just a bunch of masochists.

With guest basketball expert Mark Schindler joining the discussion, we went deep on the Washington Wizards and their prospects for the 2022-23 season. We touched on key questions like:

In this episode we analyze the Washington Wizards preseason games against the Golden State Warriors and discuss some of the key questions and position battles for the Wizards, including:

In this episode, Ron and Kevin talk about the Sarver Report, what to call the Wizards' current "Big Three" (hint: the Wizards don't have a Big Three), and then go into a hypothetical of how good the Wizards might be if they could acquire Michael Porter Jr. from the Denver Nuggets and Jonathan Isaac from the Orlando Magic.

Sometimes during a long offseason, you need to throw off the shackles of trivia, nonsense and offseason pickup videos in which *no really* he's *really-really-really* in the best shape of his life and talk about the important things like whether bald players are better, and who are the best bald Wizards/Bullets in franchise history.

The Wizards emerged from the 2022 NBA summer league with a 3-2 record, a positive scoring differential, and one of Las Vegas’s three most productive players, and the whole thing was still disappointing. In this episode, Kevin is joined by Matt Modderno, host of the Bleav in Wizards podcast, for an analysis of the summer league experience. We get into positives and negatives, and examine everything from roster construction to what's reasonable to expect from a five-game "season" lasting about 10 days.

In this kinda-sorta mailbag episode, Kevin and Ron answer basketball-related questions and end up covering a wide range of topics. The questions:

This episode might have had a different flavor, at least at the start, if we'd known all of the preposterous details of the "let's just give him everything we possibly" can contract the Washington Wizards awarded Bradley Beal.

Matt Modderno teamed up with Kevin for a two-part crossover deep-dive into the 2022 NBA Draft. Part One — covering guards and forwards is Matt's Bleav in Wizards podcast. In Part Two, Kevin and Matt break down wings and centers that have a realistic shot to hear their name called on draft night and the range most reasonable for them to be selected. The two episodes cover more than 70 players...for a 58-player draft. Wings discussed include: Bennedict Mathurin, Kendall Brown, AJ Griffin, Jalen Williams, David Roddy, Dalen Terry, Ochai Agbaji, MarJon Beauchamp, Jake LaRavia, Christian Braun, Keon Ellis, Malaki Branham, Gabriele Procida, Jabari Walker, Tevin Brown, Ousmane Dieng, Shaedon Sharpe, Tevin Brown and Vince Williams. Centers: Chet Holmgren, Mark Williams, Christian Koloko, Jalen Duren, Walker Kessler, Michael Foster Jr., Josh Minott, Trevion Williams, Ismael Kamagate, and Yannick Nzosa.

With the NBA Draft looming on the calendar, and the Washington Wizards committed to maximum salary players Bradley Beal and Kristaps Porzingis, the team will need to rely on the cheap labor of young players on rookie contracts. The burning question facing the franchise is one they've answered poorly for the past few decades: Can the team develop its young players into major contributors?

Recorded shortly after the NBA's annual Draft Lottery, which left the Wizards with the 10th pick (the most likely outcome based on their record this season), Osman Baig from Bullets Forever and Matt Modderno, host of the Bleav in Wizards podcast, joined Kevin to talk about what the Wizards can and should do this offseason.

In this episode, co-hosts Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham were joined by Wizards writer and youth basketball coach Marcus Atkinson. They discussed Ron's theory that fans need time off once their favorite gets eliminated to recalibrate their basketball eye and reset expectations. They also got into a conversation about effective team building, with a focus on the Memphis success assembling a deep and talented roster around Ja Morant. That evolved into some Memory Lane discourse that delved into the monumental organization-wide lack of foresight, poor strategic planning, and inability to provide meaningful support to young players who needed help to grow into the kinds of roles the team wanted them to fill. The episode wrapped with Kevin and Marcus continuing a conversation started on Twitter about Nikola Jokic, whether he's a deserving MVP, and whether a team can make a deep run in the playoffs built around a player like Jokic. 

With the Washington Wizards not making the playoffs, Kevin and Ron took some time to reflect on weighty #SoWizards topics like whether Bradley Beal should take less than the maximum salary, which of the Wizards' players seem like they could compete effectively at playoffs intensity, and the relative goodness of Desmond Bane. 

Osman Baig (@OBtoojiveforyou) and Matt Modderno (@MattModderno) are back for another Bullets Forever 3Pt Play! We all know the expression that hindsight is 20-20 so we thought it would be fun to fire up the time machine and rehash each of the Wizards' drafts over the last decade. We discuss what they got right, where they missed, and the flaws in their logic along the way. We identify who would have been better to select, who we liked at the time, and whether the players that fans wanted actually panned out. Plus, Matt tries really hard to defend the Isaiah Todd trade/pick. Let us know what you think and if you want us to go further back and analyze the previous decade.

Kevin Broom and Ben Becker have been having Wizards season post-mortem calls annually for nearly 20 years now. They've even recorded some of them and turned them into podcasts. That's what this is: two long-time friends who know basketball, know the Wizards and know the NBA dissecting Washington's season, and the team's penchant for bad strategic thinking.

Here's the thing that makes a 96-minute podcast episode even crazier: it started with one of us saying he might need to keep his comments tight because he unexpectedly had to be somewhere. Instead of leaving early, the conversation went nearly two hours, and we overcome technical difficulties to record roughly 95 minutes.

#SoWizards hosts Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham have been nibbling at the edges of whether Wes Unseld Jr. is doing a good job as Wizards head coach, and in this episode they were joined by the great Troy Haliburton to take a big ol' bite of the question.

Is it bad form to say your own podcast has a great episode? If so, I'm the Jamaal Wilkes of podcasting. Here's a YouTube link to his shot (and some other "bad form" shooters) for the youngs in the audience.

With no one from the franchise participating in an official capacity, All-Star weekend was quiet for the Washington Wizards. Kevin and Ron took the time to take stock of the team and what they hope and expect to see from the Wizards over the final 24 games of the season.

In the latest installment of the BulletsForever 3PT Play, Matt Modderno and Osman Baig joined Kevin to talk about tanking -- whether the Wizards should do it, and how to do it right if they do.

In this episode, Osman Baig joined Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham to talk over the most important figure in the Washington Wizards organization: Bradley Beal.

Recorded before the debaculous 29-point loss to Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics, Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham batted around the issue of whether Wes Unseld Jr. and his staff are doing a good job. It’s been taken as a given by many Wizards fans and analysts that Unseld is good and a significant upgrade from Scott Brooks.

The plan for this episode was straightforward: Ron and Kevin would spend a few minutes discussing the recent performance of the Washington Wizards and then move into picking All-Star rosters.

This is the second installment of the Bullets Forever "3PT Play," the brainchild of Osman Baig, who joined me and Bleav in Wizards podcast host Matt Modderno to analyze the recent outstanding play from Wizards PF Kyle Kuzma. Click here to listen to the first episode, where we talked about "Point Beal" on Matt's show.

Recorded after the Wizards 124-121 win against the Charlotte Hornets, co-hosts Kevin and Ron discuss how the team has adapted with so many players sidelined by the NBA's Covid health and safety protocols. The current list includes:

In this episode, former #SoWizards co-host Ben Becker joined current hosts Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham for an in-depth discussion of the Washington Wizards strategic direction. 

In this episode, co-hosts Kevin Broom and Ron Oakes-Cunningham are joined by one of the best follows on Wizards Twitter, Akbar — better known as @fastbreconomics.

With the Wizards staggering, Bleav in Wizards host Matt Modderno and Kevin turned their text message conversations about G League players into an article for Bullets Forever. In this episode, Matt joins Kevin and Ron in a Crossover Episode to go deeper on players with Wizards affiliate, Capital City Go-Go, as well as some of the more productive G League players so far this season.

The Washington Wizards are 11-6, but their offense has been trending in a worrisome direction. Kevin and Ron talk about what's going wrong and how the team might address the issues to maintain their winning ways.

Recorded during the Wizards comeback win against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Kevin and Ron talk about what the Wizards are doing well and what might happen when they run into teams with quality shooting. They talk about the strengths and weaknesses of Rui Hachimura and Deni Avdija, and what each of them need to do to reach their NBA potential.

In this episode, Kevin and Ron discuss the Wizards going 3-2 since the last episode with two wins over the Boston Celtics, a loss to the Brooklyn Nets, and a split with the Atlanta Hawks. They go even deeper on Kevin's reasons to worry article, and Ron asks a great question: Is the lack of contested shots from the Wizards a feature or a fault in head coach Wes Unseld Jr.'s defensive scheme?

Kevin is joined by new co-host Ron Oakes-Cunningham to analyze this year's Washington Wizards. In this episode, Kevin and Ron discuss their preseason forecasts and whether or not the first two games has them rethinking their predictions. They theorize on the correlation between bald spots and basketball greatness, dive in on the first two games, get nerdy about the Wizards defense, and spend a bunch of time talking about Kyle Kuzma.

Ben Becker joins the #SoWizards podcast to talk about the Wizards' nutty 2020 trip through NBA free agency. In this wide-ranging conversation, Kevin and Ben dive into all the major Wizards topics:

Kevin and guest Ben Mehic dig into why the Wizards should trade Bradley Beal to the New Orleans Pelicans for Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball and Jaxson Hayes. They also take a look at the NBA’s planned restart to the 2019-20 season and whether John Wall should take the court when play resumes.