Perhaps they felt the urge to employ the flowery language because one of the hardest parts of a rebuild, especially after a 15-67 season, is making it sound attractive. But no matter how it was said, the point came across. It could have been a mistake to call the 2023-24 season the first year of Washington’s rebuild under new management. Year Zero might have been more appropriate.
When Winger was brought in May 24, he had a general manager to hire, Bradley Beal’s leg iron of a contract to deal with and all the customs and quirks of a new organization to feel out. Now, as he heads into his first full offseason, Winger has much of the prep work out of the way and can focus on making big strides that don’t have to do with wins and losses.
“We have more time. We have certainly more education. We have more wisdom about who our people are. . . . For the better part of the last calendar year, we’ve been so roster focused, transactionally focused, that despite some of the gains that we made in the environment, we didn’t really get to spend a lot of time on the environment,” Winger said during an end-of-season news conference Wednesday. “This offseason, we do. I guess that’s one of the rewards for having that time in April and May and June.”
Winger speaks of environment both literally and figuratively. He noted that the team just redid some of the space in its practice facility — and, oh, yeah, thanks to a $515 million deal with the District, the Wizards get to start dreaming about what renovations to Capital One Arena might look like.
This summer will be the first when Winger and Dawkins have more oversight over players’ offseason programs. Even though many players work with individual coaches over the summer, the plan is for the team to be together more often, be that at summer league in Las Vegas or in players’ hometowns.
“A lot of our guys plan on being in D.C. this summer,” Dawkins said. “… I think you’ll see more bonding outside of D.C., but you will see a lot more bodies in the gym in D.C. from May all the way through August.”
But the most significant move Winger and Dawkins will make this offseason — and the most important element in establishing the type of culture they want moving forward — is selecting a coach.
That search officially began Wednesday, Winger said, out of fairness to interim coach Brian Keefe, who took over when Wes Unseld Jr. was reassigned in late January. Winger said he intentionally does not have a process in place or a list of names at the ready, though Dawkins laid out some logical parameters.
He and Winger probably won’t try to coax veteran coaches to Washington or enter a rat race should well-established coaches end up becoming available. Remember where the Wizards are: The land has just been tilled.
“We’ll look around, and we’ll definitely be inclusive,” Dawkins said. “At the end of the day, I think we’re going to find the right person who has the right core characteristics … and will be able to lead us and move us forward in this current phase that we’re in as a basketball club.”
The players were more concrete with what they’re looking for. During their exit interviews Monday, the team’s core players listed similar characteristics when asked what kind of coach the organization needs. The ability to hold players accountable, relatability, high-level communication skills and competitiveness were common answers.
“We need a connector. We need somebody who runs to — or isn’t afraid of — conflict, runs to difficult things and is a master communicator and connector, I guess,” forward Corey Kispert said. “The NBA is all about managing 15 egos and making sure everybody feels connected and incorporated for the betterment of the team. It’s a really difficult thing to be able to do that while also building a great, high-quality team and raising the level of our play.”
Turnover happens in every organization every summer, and the new front office is still working with a largely inherited staff, including scouts, assistant coaches, medical team members and other behind-the-scenes employees. Winger said nothing Wednesday about any particular group, but he said “adding to the staff” was another item on his offseason to-do list.
It was more evidence that this offseason, not the last, could be viewed as the true starting point of Washington’s rebuild.
Winger said he underestimated, in the beginning, how much more difficult rebuilding the Wizards would be compared with his previous stops. Every team he previously had a hand in building had a natural reset: Oklahoma City was a recently relocated franchise when he and Dawkins were with the Thunder. When he was hired by the Clippers in 2017, Los Angeles was coming off the Lob City era, had made the playoffs each of the previous six seasons and was looking for a refresh.
But the Wizards drifted from “bad and stuck” to “bad but working on it,” which, despite the promise of hope, is still a hard sell.
“It doesn’t feel yet like the reset of a cycle,” Winger said. “. . . And I sense now just the fan difficulty. They’ve been extremely supportive. They show up to every game. They’re there. . . . But [fans] have been starving for longer than the other places I’ve been, and I am now appreciating how that can feel. And, of course, we have to own that. It’s not like we can just ignore it.”
That was the biggest of all the things Winger learned about the Wizards this year. Land has been cleared, and seeds have been planted. Now the building begins in earnest.
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