thedcdime

By: Bohlin

It’s a bittersweet feeling. This season may have left much to be desired record-wise, but it is hard not to go into the offseason with at least some hope about the state of our franchise. Sure, we finished with the second-worst record in the NBA and will be a fixture at next month’s lottery for what feels like the better part of the last decade, but it is hard to ignore the results on the floor. While a 6-game winning streak to close out a season where you finish 26 games under .500 is far from anything to be excited about, I saw competitiveness out of this ball club the last couple weeks that was not there at the beginning of the year (or for the larger part of two years, for that matter).

There was a culture change that occurred inside this franchise this past spring. Getting rid of players who placed their own self-interests before the team and banishing The Captain for the last two months allowed for the core we are going to build around to gel and see what being successful felt like. While the games they won may have been meaningless, this feeling is not. Winning six games in a row in the NBA is not an easy thing to do, especially for a roster made up of mostly first and second year players, and as fans we have to hope the Wizards want to keep that feeling of success going next fall.

Our front office has been rather transparent with regards to the fact that this was year two of a three-year rebuild. “There’s no turning back,” as we found out from a direct quote when Ernie Grunfeld joined the Mike Wise radio program last week and the Washington Post writer, along with co-host Christopher Johnson, for lack of a better term grilled EG for an answer to this bloggers question regarding that quote and what it meant for this team going forward (Got to love how easy it is to communicate in the Twitter age). In pure GM speak Ernie went on to speak about how we have accumulated young talent through the draft and will continue to build upon those pieces already in place. It seems we have established building blocks in Wall, Nene, Seraphin and to a much lesser, more developmental, extent Jan Vesely. It is imperative that every one of those players continues to develop their games over the offseason as I can imagine this time next spring they want to be playing meaningful games at the Phone Booth.

Contrast that with the blog post by Ted Leonsis today clarifying parts of “The Plan” for the rest of us; Leonsis wrote that the plan all along was to be bad for two years and then become good. It is so simple I can’t believe I did not think of that earlier on! It looks like we will be left hoping that the ping pong balls bounce our way once again this summer, if that happens maybe year three of the rebuild on F Street will be more entertaining than the two years that preceded it.

The impending offseason is an important one for the Wizards. If we are supposed to be taking the next step going into year three of “The Plan” we must continue to rid ourselves of dead weight (Andray Blatche pun!) as well as continue the youth movement that has started in D.C. There is promise that in this summer’s draft we will be able to land an impact player that we can pair with John Wall in order to take that next step from laughable losers to “Hey, these guys really don’t suck that bad after all”. Couple that with the addition of some assets via free agency (Something we will lay our plan out for in the coming weeks) and this team could, and should, be much more competitive in 2012-2013.

As our first (half) season covering the Washington Wizards comes to an end, I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to check out TheDCDime and hope that you stick with us over the coming months as we keep a close eye on the draft, free agency and, of course, my favorite way to waste time in July…The Vegas Summer League!!!!

*Editors note: We’re going to Vegas.

Tags: Andray Blatche, basketball, blatche, d, dc, ernie gunfeld, jan vesely, John Wall, kevin, Kevin Seraphin, nba, nene, nene hilario, seraphin, sports, washington, Wizards