#SoWizards

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.

There was no outline or framework for the conversation, but they hit on most of the major themes from this past season, and took a look ahead and that team's likely fortunes next season and beyond. 

Somewhat surprisingly, there were notes of optimism about next season, primarily because in trading for Kristaps Porzingis, the Wizards have two players on the roster capable of being high-end starters. No, Porzingis and Bradley Beal are not among the game's elite players, but each could fall into a 1- or 2+ designation Kevin wrote about, here.

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.

Armon Lee, New York Knicks fan and creator of the excellent Quarter-Lee Report podcast, joined us to talk hoop. We expected to talk about the Washington Wizards youngsters, one of Kevin's crackpot theories about how bias and the evolution of basketball help lead teams and fans to misevaluate players, and Armon's perspective on Wizards big man Kristaps Porzingis. Porzingis, of course, started his career with the Knicks.

In addition to crackpot theories, they kicked around some research Kevin did attempting to assess the relative quality of each team's young talent.

Along the way, we talked about how to build winning teams, whether NBA teams need to have a goal of winning a championship and much...much...more.

This was a terrific conversation with the three of us disagreeing on an array of topics, and then going deeper to understand what the other person was saying, and then continue to disagree.

#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.

The conversation was an unflinching diagnosis of how Unseld's leadership is coming up short, how he compares to his predecessors and competitors, how the Wizards organization is failing him as a rookie head coach, and what needs to happen for him to succeed.

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.

In this episode, Mark Schindler, a contributor at Basketball News, joined Ron and Kevin to discuss a whole heap of basketball topics. Mark is an excellent basketball writers and a must read for those who want insight into the NBA. He has a specialty of sorts for the Indiana Pacers, but he covers the entire league with a focus on player development and progression, while also keeping up with college scouting and eyeing the NBA Draft. Give him a follow him on Twitter @MSchindlerNBA.

We hit on an array of topics, including the Pacers, G-League superstar Terry Taylor (the 6-5 "big"), Tyrese Haliburton, and just how big an a-hole is Indy coach Rick Carlisle. We also talked Wizards, including whether Wes Unseld Jr. is doing a good job, the relative merits of the players on the Wizards roster, and whether the team should be so gung ho about giving Bradley Beal a supermax contract.

This is a great episode. 

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.

This episode includes a discussion of All-Star Saturday Night events, which evolved into a conversation about the league could do with the schedule to make games into more of an event, and create space for some fun and entertaining formats.

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.

We also discussed the team's trade deadline moves and what they could mean for the Wizards over the next few seasons.

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.

We discussed how the team's handling of Beal is symptomatic of the front office's long-running dysfunction. We assess where Beal truly stands in the league and the challenges of trying to build around a player at his level. We got prescriptive too, which included a conversation about how the team could build around him, if they persist with their Beal strategy.

And, we got into the team's failure to find quality players -- from the free agency debacle of 2016 to missing on draft picks and veteran pickups.

The tone is on the pessimistic side, which makes sense for a team sitting 10th in the East that's coming off a 29-point loss to the Boston Celtics, a blown 35-point lead against the Los Angeles Clippers, and facing a tough schedule over the next couple weeks. This is a team falling apart, and in this episode we get into some of the big reasons why. 

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.

But what if he’s not?

What if the team isn’t being well coached? How could outsiders tell the difference? 

Would we look to the team’s 13-21 record since the 10-3 start? The negative scoring differential? The middle of the pack offense and a bottom tier defense? How about the lack of energy and urgency from a team in the midst of playing every other day during a lengthy home stand?

Give a listen to the podcast, and let us know what you think.