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Washington Post
07-07-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Lessons the Wizards can learn from the Thunder and Sam Presti's GM tree
It's a good time to be a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder just won the NBA title, its three best players have an average age under 25, and it has the most draft capital in the league. It's no wonder that Sam Presti, the Thunder's general manager, was named NBA executive of the year. This isn't his first run at success — Presti also built a championship-worthy team by drafting former MVPs Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. As is custom in the copycat world of sports, other teams have tried to replicate the Thunder's success by hiring Presti's protégés. Since 2010, the Thunder has had a league-high five front-office members hired as general managers, according to the team website. Two of them lead the Washington Wizards: President Michael Winger and General Manager Will Dawkins. Winger, who was previously the Los Angeles Clippers' general manager, was the Thunder's assistant general manager and team counsel from 2010 to 2017. The Clippers went 272-200 and made the playoffs four times during his tenure as GM. He worked under Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball operations. Dawkins rose up from intern to vice president of basketball operations over 15 seasons with the Thunder. But Winger and Dawkins aren't the first Presti offshoots to get hired. How did the others do — and what could the Wizards learn from them? Rob Hennigan Orlando Magic general manager, 2012-17 Thunder experience: 2008-12, 2017-present When he was hired in 2012, the 30-year-old was the youngest general manager in NBA history. His teams never made the playoffs over five seasons, compiling a regular season record of 132-278. What worked: Among Hennigan's first moves was trading star center Dwight Howard. The Magic's return wasn't spectacular but did net it a solid center in Nikola Vucevic. Hennigan also made some decent draft picks, taking Victor Oladipo at No. 2 in 2013 and Aaron Gordon at No. 4 in 2014. What didn't: The Magic whiffed in the 2015 draft by taking Mario Hezonja at No. 5. But Hennigan's biggest mistake came in a trade he made with Presti. On draft night in 2016, the Magic dealt Oladipo, Ersan Ilyasova and the No. 11 pick — which became Domantas Sabonis — to the Thunder for Serge Ibaka. Ibaka, a pending free agent, didn't make it the full season in Orlando. Hennigan traded him in February 2017 to the Toronto Raptors for Terrence Ross and a 2017 first-round pick, which ended up as the No. 25 selection. What happened next makes the deal look worse. The Thunder traded Oladipo and Sabonis to the Pacers for star wing Paul George. And the Thunder traded George to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of a package that included 2025 regular season MVP and Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Oladipo, Sabonis, George and Gilgeous-Alexander have combined for 12 all-NBA selections. Ross and Ibaka? Zero. Lesson for the Wizards: Evaluate your own talent properly. The George and Gilgeous-Alexander trades aside, Oladipo blossomed into a star in Indiana before multiple injuries limited him. Gordon was miscast as a No. 1 option but turned into a high-level starter and an NBA champion with the Denver Nuggets. Vucevic and Sabonis could have been a solid big man tandem. The core probably wouldn't have been a true contender but might have been a solid, playoff-worthy squad. Hennigan declined a request to comment through an Oklahoma City representative. Rich Cho Portland Trail Blazers general manager, 2010-11; Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets general manager, 2011-18 Thunder/SuperSonics experience: 1995-2010 Cho was fired after less than a year in Portland and worked under President of Basketball Operations Rod Higgins in Charlotte. Cho became the top decision-maker after Higgins's exit in 2014. Charlotte went 223-334 and made the playoffs twice with Cho. After Higgins's exit, Cho and the Hornets went 152-175. What worked: In Cho's first draft, Charlotte selected four-time all-star Kemba Walker with the No. 9 pick. With Cho as the lead decision-maker in 2017, the franchise selected Malik Monk — who has been a productive scoring guard throughout his career — with the No. 11 pick. Charlotte also traded for reliable wing Nicolas Batum in 2015. What didn't: Cho never found a running mate for Walker. With the No. 2 pick in 2012, the then-Bobcats took Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, a defense-oriented, shooting-challenged wing. He stuck around the league for eight years but never turned into a premier defender nor a passable shooter. Over the next three drafts, Charlotte selected Cody Zeller, Noah Vonleh and Frank Kaminsky with its first-round pick. Zeller, a solid but unremarkable player, became the best of the bunch. Charlotte won 48 games and made the playoffs in 2015-16 but couldn't build on that success. Cho traded the team's 2016 first-round pick, No. 22 overall, for Marco Belinelli. It proved too steep a price — ESPN gave the Hornets a D-minus for the trade — and Belinelli was traded less than a year later. Charlotte won just 36 games next season and hasn't made the playoffs since. Lessons for the Wizards: 'Draft and develop better' isn't game-changing advice but remains a critical part of a general manager's job. Another one: operate with ambition. Cho seemed to nibble around the edges during his tenure and never built on his team's brief competitive stint, instead getting stuck in the middle. Cho, now working for the Memphis Grizzlies, declined a request to comment through a team representative. Troy Weaver Detroit Pistons general manager, 2020-24 Thunder experience: 2008-20 Weaver's four years in Detroit yielded no playoff appearances and a 74-244 record. After leaving Detroit, he came to Washington to be a senior adviser for the Wizards for a year before joining the New Orleans Pelicans' front office. What worked: Weaver, known as a strong draft evaluator, tipped off an extended rebuild with Detroit, picking some of the players who powered the team's 2024-25 playoff season. Weaver's best move was his easiest: taking guard Cade Cunningham, an all-NBA performer this past season, with the first pick of the 2021 draft. Weaver also drafted Ausar Thompson, an exceptional athlete with a promising future, with the No. 5 pick in 2023. He also traded for Jalen Duren, who averaged a double-double last season. What didn't: Weaver drafted Killian Hayes with the No. 7 pick in 2020. The guard spent most of the 2024-25 season in the G League. Weaver over-indexed on big men (Duren, Isaiah Stewart, Marvin Bagley III, James Wiseman) and good athletes who struggled to shoot (Thompson, Hayes, Josh Jackson). He also rarely found excess value in the first round. Detroit never entered any of his four drafts with multiple first-round picks. It did trade for Duren (No. 13 overall) on draft night in 2022 but had to give up a protected first-round pick to do so. Weaver also struggled to find the right coach. He inherited Dwane Casey, who was hired in 2018, and only moved on from him in 2023. Weaver then signed Monty Williams, who had success with the Phoenix Suns, to a six-year contract. Williams made it just one season. Weaver's successor, Trajan Langdon, fired him. Lesson for the Wizards: Use avenues such as free agency and trades (absorbing bad contracts, signing and trading veterans, etc.) to give yourself as many opportunities in the draft as possible. The Thunder has embraced this lesson. The Wizards seemingly have as well — their roster features eight players picked in the first round of the past three drafts. Weaver declined a request to comment through a New Orleans representative.
New York Times
05-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
How the Cam Whitmore trade fits into the Washington Wizards' long-term plan
WASHINGTON — Low risk. Potentially high reward. That's an accurate way to describe a trade that the Washington Wizards agreed to on Saturday afternoon. The Wizards will receive offensive-minded wing Cam Whitmore from the Houston Rockets for a pair of future second-round picks. The move meshes with one of the goals that Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger and Wizards general manager Will Dawkins set when they were hired in 2023. They continue to prioritize adding talented young players and future draft picks, hoping that one or a few will develop into high-level pros. Advertisement In 2023, many draft analysts projected Whitmore as a likely lottery pick until he fell to the Rockets at No. 20. In his two NBA seasons with Houston, he struggled to earn consistent playing time as the Rockets made significant on-court strides under defensive-minded coach Ime Udoka, rising to a .500 record during Whitmore's rookie season and finishing second in the Western Conference's standings last season. Udoka built the Rockets into one of the league's best defenses, and Whitmore, who was mistake-prone and perhaps even uninterested at times on defense, was nowhere near as effective defensively as fellow wings Amen Thompson and Tari Eason. Meanwhile, Whitmore was not as efficient a scorer as Jalen Green, another teammate on the wing. The Rockets attempted to harness Whitmore's talent on multiple occasions — sending him to the G League to aid his development and meeting with him periodically over his role — but his frustration with a lack of playing time never waned. Udoka, who had challenged Whitmore publicly and privately to adopt a more team-first approach on both ends, simply couldn't justify his place in the rotation ahead of other players. From the Wizards' perspective, Whitmore remains an intriguing prospect. He's a skilled, physical player. Whitmore is still young (he'll turn 21 on Tuesday), and he and third-year wing Bilal Coulibaly arguably are the best pure athletes on Washington's roster. The 2023 draft was the same draft in which Washington traded up one spot to select Coulibaly seventh. A team source said that Winger, Dawkins and Wizards senior vice president for player personnel Travis Schlenk thought highly enough of Whitmore that they attempted to make a draft-night trade to acquire another first-round pick that they would have used to select Whitmore before Houston snapped him up at No. 20. Advertisement Now, nearly two years later, the Wizards finally have Whitmore — and have brought him aboard at a low cost. Washington will send Houston the Chicago Bulls' 2026 second-round pick and the Sacramento Kings' 2029 second-round pick, per team sources. In a move of salary-cap mechanics, Saturday afternoon's trade will be folded into the previously agreed-upon deal in which the Wizards sent Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey and the 40th pick in this year's draft for wing CJ McCollum, big man Kelly Olynyk and a 2027 second-round pick from Chicago. A trade call with the league about the entire transaction could occur as early as Sunday. Whitmore, who is 6-foot-7 and 230 pounds, can play shooting guard, small forward and, against many small-ball lineups, power forward. The potential risk of this trade has less to do with the pair of outgoing second-round picks that the Wizards will send to the Rockets and more to do with playing time. Even before the trade to add Whitmore, Washington already had a roster disproportionately loaded with wings and combo forwards — most notably, Coulibaly, McCollum, Kyshawn George, Khris Middleton, Justin Champagnie, AJ Johnson and this year's first-round picks, Tre Johnson and Will Riley. So, how will coach Brian Keefe allocate playing time? The younger guys almost certainly will get their minutes, but even if Keefe deploys three-wing lineups that don't have a traditional power forward, it will be a difficult task to distribute the minutes equitably. The trade is a homecoming for Whitmore. He graduated from Archbishop Spalding High School in Severn, Md., which is about 32 miles from the Wizards' Capital One Arena. In the years ahead, Whitmore will receive every opportunity to make the Wizards his long-term NBA home. (Top photo of Cam Whitmore and Max Christie: Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Don't believe the gumdrops and rainbows. The lottery was a disaster for the Wizards
CHICAGO — 'Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?' Gallows humor seems like the only salve right now, after the Washington Wizards absorbed the most brutal gut punch the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery possibly could have unleashed on them Monday night. After a regular season overloaded with losses, with the hoped-for payoff a chance to draft Cooper Flagg or Dylan Harper, the Wizards learned that they are slotted to draft sixth overall. Advertisement This was like absorbing a roundhouse punch from Mike Tyson during Tyson's prime. Or a blind-side sack by Lawrence Taylor. Or, in basketball terms, going up for a dunk and getting undercut from below. Wizards officials, who had prepared for this worst-case scenario but had hoped for the best, put on a brave face in the immediate aftermath. General manager Will Dawkins put a positive spin on things. 'The lottery is a game of chance,' Dawkins said. 'As long as you know that's what it is, you feel pretty calm going through it. Obviously, you want to win every time you have something, but we had nothing going into today and landed with six. 'So for me, I feel pretty good about it.' Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger and Dawkins started the Wizards' rebuild in 2023, and they've always known they will need some luck along the way. Winning the first pick and adding Flagg, one of the best one-and-done prospects in recent history, would have left them ecstatic. They also would have been thrilled to exit the lottery with the second pick, which they could have used to draft Rutgers guard Harper. Adding either Flagg or Harper almost certainly would have made Washington's road ahead infinitely easier and quicker. Now, it's more apparent than ever that Winger, Dawkins and their team of executives, scouts and coaches will need to make more of their own luck. One of the players they drafted or obtained through a trade over the previous two years — Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, Bub Carrington, Kyshawn George and AJ Johnson — will need to hit; all five of those youngsters have shown some degree of potential, but none of them have proven yet that they will develop into stars. The Wizards' management team can take solace from the example of the Indiana Pacers, who hold a 3-1 lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers in their second-round series. The Pacers don't have a single player on their roster who was picked in the top five of any draft. Instead, the president of basketball operations, Kevin Pritchard, brought aboard his best player, guard Tyrese Haliburton (himself the 12th pick in 2020), via a multi-player trade. Advertisement Under Winger and Dawkins, the Wizards have been ultra-aggressive on draft night, moving up one spot in 2023 to snag Coulibaly and trading Deni Avdija last year to acquire the draft rights to Carrington, a 2029 first-round pick, a future second-round pick and veteran guard Malcolm Brogdon. This year, in addition to the No. 6 pick, Washington also holds the No. 18 pick. Asked if he and his colleagues in the front office will consider attempting to trade up, Dawkins answered: 'I think in every draft we always try to find the best player and then try to find a way to go get him, someone that's going to fit into our walls and have every attribute that we're looking for. 'So, for us, we've never been stagnant in any draft. I know it's only been two so far, but we'll look to … do whatever's best for the organization. But we're very comfortable staying where we're at.' Dawkins may have been spouting gumdrops and rainbows when he said the Wizards are 'very comfortable staying' at No. 6. I'm skeptical. As painful as it was not to win the first or second pick, it's now important to at least consider the potential long-term ramifications. The 2026 draft class is said to be deeper at the top than this year's class is at the top. Now that the Wizards have (likely) come up empty on the opportunity to draft a star this year, will Winger and Dawkins prioritize bottoming out once again for the upcoming season? Some degree of tanking for the upcoming season was always likely because the Wizards will have to convey their 2026 first-round pick to the New York Knicks if it falls outside the top eight in the draft. But now that Flagg and Harper are off the board this year, will Washington go all in to maximize its chances to draft the likes of AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson or Cam Boozer 13 months from now? Advertisement And if the Wizards decide to race to the bottom in the year ahead, does that mean they're likely this offseason to try to trade veteran Khris Middleton, assuming he exercises his player option for 2025-26, and/or veteran Marcus Smart, who has one year remaining on his contract? These questions were not posed directly to Dawkins during his brief question-and-answer session after the lottery. But one would think these hypotheticals at least have been pondered internally, given how receiving the fifth pick or the sixth pick were the two most likely single outcomes. Winger and Dawkins have well-earned reputations for thinking everything through. Asked if Monday night's result pushed back the Wizards' timeline to contend, Dawkins answered unequivocally: 'Not at all,' adding that the team will 'continue to build through the draft and be strategic.' Dawkins also said the Wizards remain in 'the beginning phases' of their rebuild. That seems clear now. The top pick or second pick would've sped up the rebuild. But falling to sixth likely slowed it down. Unless Winger and Dawkins can generate their own luck.
