Washington Wizards: Profiling Randy Wittman

John Wall (right) and Bradley Beal. (Flickr.com photo by Keith Allison)

The Washington Wizards are setting their sights on the playoffs for the 2013-14 season. Whether they are able to reach that goal depends on a few things: John Wall playing like a max-level player, the continued development of Bradley Beal, the overall health of the roster throughout the season and the abilities of Randy Wittman as the team’s leader. I am a little higher on the Wizards than most. I believe that the playoffs are more or less a lock for them, mostly because I trust that three of the four aforementioned things will play out in the Wizards favor — their health being my only real concern. I even believed — at least before the Brooklyn Nets-Boston Celtics blockbuster trade — that the Wiz kids could aspire to higher things this year, namely home-court advantage in the first round.

To a certain degree, I still believe there can be more in store than what Washington is being given. I can see them competing with the New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks in the third tier of the Eastern Conference hierarchy and perhaps even forging their way into the realm of the second best if the Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers or Brooklyn struggle for a stretch of play this year. Whether they can attain to the next level of success though, will depend on just how much of difference Randy Wittman will make in his second full season as the Wizards head coach.

Wittman has already established himself as a perfectly adequate basketball coach over the last two seasons. Though Washington has not amassed a ton of wins over his first 131 games as the Wizards’ lead man — they are 47-84 since Wittman took over — they have put together some good stretches of play when fully healthy that suggests Wittman can lead this team to success. The Wizards earned a top 10 defensive mark last year, a 100.6 defensive rating (good for eighth, per NBA.com) that put them a hair below Miami’s top-notch defense. That number dropped to 99.7 after Wall returned (ranked sixth during that stretch), and Washington even put together a stretch — when Wall, Beal, Emeka Okafor, and Nene were actually able to share floor time — where they were right there with Indiana and the Memphis Grizzlies as one of the league’s best defenses.

Wittman seems capable of carrying that defense over to next season. Washington may even become a consistent member of the top five defenses as health stabilizes, younger players mature, develop as defenders and fully grasp what Wittman wants them to execute defensively. The Wizards D has all the marks of a top, Tom Thibodeau-influenced regime: they keep the ball up sidelines against ball penetration and the pick-and-roll, they take away the paint by any means necessary and they work their hardest to run teams off the 3-point line. These things were not executed perfectly or even consistently enough last year. However, with Washington’s veterans and more heady players their defense functioned relatively smoothly, earning them that top 10 defensive presence last year. Over the course of the last two seasons Wittman seems to have established Washington as a legitimate defensive force and we should see that come to fruition next season when Washington trots out a lineup at full strength — a lineup that features Wall and Okafor at peak athleticism and defensive prowess.

So while defense will not be a problem for the Wizards, Wittman’s offensive creativity may be the deciding factor regarding Washington’s success. Washington logged the worst offensive rating in basketball last season (97.8, good for, again, 30th). That number gets better, even passable considering the Wizards stout defense, with Wall in the lineup (101.1, only ranking 23rd but giving the Wizards a 1.4 ratings differential, good for 13th). Even with that though, you have to question whether Wittman has the chops on that end of the court, or whether he joins the ranks of good defensive coaches who lack innovation on the offensive end.

Here is an exhaustive look at what the Wizards did offensively last season (courtesy of the hardworking Zak Boisvert):

There is a lot of things at work here: A lot of their early offense reflects modern versions of Princeton action; there are UCLA sets, the typical Horns sets, some flex action altered for a modern NBA and a lot Rip Hamilton/Ray Allen staggered screening motion. Washington’s offense can probably best be described as an amalgamation of all these things and when you take it all in, there is plenty of good and a solid amount of bad to take from it all. The early offense Princeton action looks great most of time, within the right units. Most of the action and players are placed above the free-throw line so when a player and the ball enter the paint — via well timed cuts, up screens, ball penetration or on-ball screen action — there is little defensive resistance around the rim. There are times the lane gets clogged up in these sets, but this typically happens when Washington’s less experienced bigs are in the game. With Okafor and Nene, the paint is rarely clogged by two offensive bodies in the lane. The early offense action also involves a lot of the motions George Karl used profusely last year with Denver in order to create confusion among the defense and spacing in his offense, despite not having great shooting. There is a lot of handoff and wheel action to get players in motion without the ball before attacking the rim or engaging in a pick-and-roll. Also, bigs engage in a lot of fake screen and screen-the-screener action leading up to pick-and-rolls to make life that much more difficult for interior defenders trying to lock down the paint.

Washington also uses postups as more than just a stagnant play that can yield only a post shot. There is at least one player cutting through the lane after a post attempt, either via simple Laker cuts (when the player making the post entry cuts off the post player) or slightly more complicated split cuts (when a screen and cut is worked out between the post feeder and another off-ball player). There is also flare action to set up open 3-point attempts off of post entries. Nene and Okafor are willing and able passers down there and using their post touches as ways for them to create for themselves and others makes one of the lesser efficiency NBA plays more effective for the Wizards. Miami, San Antonio and New York have perfected this type of action. Post ups and isolations for the likes of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Tim Duncan serve just as much purpose bending defenses away from shooters and cutters as they do creating shots for the isolators.

Washington’s Horns action is perfectly capable NBA action. Their Flex action is as well, which says a lot because Flex action typically crowds the paint with two or three players. Washington and forward-thinking NBA teams avoid that paint cramming by delaying certain aspects of the flex cuts and down screens and also by moving those screens further out and away from the lane. However, Washington’s youth and lack of experience will sometimes restrict their ability to successfully execute the NBA’s most common set pieces. Watch the Wizards run a popular “elevator” play out of the horns set at 7:23 in the video above. Now compare that to the Golden State Warriors running that same play:

Other than Stephen Curry being a better shooter than anybody the Wizards sends off the elevator screen, there are a few other differences in the execution that makes the Warriors more effective. Specifically, the Warriors display better floor discipline — there remain pretty locked into the elbow and baseline positions while the Wizards bigs ventures from those spots — and more patience in letting the play develop. Those are little things and things the Wizards do get right most of the time (the very next clip in the Wizards video shows proper execution and leads to an open look), but the great offenses get those “little things” right every time.

Besides these lapses in execution, there are a couple of more gripes I have with Wittman’s offense. First, many of the Wizards’ Horns and Flex action, along with all of their aptly named Rip action, devolve into essentially single-double and stagger screen plays that are quickly moving towards their expiration date as effective NBA actions. The goal of these sets is solely to create an open shot for a particular shooter and they spend almost the entirety of the shot clock trying to create that shot. An NBA play that exists only to create one shot is rather ineffective in today’s NBA world. Defenses are getting really good and typically can shut down the first options of a play. If you spend the majority of your shot clock time trying to set up the shot and it is denied, you are left to scramble for what is typically a bad look. These plays are what slowed Golden State’s offense against the San Antonio Spurs in the conference semis and the type of action that held Boston’s offense mediocre during the big three era. These plays are quite archaic and will hold any teams offensive efficiency down over the course of a season.

The other issue I think becomes a problem for Washington’s offense is the over-complication of some of their sets and how that over-complication takes away from Wall’s ability to create. There are not a lot of simple high pick-and-rolls and side pick-and-rolls happening in Washington’s offense. Whenever Wall is handling in a pick-and-roll scenario there are typically two or three other things happening simultaneously. Inherently, that does not sound like such a bad thing, but that kind of set up can make it too difficult for even the best distributors to be creative out of the pick-and-roll set. Compare what Washington does to what a team like San Antonio does with their pick-and-roll. While San Antonio’s offense is equally as complex, most of the motion happens pre-pick-and-roll. Once Tony Parker is actually coming off the screen, other perimeter players are spotting up and the only real motion is coming from the roll man and the opposite big drifting to the perimeter. As I mentioned last week, Wall is one of the league’s best distributors.  With the floor spacing provided by Beal and Martell Webster, there are times where the Wizards can simply put Wall in high or side pick-and-roll and let him find the best shot out of the action.

All in all, this is not a revolutionary offense by any means. However, while it might not rank among the likes of Miami, Houston or San Antonio, it is good enough to be a top half offense with the right personnel. Considering Washington should be shooting for a top five defense, a top 15 offense should more than get the job done for the Wizards this year. At this point it looks like Wittman will have a healthy and formidable roster this year — with the personnel to be great on defense and good enough on offense. We will see if all the pieces come together for him.