The Washington Wizards have had an up and down year with the injury of John Wall, the breakout year for Bradley Beal, the turnover on their bench and probably most overlooked, the deterioration of Marcin Gortat.
At the moment, the Washington Wizards sit at fifth in the Eastern Conference with a 38-30 record. The team will most likely make the playoffs considering the ninth-seeded Detroit Pistons would have to make up eight wins just to crack the top eight.
However, it’s not all gravy for the Wizards yet, with seeds 4-8 in the Eastern Conference only separated by three games right now. This means that in the last 15 games or so, seeding is very much up for grabs and teams could end up with a much easier or much harder first round matchup.
While 39-30 would be a decent record for most NBA teams, the Washington Wizards seem worse than they did last year. At the end of the 2016-17 NBA season, the Wizards sat in the 4-seed, 16 games over .500. This year, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll top that record.
Some may argue this is in part due to the big chunks of time John Wall missed this season and other might argue it’s their lack of depth. The real answer might be an amalgamation of both of those things, but one factor that consistently gets overlooked is the impact (negative and positive) that Marcin Gortat has on the team.
It isn’t hard to pinpoint that the 6’11” 34-year-old is past his prime. His minutes, points, rebounds and blocks have been on a steady decline for years now. But Gortat has always been an imposing force protecting the rim and setting picks offensively. In the 2017-18 NBA season, those staples of his game have started to vanish.
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Defensively, Marcin Gortat has been below-average defending the pick-and-roll. He has the 18th-highest points per possession rating while defending in the pick-and-roll (0.98). When he’s switched off of his man and forced into isolation, he becomes even more of a liability, giving up 1.07 points per possession.
Among centers, that’s the eighth-worst in the league who have played a majority of games this season. Even if you take positions out of it, Gortat is the 21st-worst defender in the league in isolation.
In today’s modern NBA, creating a mismatch is something that comes second nature to teams. Coaches and players alike actively use picks to get smaller, quicker players on bigger less mobile centers. Gortat has always been a slight liability defending guards, but this year it’s become a problem for the Washington Wizards.
Another sign of an aging Marcin Gortat is his inability to contest 2-point shots anymore. Contested shots have only been tracked by the NBA for two full years now, but even during that small window we’ve seen Gortat’s contested 2-point shots drop from 9.5 to 7.2 shots per game.
Though Gortat has deteriorated mostly on the defensive side, he’s also started to show signs of slowing down offensively as well. During the 2016-17 NBA season, Gortat averaged the most screen assists in the league at 6.3 per game (NBA.com defines a screen assist as a basket resulting from a set screen).
This year, Gortat, (who’s always been known as a strong screen setter) has dropped to fourth in the league with 4.5 screen assists per game. While being fourth-best in the league is ultimately a good thing, his drop in statistics is all evidence of why the Washington Wizards and Gortat himself have been underperforming.
Unfortunately for the Wizards, Gortat is still on the books for his most expensive year in the 2018-19 NBA season. They’ll have to wait at least another season before being able to part with the then 35-year-old center. In today’s game, Gortat is a bit of a relic of the past, a guy who got by setting picks, defending the rim and getting rebounds.
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Now, an older player with already weak mobility is only someone teams will be able to target offensively. No matter where the Washington Wizards end up seeded in the Eastern Conference, look for their opponent to create an offensive scheme set around forcing Gortat to switch at the perimeter.