“From beginning to end, this season is going to pay dividends, as far as what we want to do in the future,” Coach Flip Saunders said before the loss at Quicken Loans Arena. “As of late, we’ve had a lot of individual success with players. Next year, that’s going to turn into team success.”
They opened the season with 25 consecutive road losses, set a new franchise low with just three road wins, and lost more than 50 games for the third consecutive season. But they will have another high lottery pick, acquired a mid-first-round pick from the Atlanta Hawks and are in position to possibly sign free agents, depending on what happens with the next collective bargaining agreement.
“We’re all competitive. We all want to win and we’re not happy about that part of it,” Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld said, “but I think we know what we’re doing, as far as executing a plan, and trying to move forward, so hopefully one day, we’ll win a lot more games and get back to the playoffs.”
After going through several incarnations, the Wizards established an identity as a team that would be a tough out on most nights, leading Wall to talk about making the playoffs next season. “That’s our goal,” Wall said. “We take this as a learning experience. We know it’s going to take time, but we feel like we’re going to be a playoff team next year, definitely.”
The season could actually be broken into three parts — the first 24 games with Gilbert Arenas on the roster, the next 32 games when the team rarely got veterans Rashard Lewis and Josh Howard on the floor together, and the final 26 games when the team was energized by trade of Kirk Hinrich, which added Crawford and Maurice Evans.
The Wizards let it be known that the focus was on the future when they traded Arenas to the Orlando Magic for Lewis on Dec. 18. The move, which saved the franchise nearly $30 million, ended a more than seven-year relationship with Arenas, whose tenure was defined by electrifying play, playoff appearances, injuries and a franchise-altering gun incident. It established that the franchise was moving forward with Wall as the foundation. The trade also cleared an opportunity for Young to slide into Arenas’s spot at shooting guard and establish himself as the team’s leading scorer. After struggling to find a spot in the rotation his first three years, Young averaged a career-high 17.4 points per game — an 8.8-point improvement from the last season — and held his own against some of the best players in the league.
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