30 teams in 30 days: Washington Wizards offseason preview
By Jeff Siegel
The Wizards took a step forward last season. Since they’re pretty much locked into this core going forward, with no projected cap space until at least 2020, it was vital for them to have a successful first season under new head coach Scott Brooks. John Wall and Bradley Beal both flourished in Brooks’ system, but it was the emergence of Otto Porter Jr. that pushed the Wizards into serious contention for the Eastern Conference Finals, just one year removed from missing the playoffs altogether in Randy Wittman’s final season in charge of the club.
Porter shot 43.4 percent from 3-point range on the largest volume of his career, breaking out as the high-quality shooter who can space the floor around Wall and Beal. He’ll be a restricted free agent this summer and will be cashing in on his monster season, likely to the tune of a max contract starting at $25.25 million next season (assuming a $101 million cap).
With Porter’s cap hold on the books, as well as restricted free agents Trey Burke and Bojan Bogdanovic and unrestricted free agent Brandon Jennings, the Wizards are well over the cap going into July.
As will be a theme across the league, the Wizards will have some tax concerns if they do retain Porter at his full max. A team with cap space will go after Porter as soon as he becomes available, so there’s almost no chance that Washington will be able to bring him back for less. The biggest question this offseason for the Wizards will be whether they let Porter go out and get that max contract from another team or pony up the money for him before the end of the moratorium. Letting Porter go get that max offer from a team affords the Wizards a bit of flexibility in case he can’t get that full max from Philadelphia or another team with cap space. But they also run the risk that he’ll sign a shorter offer sheet or include a player option, which would get him back on the free agent market sooner than if Washington put up the money initially.
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The Jazz made that mistake with Gordon Hayward, opting to let him go get an offer from the Hornets that put him back in free agency a year earlier than if Utah had put a similar offer on the table, and now the Jazz may lose him.
However, there’s a real concern that giving Porter a massive contract could come back to bite the Wizards, even though they’d have no way of replacing him this season if they were to let him go. His rise as a shooter has masked the other flaws in his game; namely, he’s neither a lockdown defender nor a capable ball-handler. The wing combination of Porter and Beal has a lower ceiling because neither of those guys can handle the defensive duties on the bigger wings in the league — and the Wizards have to go through LeBron James to reach their goals. It will be imperative that Washington uses whatever remaining money they have to go out and find a defensive wing for those exact situations.
Outside of Porter, Bogdanovic, for whom the Wizards traded their 2017 first-round pick and Andrew Nicholson’s bad contract, will be their priority. He gives Washington yet another shooter to give Wall more room to work his magic (pun fully intended) in the paint. Every dollar he gets will push the Wizards further into the tax the next two years, so they may be more frugal with him than another team will on the open market. While Washington may be proactive with Porter’s restricted free agency, it’s more likely that they’ll let Bogdanovic go out on the market and find an offer sheet before deciding whether the price is worth matching.
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Washington’s bench was abysmal last season and reared its ugly head in their playoff loss to the Celtics. Giving Bogdanovic a full season to get acclimated will certainly help and using their mini mid-level exception (starting at $5.2 million for next season) on either a backup point guard or a defensive wing will steady them on at least one end of the floor. Brooks is one of the best developmental coaches in the league and if he can bring out the best from current bench guys like Tomas Satoransky and Kelly Oubre, the Wizards could be a force in the East over the next several years.