Flip Saunders expertise seems to be no longer required by the Wizards, as the management has decided to bring in Randy Wittman to replace him. Flip Saunders had a tough time coaching the team lately, but to be fair it wasn’t much of his fault. It’s highly plausible that Saunders had been doing his job, but the team became unresponsive to his instructions, given the fact that the team has a handful of colorful characters.
Washington Wizard President felt that the team was not responding to Saunders and hence comes the need for his exit; “a different voice and a change of philosophy” may perhaps get the team back in tune.
Saunders had started with the team back in April 2009, becoming the 22nd head coach of the franchise. He had a record of 51-130 which comes around to 0.392 during his stint here with the Washington Wizards. Given the fact that the team in 2009 wasn’t the one Saunders ‘had signed up for’, he did admirably well. Saunders is known to have coached veteran players in teams quite well, and that’s the lineup he had been expecting when he joined in. Initially the team that was to be supplied to him consisted of Gilbert Arenas, Josh Howards, Antawn Jamison, Caron Butler, Mike Miller, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson. But soon after, back in December 2009 a harrowing incident crippled the side. A gambling dispute followed by guns in the locker room followed by expulsion and suspension of certain players, resulted in disarray and cracks in the team which paved the path for a complete restructuring and introduction of new players, who under Saunders’ watch hasn’t done well.
The players were officially informed of the change over after the Philadelphia game, but talks had been doing the rounds for quite some time now. It started brewing right after the teams eight straight losses from the start of the season. Andray Blatche had put the state of the team quite perfectly when he quipped that “Flip is definitely doing his job” but the team is doing little in “following behind what he says”. His remark has brought the spotlight on the likes of Nick Yound and Jordan Crawford and Javale McGee, who are quite ‘colorful characters’ in their own respective ways. The players seem to be quite strong headed and difficult to coach, a lot of adjustment is required, and here’s where Witman comes in.
Wittman after having coached Minnesota and Timberwolves takes up the challenge thrown at him by Grunfeld. Wittman had been the lead assistant for the past one year in the Wizards team before filling into Saunders’ shoes. Wittman had stared in nine NBA seasons from 1983 onwards. He had a career average of 7.4 points from 543 games when he retired in 1992.
It seems someone had to be the scapegoat in the poor run of events for Washington Wizards. Hence Saunders ‘had’ to go, leaving Wittman to take up the new respectable role. Now the big question is, is Wittman up for it?
