The Washington Wizards fired Ernie Grunfeld, the team’s general manager for 16 years, on Tuesday. This was something so mythologized by Wizards fans over recent years that it became both seemingly inevitable and something that would never actually happen. But it has. The Wizards have finally failed enough for repercussions that extend beyond the head coach. (These repercussions might also knock the head coach out. We’ll see.)
For some perspective, Grunfeld’s first draft pick running the Wizards was Jarvis Hayes. Grunfeld took over the Wizards the summer James Jones was drafted into the NBA. Jones retired with three championships as a role player and is now himself a general manager. The only front offices with more tenure are the R.C. Buford/Gregg Popovich cabal in San Antonio, Pat Riley in Miami, and Donnie Nelson in Dallas.
Nelson drafted Dirk freaking Nowitzki and built a Mavericks team that went to two NBA Finals, winning one title. Riley has brought three titles and a small army of Hall of Famers to Miami. The Buford/Popovich front office is the modern gold standard and the source of many other teams’ GMs. The Grunfeld front office has ... uh ... err ... yeah.
The Wizards have been sometimes good and more often bad this millennium. Washington made the playoffs in half of Grunfeld’s years, but rarely did much in those playoffs worthy of excitement. Grunfeld only brought one elite player to the Wizards outside of the draft — Gilbert Arenas, with one-time all-star Caron Butler as No. 2 — and mismanaged both that era and the successive era built around landing John Wall and Bradley Beal in the draft.
Grunfeld’s tenure has been marked with a definite lack of imagination, an apparent lack of planning, and a rampant lack of high-level success. In a league where the best front offices have multi-year blueprints and contingencies built on top of contingencies, the Wizards always seemed like they were flying by the seat of their gym shorts, reacting to the latest tragic befuddlement instead of finding paths around obstacles.
In that sense, this lost season was a perfect encapsulation of Grunfeld’s reign. The chemical mix of the team was bad from the start, Wall eventually got injured seriously enough to derail the Wizards’ hopes of even getting to .500, the team had a minor fire sale, and tanked out while still letting Beal cook enough to challenge for an All-NBA spot, which would qualify him for that enormous contract. It starts with a mess the Wizards didn’t expect and grows into an all-encompassing disaster. It’s the Gilbert Arenas era all over again, but with ruptured tendons and supermax deals instead of pistol duels and Lapdance Tuesdays.
A new era begins, possibly with interim GM and longtime Grunfeld deputy Tommy Sheppard in the lead role, or possibly with an outsider taking over. The pressure starts immediately, as the Beal issue will essentially be resolved this summer — Beal will be traded, take an extension offer a year prior to free agency, or decline the offer and then leave one way or the other. Wall’s recovery timeline runs deep into next season. Otto Porter is gone. There’s no one but Beal to get fans juiced.
And franchisee Ted Leonsis’ statement announcing the end of Grunfeld’s tenure should send shivers down Wizards fans’ spines.
“We did not meet our stated goals of qualifying for the playoffs this season and, despite playing with injuries to several key players, we have a culture of accountability and a responsibility of managing to positive outcomes,” said Leonsis. “I wish to thank Ernie for his service to the Washington Wizards. He and his family have been great leaders in our community and have worked tirelessly to make us a top NBA franchise.”
The stated goal of the season was to make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference. So if the Wizards had snuck into the No. 8 seed with a 40-42 record, Grunfeld would be safe? Had one fewer thing gone terribly wrong in the immediate term, but Washington’s long-term outlook still looked as bleak as it currently does, Grunfeld would stick around for the next phase of the eternal rebuild? That’s where you’re setting the standard for a team with four playoff appearances in five years and three playoff series wins — a playoff appearance?
It looks like that devastating lack of imagination extends beyond Grunfeld’s office.
Instead of shooting for the stars, it’s like aiming for the satellites in Medium Earth Orbit.
No one would ask the Wizards to set unrealistic or self-destructive goals. No one is asking the Wizards to go championship-or-bust on us. But given how long it has been since D.C. basketball fans have been able to root for a truly great pro team — four decades — it’d be nice if the standard was a bit higher than roughly equal to the league average team, or a little worse but lucky. That’s essentially what aiming for the playoffs in the NBA means: you want to be one of the 16 best teams in a 30-team competition. You want to hit the 47th percentile. Instead of shooting for the stars, it’s like aiming for the satellites in Medium Earth Orbit.
Fans want more than low-seed playoff bids from the Wizards, and if Leonsis thinks he’s building a “top NBA franchise” he should expect a whole helluva lot more out of his front office. That means being bold, and maybe being worse in the short term. That probably means trading Beal instead of paying him. That might mean tanking over the next year or three. That means evicting the Grunfeldian and apparently Leonsisian mindset that good enough, that the 47th percentile is worth chasing in this league.
If Leonsis can’t see that Grunfeld’s failure stems from a lack of a vision for future Wizards greatness — not modest success, but true greatness — then D.C.’s doom may not be over for quite some time.
