Wizards hire Clippers GM Michael Winger as President; Winger hires OKC VP Will Dawkins & former ATL Hawks GM Travis Schlenk to lead new front office

[2Quik4UHoes]

Hopefully this is a hire that helps change the team’s fortunes. Although I’m not a Wizards fan, DC sports fans are very passionate so I always hope teams here can get right. Especially the ones that Black people pay the most attention to lol.

 

[KateFabersBoyfriend]

I know nothing about this guy. I think I was still holding out hope for Myers, especially after the reports that they were willing to wait for him to decide his future. Seems like it's being viewed positively, so I guess that's a plus.

There's rumors Myers would be the Clippers number one target if they move on from Lawrence Frank. I'm skeptical of how good he is as a GM, but I think the clippers job for balmer money is a more attractive job than the wizards gig.

 

[Blackrogue]

its the wizards, nothing ever works out

 

[Blackrogue]

Great hire for the Wizards

why?

 

[Blackrogue]

Beal has a no trade clause. He decides when that happens

he gets a 15 percent increment if traded. what's 15 percent of 250 million? 37.5 million dollars

 

[Squirrel from Meteor Man]

why?

He (and Lawrence Frank) put together a championship caliber roster that was able to compete in the West even without their 2 star players

 

[Blackrogue]

He (and Lawrence Frank) put together a championship caliber roster that was able to compete in the West even without their 2 star players

that roster was nothing special outside of kawhi and PG. But i'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Any interviews or stuff posted will be helpful

 

[FAH1223]

why?

He (and Lawrence Frank) put together a championship caliber roster that was able to compete in the West even without their 2 star players

that roster was nothing special outside of kawhi and PG. But i'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Any interviews or stuff posted will be helpful

WASHINGTON — With the Washington Wizards underperforming and lacking a clear path back to national relevance, Ted Leonsis has decided to hire LA Clippers general manager Michael Winger, a lawyer by training who has experience dealing with superstar players, high-powered agents and the nuances of the collective bargaining agreement and salary cap.

Leonsis plans to give Winger wide latitude to expand and revamp the Wizards’ infrastructure — and potentially launch a full rebuild of the roster — said league sources who were granted anonymity because Winger’s hiring, though agreed to in principle, has not been made official yet.

Leonsis will name Winger the president of Monumental Basketball, a new position that will give Winger oversight of not just the Wizards and the G League’s Capital City Go-Go but also the WNBA’s Washington Mystics.

Winger, 43, will take over a Wizards team that has missed the playoffs in four of the past five years, is set to pay shooting guard Bradley Beal up to $208 million over the next four seasons and faces an offseason in which forward Kyle Kuzma intends to become an unrestricted free agent and center Kristaps Porziņģis can become an unrestricted free agent.

According to a league source, Winger will have full authority over constructing (and perhaps deconstructing) the Wizards’ roster and the front offices within Monumental Basketball.

Winger will submit a five-year plan to Leonsis for approval, then update the plan after each year. Most important, Leonsis would not be against a rebuild if that’s the route Winger wants to take, a league source said.

In the coming days, Winger faces a more urgent matter than deciding whether to retain Kuzma and Porziņģis — and arguably even more urgent than prioritizing which NBA Draft prospects to invite to Washington for team workouts. Winger will hire someone to become the new head of Wizards basketball, a league source said. It’s unclear if that role’s title will be “general manager,” but that individual will be the person to whom coach Wes Unseld Jr. reports.

The Wizards’ hierarchy will be similar to the hierarchy within one of Leonsis’ other professional teams, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, who have a team president (dikk Patrick) who oversees the team broadly and a senior vice president/general manager (Brian MacLellan).

Winger worked as the No. 2 person within the Clippers’ basketball operations department, reporting to president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank.

Frank and Winger complemented each other’s skill sets. Frank, who previously was the head coach of the New Jersey Nets and Detroit Pistons, brought high-level X’s and O’s knowledge and experience evaluating players. Winger’s expertise, on the other hand, centers more around developing a team’s short- and long-term roster construction strategy, conducting contract and trade negotiations and navigating NBA salary-cap rules.

As his No. 2 person on the Wizards, Winger likely will hire someone with a relatively traditional basketball background. Per a league source, that hire likely will occur within the next two weeks.

 

[Squirrel from Meteor Man]

that roster was nothing special outside of kawhi and PG. But i'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Any interviews or stuff posted will be helpful

It has to be a good roster if they were winning games consistently without one or both in the lineup. They were a Kawhi freak injury (and even without him a Deandre Ayton buzzer beater) away from the Finals.

 

[FAH1223]

It has to be a good roster if they were winning games consistently without one or both in the lineup. They were a Kawhi freak injury (and even without him a Deandre Ayton buzzer beater) away from the Finals.

Winger being part of drafting Mann in the 2nd round is better than any of the Wizards recent lottery picks.

@pete clemenza

 

[Squirrel from Meteor Man]

Winger being part of drafting Mann in the 2nd round is better than any of the Wizards recent lottery picks.

@pete clemenza

I was going to bring up Mann and Zubac’s development but that may be more of the actual coaching staff. Still great GM moves overall

 

[FAH1223]

Ted Leonsis didn’t want to run it back.

This is a major step in the right direction for the Wizards, who unofficially hired Michael Winger from the Clippers on Wednesday to run the show in D.C.

Who knows if Winger, with extensive experience on the contract negotiation/analytics side of teams in L.A., Oklahoma City and Cleveland, will be able to turn things around here? He is not, people who’ve worked with him and know him say, someone who’s going to travel with the team on the road and glad hand them when they enter the locker room after wins. He may not even be at games. He is not a scouting bird dog. He will have to hire a general manager to do all of that. He was team counsel for both the Cavaliers and Thunder. He is not a basketball guy, in the traditional sense.

But none of that matters. Or, at least, it doesn’t matter all that much, right now.

What matters is we know, finally, that winning and losing matters to Leonsis, the Wizards’ governor. We know that it’s not okay that the Wizards continue to scrape the bottom of the NBA barrel, meandering through seasons, with no long-range notion for how they planned to escape from the league’s dregs.

If Winger doesn’t formally replace Tommy Sheppard in job title, he will at least have the green light to do whatever’s necessary, including – be still, my beating heart – a total rebuild, meaning building through the draft and not through incremental, piecemeal trades. Don’t say “tank” around Leonsis; it makes him break out into hives. But if “rebuild” is more palatable in the genteel world of Universe Mastering, so be it. Winger can do whatever he wants with the existing roster, and no NBA executive worth his iPhone thinks this roster is good enough to compete at a high level.

It does not mean the Wizards will trade Bradley Beal tomorrow. Or that they will definitely not re-sign either Kyle Kuzma or Kristaps Porziņģis this summer.

But it does mean a significant roster shakeup is in the offing. As it had to be.

Michael Winger will have the authority to reshape the Washington Wizards, sources say

Yes, teams that go far in the postseason tend to be teams with continuity, whose best players have played together four or five seasons. But Washington’s best players, year in and year out, haven’t been anywhere near good enough to scare anyone. So, get better best players.

By the way: it’s too clever by half to say Sheppard didn’t have any plan the last four years. That’s not fair. The plan, to gradually build around Beal, didn’t work. But that’s not the same as having no plan. And that plan, as of 12 months ago, had Leonsis’ blessing. (Nor is it cool that neither Trajan Langdon, the Pelicans’ GM who was the other known candidate to formally interview in Washington, nor Langdon’s representative heard from the Wizards Wednesday, and had to read a Tweet informing them that Washington was going in another direction.)

Winger, the former general manager in L.A., will have a new title in Washington – President of Monumental Basketball – and carte blanche to remake the whole operation from top to bottom. Leonsis, according to a source with knowledge of the team’s thinking, but who was not authorized to speak publicly because the Winger hire is not yet official, will ask Winger for similar five-year team development plans for the Wizards that the Capitals have used under team president dikk Patrick. Tweaking the plan midstream is encouraged, if needed – and, importantly, will be funded without complaint by Leonsis, Monumental’s managing partner.

Leonsis, the source said, wanted someone who’d take big swings, in a big market. It is not a coincidence that Winger has been in Los Angeles the last few years. Leonsis wanted someone who knew how to recruit blue-chip talent to a big city, who had relationships with the game’s top agents and agencies, like CAA, Excel and Klutch. And he allowed that there may be a need for fresh eyes on his basketball team, that someone from the outside needed to tell him what he didn’t know, and what he needed to prioritize. Winger has assurances that Leonsis will go into the luxury tax if necessary down the road.

Winger handled contract negotiations for the Clippers, as well as making sure, as one league source said Wednesday, that everyone in the organization felt “safe” in their working spaces, from Paul George and Kawhi Leonard to low-level staffers. He was a big-picture guy who saw how all the disparate parts of what are now billion-dollar companies can, and have to, work in concert with once another, from player development to HR, security to medical staff. Nor was Winger reluctant to express his views strongly within the Clippers’ front office.

A league source said Wednesday that Winger was one of the few voices that expressed caution about proceeding with the trade that brought George from Oklahoma City to L.A. in 2019 – the deal that was central to Leonard agreeing to join the Clippers in free agency – because he thought the Clippers were giving up too many future draft picks to OKC.

The Clippers did the deal with the Thunder anyway, but it was indicative of Winger providing unvarnished truth, as he saw it, if he thought it was best for the team. It raised the information level of the group. And the Clippers, with Winger collaborating with team president Lawrence Frank, have built a contending team around Leonard and George – one that has been derailed by recurring injuries to its two superstars.

“He is all about the organization,” another league source said of Winger Wednesday. “In terms of the group, he makes it about the players.”

Winger should mesh, at least philosophically, with Wes Unseld, Jr., who also believes in leaning into the numbers to help shape game plans and rotations. But the third-year coach, like everyone else in the organization, will be on notice going forward. There’s a disruptor coming to town, who will try to lift this barge, weighed down by history and low expectations and decades of settling, to heights it hasn’t reached in two generations. That may mean making people feel uncomfortable, worry about their futures. Well, that’s what happens in great organizations. You get comfortable being uncomfortable. And you grow. Or you leave.

The Wizards might, finally, be getting back into the game.

 

[Rekkapryde]

@thewiz
@lochead
@mastermind
@ThatsRite2
@Black
@Eddie Jordan
@Mr swag
@Spree At Last
@mrken12
@Rob's al Ghul
@KBadd
@seanjohn21276
@L. Deezy
@ZEupTWN
@Guv
@KillbertArenas
@G-Zeus
@Icepick Isaacs
@Blackrogue
@VladTheImpaler
@Jack!
@PracticeMeansNothin
@Smashius Clay
@Jemmy
@Dad
@KBadd
@L&HH

The type of hire Ted should have made in

2010
Or
2012
Or
2016
Or
2019

Damn yall still ain't got my dog @PS5 included

 

[pete clemenza]

Winger being part of drafting Mann in the 2nd round is better than any of the Wizards recent lottery picks.

@pete clemenza

Winger was rarely heard from. It was all Lawrence Frank & Jerry West who take the credit for everything. Our front office is still mediocre and overrated. Winger might do well in DC tho

 

[FAH1223]

Winger was rarely heard from. It was all Lawrence Frank & Jerry West who take the credit for everything. Our front office is still mediocre and overrated. Winger might do well in DC tho

The David Aldridge story above talks about how Winger was more on the CBA, contract negotiation, strategic planning stuff while Frank brought the Xs and Os basketball stuff as the lead guy.

It sounds like Winger is going to hire a traditional basketball person to be his #2 and manage the Wizards day-to-day.