Washington Wizards head coach Brian Keefe has come an extended strategy to get to the place he’s, serving as an assistant with a number of NBA groups.
Keefe’s first step within the NBA got here with the Seattle SuperSonics in 2007, the identical yr Kevin Durant was the second general decide within the draft. A yr later, the franchise grew to become the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder and recruited Russell Westbrook. Then, James Harden entered the scene in 2009.
Whereas the Thunder drafted three future MVPs, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows in Oklahoma Metropolis. They needed to undergo rising pains, much like what wizards face now.
“It wasn’t like they obtained away from bed and gained 50 or 60 video games,” Keefe stated through The Athletic. “They needed to undergo some adversity, and I feel we used that adversity as a constructing block of what we had been doing there.”
Throughout the 2008–09 season, the Thunder gained their third sport on December 19 after dropping 24 video games. It is worse than what Wizards have finished to this point within the season as they compile a 3-20 document.
This doesn’t imply that the Wizards are going to be the Thunder, however this reveals that Keefe is ready for what the group goes by means of.
“We developed lots of resilience,” Keefe stated. “I feel our gamers, our group actually labored onerous and actually used this as momentum for us to maneuver ahead.
“These guys constructed endurance, psychological toughness, resilience, after which we actually simply embraced the work, and these guys actually embraced constructing habits each day and dealing on their craft and their sport. And I feel that basically pushed the franchise ahead throughout that point.
The next yr, the Thunder gained 50 video games and returned to the playoffs. It is probably not the Wizards“, however there’s a imaginative and prescient and a recipe for what the group goes by means of, and it would take some persistence to get there, but it surely might change into precisely what Washington wants in the long term.
