Randy Whitman: The Full Season Interim Coach

27.142 – That is the projected number of games that the Washington Wizards will win in the 2012-13 if newly retained coach Randy Whitman’s career continues the way it has been. (Whitman holds a career 33% winning percentage)

So in case you forgot, let’s look at some of the coach’s history. Whitman coached 2 NBA teams as a full-year coach; the Cavs in 99-00 and 00-01, and the T-Wolves in 07-08. He has never made it more than 2 sets of 82 games with the same team.

With Cleveland in 99’ he had players like 500 year old Shawn Kemp (did you even know he played for Cleveland) leading the team in scoring. In 00’ Chris Gatling (headband) was the most efficient scorer on the roster per 36 minutes.

Then with a T-Wolves team led by Al Jefferson & Rashad McCants he managed to win only 4 games more (22) than he did with the Wiz this season (18) with 33 more games coached that season. (Should have played Mark Madsen more)

While he didn’t coach the Wiz all season last year, he did coach a majority. If you throw out the last 6 BS wins that Ted & Ernie will hype up discussing the reason for the re-hire, he only won 12 games out of 43, which is a still a higher percentage than his career numbers.

So what do those numbers tell us? Both the win percentage and the teams he coached/took over, it shows he is an interim, tank coach. In my opinion it tells us that we are in for another year of rebuilding, another year of struggling, and another year of management not trying to sign any big free agents to “win now”.

Would any real coach want to come here after what happened to Flip Saunders? Did Ernie even consider bringing another “Flip Saunders” in?  Would any other coach even want the job?  Should they have hired a coach pre-lottery?  Do you really think the players “respond” to Whitman and the end of the season wins showed it?

My answer to all of these...NO!  And I think he will be gone when the team gets better...Interim...