Justin Champagnie, the Wizards’ first substitute off the bench Tuesday, scored 17 points in the victory over the Magic.
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WASHINGTON — Coach Brian Keefe would have you believe that the Washington Wizards’ much-improved play lately has stemmed from a steady, workmanlike build.
“I think we were showing at times early in the year flashes of playing pretty good,” Keefe said in an interview with The Athletic. “I think I even would say this in the media. We just weren’t really consistent with it.”
Keefe is not inaccurate. Alex Sarr, for example, has protected the rim well all season long, and now he’s protecting the rim for longer stretches. Bub Carrington, for instance, labored during the offseason to improve his jumper, and he’s now sinking tightly contested 3-pointers. CJ McCollum persevered through a slow start to the season and has reemerged as a lethal scorer. The list goes on, and it includes positive steps taken by players such as rookie shooting guard Tre Johnson, third-year wing Bilal Coulibaly and veteran center Marvin Bagley III.
But Keefe’s theory, which adheres to the Wizards’ internal narrative of “stacking days” of diligent practice and professional habits, does not go quite far enough to explain why they’ve won five of seven games since Dec. 26, including a 120-112 victory Tuesday night over the Orlando Magic.
Heightened accountability has played a significant role, too. In interviews with The Athletic in recent days, several Wizards players said they believe a players-only meeting Nov. 16, in the immediate aftermath of an embarrassing 129-106 loss at home to the Brooklyn Nets, helped spark the turnaround, tightening bonds within the team and reaffirming players’ responsibilities to one another.
“It was needed,” Carrington told The Athletic. “It was necessary. But at the end of it, we all looked each other in the eyes as men and said, ‘What we’re showing the world ain’t us, and it’s literally up to the guys in this room to change it.’ And I feel like we’ve moved accordingly, for sure, after that conversation.
“I think we’ve completely shifted our goals and our mindset as far as our approach when it comes to the game,” Carrington added. “We’re focusing on just straight winning plays. We’re preaching to everyone, ‘Block out your other agendas, block out all the things that don’t really matter. Let’s just focus on winning the ballgame. Let’s focus on being the best Wizards we can be.’ And it’s been working well for us.”
The mid-November loss to the Nets dropped the Wizards’ record to 1-12, with 11 consecutive losses.
There have been some massively lopsided games since then — a 146-101 defeat on Dec. 4 at home to the Boston Celtics and a 141-115 home loss Sunday to the Minnesota Timberwolves come to mind — but the overall upward trend against a softer schedule is unmistakable, in quantitative and qualitative terms.
Washington has compiled a 9-13 record after the loss to Brooklyn and, arguably more important for a group of predominantly young and inexperienced players, has shown more fight and more resolve than at any time since starting its teardown rebuild with the trade of Bradley Beal in June 2023.
Bagley was one of the vocal players during the Nov. 16 meeting.
“We just had to make a decision on how we were going to present ourselves as a team, how we’re going to compete every night,” Bagley told The Athletic.
“We weren’t meeting that standard at the time. I think that meeting was well-needed. I spoke up and said my piece, and guys in the locker room spoke up as well, and we had a good talk. I think we came out closer as a unit, and it makes us understand each other more and want to go out and compete for each other. You can see it.”
The Washington Wizards have had something to celebrate lately: growth.
It’s not going to be perfect on many nights, not with a group as young as the Wizards. When a team allots minutes to so many young players simultaneously, lapses in concentration and on-court mistakes are bound to happen. There will be games similar to Sunday’s loss, in which Washington trailed Minnesota by double digits for the majority of the game.
Forty-eight hours later, though, Wizards players performed like they had chips on their shoulders. The Magic are one of the league’s most physical teams, but on Tuesday night, the Wizards were the aggressors from the jump.
Coulibaly set the tone on the game’s opening sequence, poking the basketball away from Paolo Banchero, collecting the loose ball and dunking on a fast break. A short while later, immediately after McCollum missed a 3-pointer, Sarr hustled to collect an offensive rebound and drew a foul on Banchero in the process. Washington forced a total of 19 turnovers, and Orlando never recovered fully despite a late-game run by a group of reserves.
The players-only meeting was one of two major sparks for Washington.
Another occurred after the early-December loss to the Celtics. In a game in which almost every Wizards player performed poorly, without the necessary effort, one player’s performance appeared more lackluster than anyone else’s.
Wing/forward Cam Whitmore did not hustle back on defense and continued to play with tunnel vision on offense. Whitmore was benched — not as a punishment but as a reaffirmation of team standards such as playing with effort, being competitive at all times, playing with physicality (especially on defense), playing smart basketball and playing unselfishly. Keefe, his assistant coaches and team officials could not continue to preach those objectives without holding Whitmore accountable.
To be clear, Whitmore was not the reason the team lost to Boston or had been playing badly. His play was one of many reasons.
But his benching, which occurred several weeks before he was diagnosed with a blood clot in his right shoulder, had trickle-down effects. Perhaps it also sent a message to the team.
Whitmore’s minutes had to go somewhere. His benching and injuries to other players led to more playing time for Justin Champagnie, a fifth-year forward who had gone undrafted out of college and plays as if his career depends on the outcome of every possession. Champagnie embodies the effort team officials want to see; he is only 6 feet 7, but he is the team’s most tenacious, most effective rebounder pound-for-pound.
Rookie Will Riley, another hustle player, also has earned a rotation spot. For a time, rookie guard Jamir Watkins, one of the team’s most active and most physical defenders, also earned minutes.
The all-out effort from Champagnie, Riley and Watkins had a carryover effect on their teammates. Carrington has found his groove. Coulibaly, now healthy after several early-season injuries, has amped up his energy. And Sarr has been more active than he’s been since Washington drafted him nearly 18 months ago.
The end result has brought out the best in the Wizards for now, and all the stacked days have started to pay modest dividends.
“We’re playing really good,” Coulibaly told reporters after Tuesday’s victory. “We’re playing fast. We’re getting stops.”
And they’re earning wins. The Wizards are having fun, and deservedly so. This is what accountability done correctly looks like.
—The Athletic’s David Aldridge contributed to this report
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Josh Robbins is a senior writer for The Athletic. He began covering the Washington Wizards in 2021 after spending more than a decade on the Orlando Magic beat for The Athletic and the Orlando Sentinel, where he worked for 18 years. His work has been honored by the Football Writers Association of America, the Green Eyeshade Awards and the Florida Society of News Editors. He served as president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association from 2014 to 2023. Josh is a native of the greater Washington, D.C., area. Follow Josh on Twitter @JoshuaBRobbins
