We were wrong about the Washington Wizards | The Athletic NBA Show
Next Award fine I was wrong award which goes to the preseason take we are reluctantly giving up um and for me it’s uh Yousef nurkic because uh listen I understood the argument for why it made sense to trade DeAndre Aon you know things were Beyond repair with DeAndre
And on the court nurkic was going to provide more passing ability which the sons needed but I was still extremely dubious Andrew that nurk was going to be the level of player that the Suns would need I had real concerns about his durability well through half of a season the only
Phoenix Suns player to play in every single game has been you guessed it YF nurkic all 42 games and while his scoring hasn’t been amazing he’s shooting under 50% from the field not great he’s rebounding the ball great he’s averaging three and a half assists
Per game and when he’s on the court the Suns hold teams to 8.2 fewer points per 100 possessions which leads the Suns and is in the 95th percentile in the league and if you go over to dunsen 3.com his defensive EPM plus 2.3 the guys immediately around him on the list Chad
Hren bam out of bio ogn and Obi that’s where that’s where he is with defensive EPM All Things Considered nerk has been an incredibly steady presence for a team that has desperately needed a steady presence through the first half of the season and for that reason I’m happy to
Give him my fine I was wrong award congratulations to you nage uh Al we we uh try to pick a surprise Team every year and yeah in the past I’ve done pretty good uh I I picked maybe the most shockingly bad team in the league like one of the most
Shockingly bad teams I picked the Wizards to be the team I picked has one more win than your team he’s a surprise team I know I can still hold it over you I know and and that team actually has a has a worse net rating today thanks to
The big go back go back to what you’re talking about Showdown um but the team I picked has seven wins right now so bad negative 9.1 net rating uh I thought they could surprise I thought they could shock the world and and win more games than than people thought they
Could but uh no they are seven and 37 currently and uh just did they didn’t fire their coach they uh told their coach promoted him in some ways to take a different seat and having Brian Keefe come in uh it’s not good out I mean almost everybody has underperformed to
Them um I guess the only thing that’s good is we got belal kulali you know doing some stuff but other than that it has been rough and I was very very wrong about the zards this is a very uh Niche stat but maybe the most like shocking
Thing about the Wizards is that Jordan P has you can find him on the waivers in some fantasy basketball leagues like that that is truly crazy because coming into the season people were thinking like all right Jordan pull he’s gonna get all the usage he wants like he might
Score a 30 a game who knows it’s been really rough and I did pick him up off of waivers and I keep waiting for it to turn around hasn’t exactly happened yet but he has been slightly better lately
The Athletic NBA Show discuss the Washington Wizards’ failures.
