For the second time in four years, the Washington Wizards are searching for a general manager after Ted Leonsis fired president and general manager Tommy Sheppard on Wednesday in the wake of the team missing the playoffs for a second consecutive season.
“Failure to make the playoffs the last two seasons was very disappointing to our organization and our fans,” Leonsis said in the statement.
Not all is changing at the top: Wes Unseld Jr. will return for his third season as coach, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, and he has Leonsis as a strong supporter.
Sheppard’s downfall was Washington’s inability to progress during his tenure despite multiple roster revamps and a new coach. The team finished 35-47 for the second consecutive season and missed the postseason for the fourth time in five years.
Overall, the team went 129-179 under his leadership, a winning percentage of just .419.
Sheppard took over the team from longtime general manager Ernie Grunfeld in an official capacity in July 2019 and led the Wizards during a time of great change both within the organization and for the NBA broadly.
Having worked in the front office under Grunfeld since 2003, Sheppard was promoted from interim general manager just eight months before the league halted amid the pandemic, then took the Wizards through their brief stay in the NBA bubble. In September 2020, a video of John Wall flashing gang signs at a party was the first link in a chain of events that ended with Sheppard trading the five-time all-star that December and handing the keys to the franchise to Bradley Beal.
Sheppard earned credit for turning Wall’s burdensome maximum contract into a deal that brought in Russell Westbrook — who willed the team to its only playoff appearance of Sheppard’s tenure — then turning Westbrook’s equally onerous contract into a deal that netted Kyle Kuzma.
He also traded for Kristaps Porzingis, fired coach Scott Brooks and last summer signed Beal to a five-year, $250 million maximum contract that cemented the guard as the franchise cornerstone.
Yet none of the changes in direction or savvy dealmaking helped the Wizards climb the ranks of the Eastern Conference, nor cement an identity on the court. They ended the season tied for the sixth-worst record in the NBA, but not even a season-ending stretch in which they sat their starters and focused on young players in large part to increase their draft positioning did any good.
Washington lost a tiebreaker to the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday, meaning it heads into the May 16 draft lottery with a 6.7 percent chance of winning the top pick and slightly increased chances of picking ninth or 10th — exactly where the Wizards have picked three of the past four years.
If constant churn was one defining aspect of Sheppard’s tenure, underwhelming drafting is another.
Sheppard selected forward Rui Hachimura with the team’s 2019 first-round pick, forward Deni Avdija in 2020, guard Corey Kispert in 2021 and guard Johnny Davis in 2022. Hachimura is now in Los Angeles, impressing with the Lakers in the playoffs after he requested a trade in January. Avdija has plenty of potential on the defensive end but has struggled with consistency. Kispert has evolved into a top-class three-point shooter, but Davis, selected 10th last year, failed to do much as a rookie. Washington needed a player who could come in and make an immediate impact, but he spent the majority of his first season in the G League.
Davis’s quiet season was just one of the issues in a disappointing campaign. The rosters Sheppard constructed never seemed to coalesce, and this year’s group fell far below its lofty expectations, given the talent levels of headliners Beal, Porzingis and Kuzma.
The Wizards’ front office, coaches and players cited long-term injuries to core players as reasons the roster never jelled. Beal, Porzingis and Kuzma played just 35 games together; the team went 16-19 in those matchups.
Yet every team deals with injuries. What the Wizards had to overcome were not bumps and bruises but years of being stuck in an endless cycle of mediocrity.