WASHINGTON \u2014 Wizards general manager Will Dawkins said he’s expecting coach Brian Keefe to return next season after Washington finished with the NBA’s worst record.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I anticipate Brian Keefe to be here,\u201d Dawkins said Thursday at his end-of-season news conference.<\/p>\n
Keefe took over in the middle of the 2023-24 campaign, replacing Wes Unseld Jr. That was Washington\u2019s first season under its new front office led by Michael Winger and Dawkins. The team eventually took off Keefe\u2019s interim tag. <\/p>\n
But the Wizards haven\u2019t been built to win right away under Keefe. He went 8-31 in that first season, then 18-64 in 2024-25. This season Washington lost 26 of its last 27 games to go 17-65, ending any danger of the Wizards losing their first-round draft pick if it wasn\u2019t in the top eight. It\u2019s the first time since 1967 \u2014 when the franchise was the Baltimore Bullets \u2014 that the team finished with the league\u2019s worst record.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe put him in a situation this season which was a little difficult,” Dawkins said. “We led the NBA in starts for players under 21. I think we had 50-plus different starting lineups. So we threw a lot at him.\u201d<\/p>\n
But soon, Washington hopes to turn the focus away from collecting picks and lottery odds and improve its performance on the court. There were certainly some steps in that direction this season, when the Wizards traded for both Trae Young and Anthony Davis, although Young played only five games for them and Davis didn\u2019t play any. If both are healthy next season, Washington could be improved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Wizards general manager Will Dawkins said he’s expecting coach Brian Keefe to return next season after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,6,682,468,3892,2148,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-712057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-washington","11":"tag-washington-wizards","12":"tag-washingtonwizards","13":"tag-wires-bot","14":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116416873980031957","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}